Pushing the Hispanic Button
January 2008
By Peter Caranicas

Eyebrows rose last November when the U.S. Census Bureau released an analysis of surnames in the United States. Just as the hot-button issue of immigration neared the top of the presidential political debate, the census reported that two Hispanic names, Garcia and Rodriguez, have climbed into the list of the ten most common in the country.

People in the TV business who follow statistics like these were not surprised. According to the census, Hispanics now account for more than 14 percent of the U.S. population, and their numbers are growing far faster than the national average.

Most visibly, this demographic change has informed the political agenda, forcing candidates into delicate positions whereby they condemn illegal immigration while trying not to antagonize the growing block of Hispanic voters.

It has also propelled the rapid growth of Spanish-language television over the past several years, spawning networks and programming services alike that cater to a domestic group conservatively estimated at over 40 million people, which is—coincidentally—about the same number as the entire population of Spain, the source of the Spanish language.

In all, there are now 12.14 million Hispanic TV households in the U.S., according to Doug Darfield, the senior VP of multicultural measurement at The Nielsen Company. In about two-thirds of those homes, “Spanish is spoken as much as or more than English,â€