Some of the country’s biggest media companies have tapped into widespread Latino sentiment by offering programming geared for Latinos in English instead of Spanish, according to a recent online opinion piece.
While CNN is going to start a Spanish-language programming service tailored for broadcast TV stations next year, “CNN Latino” is a step in the wrong direction for Latinos, who are increasingly speaking English as a dominant language, according to the column.
The columnist, Hector Luis Alamo Jr., claims that the marketing strategy of companies like CNN looking to tap into Latino buying power should factor in that each new generation of U.S. Latinos speaks more English than the last. “And because there are more Latinos being born in the United States than arriving from Latin America, we can expect to see a mostly English-dominant Latino population in just a short while,” he writes.
On the other end of the spectrum from CNN, ABC News and Univision are working together to give English programming to Latinos. Comcast will also start a channel called El Rey in 2014 offering English-language programming for Latinos. Comcast owns NBCLatino, an English-language news site geared toward Latinos.
