COMMUNICATIONS-U.S.: Hispanic Media Merger ‘Threatens Diversity’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alberto Pipino

NEW YORK, Oct 1 2003 (IPS) - The merger of the Univisión television network and the Hispanic Broadcasting radio network in the United States suggests that the Spanish-speaking community here increasingly will have to rely on just one source for news and entertainment.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the merger last week, in a 3-2 vote, with the members representing the Republican Party in favour and those of the Democratic Party opposed.

This gave the green light to the biggest Spanish-language media conglomerate in the country, with 53 television and 68 radio stations.

But the FCC decision, announced after a year of consideration, will not put an end to the controversy about the merger, estimated to have cost Univisión 3.4 billion dollars.

Many see it as an attempt to monopolise the lucrative Spanish-language advertising market and to influence a community that could be key in the next presidential elections.

The merger approval was not an easy feat for the Republicans on the FCC, in part because of a law that limits the concentration of ownership of the communications media. In this case, the merger went beyond the maximum number of radio stations allowed one owner.

But that law has been suspended by a federal court, and the FCC authorised the Univisión-Hispanic Broadcasting merger with the condition that the new media giant must sell the excess radio stations within six months after the suspension is lifted.

The stations that belonged to Hispanic Broadcasting will now be known as Univisión Radio, but Thomas M. Arnost, chairman of the Univisión Television Group said there will be no major programming changes.

Critics charge that the new conglomerate will hold inappropriate dominance in a specific sector of the media market, but the three-member majority of the FCC argued that it will be a relatively small actor in U.S. broadcasting overall.

The merger "will give Hispanic media a better opportunity to compete against big media companies, capturing more advertising revenue to allow it to expand unique language and cultural offerings to its audiences," says the FCC statement of approval.

Univisión will now capture two-thirds of the 2.4 billion dollars that advertisers spend in the Spanish-language media in the United States, reports Hispanic Business.

The FCC approval was signed by the body’s chairman, Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and by Kathleen Abernathy and Kevin Martin, all members of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, the two Democrats on the commission, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, wrote in their dissent that the merger approval is yet another in a series of troublesome FCC actions towards deregulating the media market under the George W. Bush administration.

They said deregulation runs counter to the public interest because "mega-mergers" of media that dominate news coverage and opinion, reducing the range of viewpoints that reach audiences.

The Univisión merger affects an important sector of the public. According to a study by Nielsen Media Research, a television rating company, one out of seven TV-viewers is a member of the Latino community.

Currently, Univisión reaches 97 percent of Spanish-speakers living in the United States, and Hispanic Broadcasting reaches 60 percent.

According to the 2002 U.S. census, the Latino population is approximately 38.8 million, or 13.5 percent of the national population.

The National Association of Hispanic Publications (NAPH), comprising more than 200 Spanish-language periodicals with a combined circulation of more than 14 million, made a decision to publicly oppose the merger.

"For the Hispanic print industry to continue prospering, we need to ensure that we have a level playing field where all Hispanic media can compete fairly," NAPH director Ivonne Cunarro wrote in a letter to the FCC.

The merger of Univisión and Hispanic Broadcasting "threatens to stifle the diversity of voices and the fair competition existing today in Hispanic media," she said.

As a result of the merger, nearly all Latinos will receive their news and entertainment from just one source: Univisión, Robert Menéndez, chairman of the House of Representatives Democratic Caucus, told a Senate committee hearing on the matter.

Menéndez also noted that the owners of the media giant – Jerrold Perrenchio, of Univisión and McHenry Tichenor, of Hispanic Broadcasting – are not Latinos.

Perrenchio and Tichenor’s families are major contributors to the Republican Party, a fact that is part of the backdrop of the FCC debate.

Democrat Bill Richardson, Latino governor of the southwestern state of New Mexico and Cabinet member during the Bill Clinton administration (1993-2001), said the merger will result in a company run by Latinos, will attract new advertisers and will better serve the millions of Spanish-speakers living in the United States.

But Mario Diament, journalism professor at Florida International University, says, "The more media are covered by a single economic umbrella, the less informational diversity the public has."

Even diversity within the Latino market could suffer, given that Univisión tends to focus on the largest group within the Spanish-speaking community, which are Mexicans – some 20 million people, he said. "We could be on the verge of greater ‘Mexicanisation’ of news and programming."