I read on the Huffington Post this week that the New York Post had closed down its weekly, English language Hispanic targeted “publication” Tempo and fired it’s editor Sandra Guzman. Huffington Post Blogger Sam Stein wrote an article hypothesizing that the firing had something to do with Guzman’s criticism a few months back of the Post’s very controversial cartoon which depicted the author of President Obama’s stimulus package as a dead chimpanzee.
Numerous comments about the article depicted Rupert Murdoch as grand orchestrator of this “racists” dismissal and Miss Guzman as a courageous soul for standing up to big bad Rupert and the numerous white supremacists at the New York Post. Â Few mentioned the very real fact that the newspaper industry is in the midst of a historic shakeup amid the recession and no one mentioned the fact that Tempo had shrunk down to a shell of its former self with often just a page or two per week and maybe one or two sponsors.
My experience with Tempo is that it had degenerated to Hispanic “tokenism” pure simple, with the minimum effort given to New York Latino readers while trying to extract the maximum possible from Latino targeted advertisers. That never works long term so there you have it.
Tempo closed down and probably the News Corp folks are saying “good riddance”, but that is not racism. Its just bad business. Tokenism is not unique to News Corp or even to Non Latino companies.
Below is an excerpt of the comment I posed on the Huffington Post site (after they deactivated my original username for some unknown reason). You can read the Huffington Post article at
I’ve worked in the media my entire career and in the Hispanic Media industry most of that time. The saying that “a fish stinks from the head down” couldn’t describe a company better than Murdoch’s News Corp. They are ruthless and opportunistic and will do anything for profit or power, like most corporations and media companies. That being said, there are some very good people that still manage to work there.
However, blaming the editor’s discontinuation on criticisms she made about the NY Post’s cartoon months ago is not only way off , it hurts the credibility of legitimate issues associated with Murdoch’s media outlets.
The bottom line is:
1) The Newspaper industry is getting killed and probably won’t recover.
2) Tempo was not a serious effort at courting New York Latin readers. It was a token effort to attract Hispanic ad dollars, lack of quality writing, intriguing stories or good management be damned.
It’s too easy and lazy to scream racism at every turn when Murdoch is involved. Based on my experience with Tempo and News Corp., it was probably a business decision pure and simple.
Tempo had several shots to be a much needed voice for the Latin community, but they blew them, so now it no longer exist. That is the way business works. Please stop screaming racism and painting the editor as a martyr by connecting dots that don’t exist. Save the accusations for the many, many legitimate times race is a factor.
A discussion about the upcoming 2010 census at the recent Global Hue “Sobremesa†panel sparked reflection regarding how much has changed yet remain unchanged since the 2000 census.
In 2002 I first began producing a half hour TV show called “Urban Latino TVâ€. At that time there was excitement from the recent census release but a huge scarcity of English language programming for young, U.S. born Latinos (American Latinos). We felt compelled to produce broad appeal segments that had a primary goal of entertaining our core audience but at the same time educated Non Latinos to counter the stereotypes that resulted from this scarcity of accurate media images.    Â
In 2004 we changed the show to “American Latino TV†and launched “LatiNation†as a companion show for a one hour block. This strategy grew distribution, ad sales and audience but a happy coincidence was that with two shows we could now cover twice the number of subjects with twice the segments. I read great book about fragmentation called “The Long Tail†www.TheLongTail.com which inspired me to coin a concept that goes something like “the more underserved the demographic, the more loyal they will be when you engage themâ€. What would happen if we use some of these extra segments to “sub-target†within the shows to more specific and underserved demographics? Â
The extra segments meant staffing up production but our marketing resources were small. We needed to keep growing and media fragmentation was taking hold industry-wide. How could we grow audience in the face of such fragmentation and such limited marketing resources?
The magic happened when we turned to our source of strength, CONTENT, to help our weaker link, MARKETING. Our producers dug deeper, looking for untold stories, the kind that had rarely if ever been told in hopes of creating buzz. Keeping the “Long Tail†concept in mind, we tasked ourselves to identify subcultures within the Latin market that were large enough to impact but had been ignored by English and Spanish language TV. Could we include these subcultures while holding true to the mission of representing all American Latinos with positive and uplifting stories?
We began broadcasting stories on “sub ethnicities†like Afro Latinos, Brazilians & Filipinos and targeted lifestyle subcultures like punk, rockabilly and psychobilly. We covered tattoo artists, burlesque dancers, lucha libre wrestling, female boxing, roller derby, pin up models and more.
The more underground the subculture, the more enthusiastic the response, not only from our new subculture viewers but from the core viewers, who found the coverage refreshing, educational and counter stereotypical. The viewer emails and feedback was unprecedented. We built rapid word of mouth and new legions of viewers as each subculture had its own loyal following and those fans were now our fans. Â
By including subcultures we produced a better show while helping achieve our marketing goals. Subculture members cluster and are accustomed to being ignored by mainstream media. They are early adapters and heavy users of social media like My Space, Facebook, YouTube, etc. They worked tirelessly to promote our shows to their peers and the price was right. FREE!Â
Our marketing focus changed to enable an army of subculture fans to talk up the shows via web message-boards and social networking sites. We supplemented these efforts with targeted grassroots events such as Brazilian festivals, various ethnic parades, rockabilly conventions, etc. We were often approached by the media spawn of these subcultures (niche websites, newspapers, radio shows) that were so excited for the coverage on national TV that they eagerly provided us valuable publicity. Â Â Â
Of course we continued covering major stories and using well known American Latino celebrities as hooks. But by simply targeting a few segments consistently to an ignored subculture and supporting this with a coordinated marketing effort, we garnered fans that may have never tuned in (or purchased our advertisers’ products).    Â
After selling the company “American Latino Syndication†to LATV Networks, I no longer produce these shows but the lessons I learned by targeting subcultures remain. I’m currently working on a documentary on Latinos in punk music and discovering more.  Â
Unfortunately, I feel that for some marketers, the entire Hispanic market is viewed as one big subculture with monolithic likes and dislikes. Sacrificing effectiveness for ease, they produce Spanish language creative, run 95% of their budgets on Spanish language media and call it a day. By doing this they don’t realize they are missing out on the largest and most dynamic subculture of all, over 25 million young, upwardly mobile and rapidly growing U.S. born Latinos who, heading into the 2010 census, are still grossly under-represented both on television and with marketing budget allocations. Â
You can check a story we did on punk band NOFX to target the Latin punk subculture here:
Uncharacteristically Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post recently published a clear eyed opinion on the misplaced hysteria surrounding the immigration debate. Sure could have used this objective journalism in 2006 and 2007 when the News Corp Media empire stirred up the controversy in the first place.
Full disclosure, as a member of the media, I don’t trust or like Murdoch, an immigrant himself, just one with lots and lots of money and very little class. Send his ass back to Australia and let the poor Mexican immigrants stay I say.
This is a great article on the cultural differences shaping our country. I think it’s interesting that it’s a reaction to increasing intolerance in Long Island,NY. When I first moved to NYC from Tennessee so many “educated” people, (many of them ivy leaguers), stereotyped the entire southeast region of our country as dimwitted, intolerant racists. How many wall street working, ivy league educated people live in East Hampton where THESE atrocities occur? I believe people should forgo a semester at that expensive university and travel south… (and keep going until they get to Patagonia). Â
John Myers -
Long Island City Guide Examiner
Â
the article
From Farmingville to East Hampton: communication gaps between American’s and today’s immigrants
This is a piece I wrote more than five years ago. In light of recent discussions following the last year’s murder of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue, I thought this might be a good time to revisit the piece. Introduction:…
To read the rest of this article, please click on the link below:
American Latino Syndication has announced that Daisy Fuentes will be hosting and co-executive producing “American Latino TV” this coming Fall 2009. American Latino TV is an English-language TV show targeted to US-born Latinos and seen in over 100 cities, reaching over 92% of Hispanic TV homes. This reach makes American Latino TV second only to Univision for distribution of Hispanic-targeted TV programing.
“In a typical episode of American Latino TV, you’ll see interviews with Latin celebrities, musical artists, features on cultura, fashion, barrios and, most importantly, everyday American Latinos doing extraordinary and inspirational things! We tell stories that need to be heard, that must be heard!”
Daisy will be an exceptional addition to the TV show with accomplishments ranging from MTV VJ, TV personality, model, Revlon cosmetics spokesperson and her own line of sportswear, fragrances and hair products.
Rock y Roll Radio is definitely a fan of American Latino TV and will be waiting anxiously for Daisy’s show to premiere the first week of October.
