Abstract
It is commonly believed that there is widespread attention being paid to the emerging Latino audience with an eye toward maximizing the economic potential of selling this audience to advertisers. Christopher Chávez, however, keenly critiques this position, demonstrating in his book Reinventing the Latino Television Viewer: Language, Ideology, and Practice, that the Latino audience is not “emerging,” nor is attention toward its market potential new. Christopher Chávez is an assistant professor at the University of Oregon and uses his experience as an advertising executive to contextualize and frame his analysis of the Latino media landscape.
Chávez grounds his research in a Bourdieuian framework to investigate the practices of Hispanic television to highlight the “commonsense presumptions that structure the field.” He is critical of the intuitive comparison that pits “Hispanic television” against “general market television.” Chávez is careful to outline the historical development of Spanish language media, describing the newspapers’ role in the Spanish Southwest. Importantly, he explains how the press emerged within the Southwest after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. He emphasizes the various challenges encountered by these media organizations in California and other newly acquired States. He traces the dominance of the printed press to the broadcast era by exploring ownership patterns. The Mexican influence on the expansion of Spanish language television in the United States meant that much of the programming was imported from Mexico and broadcast exclusively in Spanish.
The description of the current marketplace offers a backdrop to Chávez’s arguments regarding “linguistic erasures.” In the early stages, Hispanic television practiced the erasure of English by its exclusive attention to Spanish as the coalescing factor that could unite the audience. Furthermore, deregulation established the impetus for the consolidation of the Spanish language outlets, allowing them to compete directly with the English language networks. By 2013, Univisión was earning its highest ever prime-time ratings, further emphasizing the success of Spanish as the preferred language of the audience. The success of the Hispanic networks leads Chávez to question whether the economic structure of marketplace impacts their ability to serve the diversity of the Latino audience.
In Chapter 2, Chávez outlines the way in which market research is used to justify advertising strategies that benefit Spanish language media outlets. The industry findings emphasize normative assumptions about the Latino audience that serve to prioritize Spanish language networks, such as Univisión, as the media outlet of choice for a presumably Spanish-dominant audience. Chávez is able to use evidence from interviews with advertising professionals to demonstrate the deeply held beliefs about the Latino audience that influence decision making. He aptly points out that professionals rarely interrogate how these assumptions might limit creativity and their ability to effectively reach Latino consumers.
Chávez transitions to the next section by underscoring the relationship between language and social identity. He provides examples of code-switching characters and accented speech patterns that are finding their way to general market programs. His interview subjects include bilingual actors who offer keen insight into the production of programs that use Spanish phrases for consumption by primarily English monolinguals. On the contrary, the growth of bilingual characters and the expansion of networks that pitch themselves to bicultural millennials are blurring the boundaries between Spanish and English programming. After uncovering the strategies of several Latino media outlets, however, he concludes that the changing media landscape is in fact reifying the boundaries between Spanish and English programming, but in ways that restrict the use of the Spanish language, even on the Latino-themed networks. He states, “In the new Hispanic landscape, linguistic capital is beginning to shift back in favor of native English-speakers.” Although he describes the success of individual executives and actors, he is cautious not to overemphasize the power of the “small, but visible Latino cohort.”
In the final chapter, Chávez investigates the future of the Hispanic television landscape and emphasizes the need for more Latinos in creative and executive positions. Although conventional wisdom is in agreement that Latino cultural elements are finding their way to the mainstream, how those elements are appropriated and sold is still dictated by a vision of America that presents racial harmony, where there are “no costs to being Latino.” He cautions that more representation does not necessarily equate to Latino agency in political and social practices. If the Hispanic media industry turns away from its foundational audience to “more lucrative acculturated Latinos,” it runs the risk of losing its ability to support the audience that it is meant to serve.
Chávez’s unique position gained him access to a diverse range of interview subjects who provide insight into the production practices of the Hispanic media market. Ultimately, he is able to weave together the development of Spanish language media and the emergence of a bilingual media space while explaining the market forces that imagine a Latino audience that ultimately fits into the larger corporate logic of commercial media in the United States. The promise of new media platforms and distribution channels may provide an avenue where a range of stories that appeal to the diversity of the Latino experience can find a home and recapture the civic function of media meant to serve the community.