The president should send Fox a bill for all the millions of dollars they make from the free content he provides.
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Avoiding Spanish-language radio
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
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The president should send Fox a bill for all the millions of dollars they make from the free content he provides.
I oversee over 20 stations all in Spanish and I can tell you we are seeing and feeling the effect of this new administration.
legal hispanics (first generation) still keep spanish as first language even if they have been here for 30 years.
Trump was in Texas this past week and it just happened that Televisa-Univision was one of the networks not allowed at the press conference.
I would say Trump has a deep distrust of legacy/mainstream media. He gravitates toward the FOX/NewsMax models because they are more geared to his views. Having said that, I think even some FOX staff are sick of the way things are going. On Netanyahu, my question is, did FOX give an unbiased view of what was going on in Gaza? Or, did they gloss over it? I truly believe that the CBS 60 Minutes experience has muzzled mainstream media.
Being in Australia and curious about world events, it is very eye opening watching (US) mainstream news outlets cover events, then finding other sources, often former msn staff, and seeing the difference in news reporting. The former staff, who still have huge online audiences and no longer employed by mainstream media are free to think and report things as they see them, with little fear of an employer being harrasssed because they dared to broadcast factual information.
The clips I saw where one reporter dared to ask about the local governments political bias in refusing emergency funding, Trump tore them a new hole, saying it was offensive. At some point, the only people left in these conferences will be right wing bloggers if they keep shout at people and banning the media.
It's OK with me!
For what it's worth, I agree with what you're saying. @davideduardo also makes good points, but in my opinion, those points are, at least in part, predicated on the belief – and the assumption – that we have a government that will reliably and consistently follow its own laws. Unfortunately, given what's been going on – both in public and behind the scenes – we can no longer safely make that assumption 100 percent of the time.
I mean, 90% of what has been threatened probably won't come to pass. Term #1 was full of similar threats that were never fulfilled, so it may very well be a TACO variant. But we must be careful and consider the possibility, no matter how remote, and have a plan in place should it ever actually happen. It would be foolish not to.
So, given all that, we should be prepared for the event, unlikely though it may be, that the FCC under Brenden Carr, based on that EO, mandates that only English be allowed on radio.
Will it happen? Probably not, but who can say for sure?
c
What's been going on in their native country has nothing to do with whether they're listening to KIRN, and/or afraid of listening to KIRN in their car. Most Persians in the US probably speak English fluently, and the majority of them listen to rhythmic or CHR, English language stations anyway. Children of immigrants Americanize very quickly. If you look at the stats, the peak years for immigration from Iran were the 80's and 90's. That was over 35 years ago. In 2020, there were 350K Iranian-Americans in the entire country. That's a small population, comparatively, and most of them by now are probably citizens because they were born here.
The variances in mainstream news seems to be a worldwide phenomenon anywhere there is commercially-supported news. In Oz you've got the ABC and Sky News, the UK has its version of Sky News and other news agencies, and online there are a lot of different news channels from many countries, all with different views and takes, including a bunch out of India.
We're seeing fragmentation of the news media, especially with all the online channels with their global distribution (mostly in English), and the days of 3 or 4 major networks in a given country seeming to be drawing to a close.
Televisa, owners now of Univision, made a decision to change the approach the company had to news. For example, the former Univision´s most prominent anchor, was on record stating that he believed that news anchors had a duty to analyze and guide public opinion via their presentation of the news. The new owners do not have, ever since they introduced TV to Mexico in the 50's, that approach. Instead, they stand for neutral and impartial delivery.
That is why executives from TelevisaUnivision have had meetings with the current administration, something that would have never happened under the system typified by Ramos' single party approach. The network is now accessible to all parties and voices. And news anchors do not editorialize or give opinions in pure newscasts.
Televisa's approach has favored them through four different parties in the presidency of their home country, and it appears that they want that in the U.S. as well
No party in the U.S. told Televisa who to employ as anchors nor did the news department overall undergo a change, although much of the production and writing is now done in Mexico and not Miami.
How can a company deciding on a new internal news policy be a violation of the First Amendment?
I read the EO that you linked. I didn't see anything about the use of English or any other language in commerce, interstate or otherwise. Just Federal government documents.I wondered about that when the president signed an "English Only" executive order. This FCC carries out all executive orders.
Designating English as the Official Language of The United States
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose andwww.whitehouse.gov
It would be very unpopular among some Hispanics.
Ethnic radio stations have nothing to worry about concerning this EO.
I never have agreed with English being declared a national language here in the US, because it basically already is the defacto language of government (local, state and Federal) and commerce. The vast majority of immigrants speak at least some English, if they don't already have some measure of fluency from working on the job and interacting with other immigrants (and native born Americans) in commerce.
In my personal opinion the EO is bullsh*t. But also I think that radio has little to worry about. The Punjabi or Regional Mexican station down the road isn't giving out edicts and laws from a Federal Agency. They're playing music and maybe have some talk shows. In a sense, they're not much different than the Asian markets, taco stands and mercado's one sees in most metros in urban America, where a lot of the info -- and interaction between business and customer -- is in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or other languages.
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That is absolutely wrong. The vast majority of immigrants from non-English speaking nations arrive with no English at all. And only a smallish percentage become truly bilingual (able to think in two languages separately without translating).
I had the opportunity a few years back to see the data the Mexican consulate in LA compiles on immigrants from Mexico. Roughly 50% of men have a 6th grade education or less. A higher percentage of women have not even attained that level. Since the vast majority of Mexican immigrants come from rural and small village locations in Mexico, there is no English spoken and none taught in local schools.
Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have even less English language knowledge.
In Latin America, English is taught in private schools only. Those going to such schools are upper class and upper middle income class people, the ones who do not emigrate. Even in Puerto Rico, USA, in public schools English is optional or only required for a couple of semesters; only in expensive private schools there is English generally required and often as much as half of the curriculum is taught in English.
Most such adult immigrants will learn enough English to get employment unless they work at an Hispanic business where English is not needed. They will not suddenly become listeners to English AC stations nor will they just love Seinfeld reruns. They will retain their culture in the home, usually forever.
The only exceptions are sociopolitical refugees such as the 60's and 70's emigration from Cuba where the emigrants were the upper class, fleeing socialism. Similar situations can be seen in Colombian and Venezuelan communities in South Florida where the most wealthy and educated have left nations due to violence or repressive governments. But, returning to the Mexican example, the well to do in Mexico do not want to leave; they live much better where they are than they would in the United States.
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Perhaps you misunderstood me. It all revolves around what is the definition of 'immigrant'. Are we talking about the 'just came over the border' or 'just off the plane' immigrant, or the one whose family has been here for over a decade. Because both are considered 'immigrants' by a lot of people, and when it comes to English language skills they're vastly different in both cases.
In the case of the Iranians mentioned upthread, how many have arrived within the last 5-10 years, compared to the majority who were born here and/or arrived before 2000? An 'immigrant' can be here in the country for 40 years and still be identified -- or self-identify -- as an immigrant. When I was a mechanic for a few years I worked for a Sri Lankan who had been in the UK for 20 years, lived in Germany for 2 years, and had been in the US for just over 30 years (and a citizen for the majority of those years) and he is still considered an immigrant by some. Having brown skin, he has dealt with racism nearly his entire life outside of Sri Lanka -- no matter who was in office in the WH.
I taught English to Ukrainian adults in the early 1990's. They already knew rudimentary English, just by living here for 4-5 years. Their kids were already fluent. I'm sure some of those kids (all adults by now) consider themselves immigrants. Some of them were born in Ukraine, and they were already fluent or near fluent when I met them. Those children and college age kids back then were into rap and pop, not Ukrainian folk music. Children of immigrants usually assimilate fairly quickly, especially if the metro -- like the one where I live -- is fairly integrated, with no 'Salvadoran neighborhoods', or 'Somali neighborhoods'.
In other metros perhaps it's different.
I also dealt with Salvadorans, Mexicans, Filipinos and Ethiopians in my last job, where they were my former boss's clients, and they all spoke English proficiently enough, because they had to on the job, or to hold a business (like taxi driver or truck driver or small restaurant owner) where one has to deal with people of all nationalities. Some were in the US for 5-10 years, some longer -- they were still all 'immigrants'. Whatever English they could speak and understand they learned on the job, or in interactions with other people -- people of all nationalities, not just whites. Could they read and understand a legal document, or technical college textbook? Maybe not in the case of most of them, but they knew enough English to get by.
And don't forget, there are estimates that almost 54% of Americans read at a 12 year old level. So when it comes to overall language proficiency, there are a lot of factors involved, even with people born here.
This thread has completely veered off the rails from media to personal political opinions.
It would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution if Televisa made those changes under threat by the U.S. President and/or his family and other people in power. It would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution if the U.S. President threatened the licenses of Televisa network affiliates unless the organization got rid of its commentator(s) who happened to oppose the U.S. President in their commentaries.
Turning the tables, if former President Biden had pressured Fox to dump Tucker Carlson (as far as I know, the pressure came from Dominion Systems a private business that sells voting machines to states and countries, and not the President of the U.S.), then he, President Biden, would have also done something that was against the U.S. Constitution and which he should have been called out on.
I regret having even brought it up. (Next time, I might not. I try to bring something new to the table with my posts; political combat is the least new and most boring thing right now.) I'm not naïve; the original topic is related to a sensitive subject where there are strong opinions. But the discussion started to devolve into a urination contest with only bits and pieces related to the economic viability of Spanish-language media. So let me try to re-center it. My point was this: if anecdotes such as the one NPR reported take hold, Spanish-language media could begin losing their economic base. Ratings would no longer matter when the narrative of "Spanish speakers are afraid to listen to (or use) media in their language for fear of detention and deportation" became more widespread. If advertisers believe that they don't have an audience any more, they're going to stop being advertisers. This scenario would be especially problematic for publicly traded companies, because so much of the stock market already runs on narrative and sentiment. Media businesses already are disfavored in the public markets. This wouldn't help.
The topic on restrictions on broadcasting in languages other than English is also interesting. Newspapers in other languages have been around a long time, of course. For example, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch originally started out as a German-language newspaper. But from what I recall, non-English broadcasting seemed to be discouraged in the 1930s and 1940s, though a few smaller stations in big metros did some of it anyway. But I don't know that there were any regulations against it. Perhaps it was more of a cultural thing. When did it become more common? 1960s? 1970s? My own 1960s experience in New Mexico isn't representative and, even there, only one station broadcast in Spanish full-time though there were programs on other stations. But I spent the 1970s in the Midwest, where all broadcasting was in English. So I don't have a good insight on when this type of ethnic broadcasting became more common. It was probably a trailing indicator of population changes, but how much did such broadcasting lag those changes?
I think that was already addressed. If they're illegal, they're not part of the economic base.
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Not to go back into deep history, but during World War 2, when radio was the dominamt media, broadcasts in Italian and German were allowed. True, stations were required to keep English translations on record, but there was never any official prohibition of foreign language radio. My father was on on the air on Italian language radio throughout the War.
SnottyNose799
Banned
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm almost sure the migrants know radio pros (and maybe the government too) with PPM devices can tell what they're listening to, so that's why they're avoiding Spanish radio.
Of course they are. Most of them work, make money, and they're consumers just like anyone else. In an earlier post, David Eduardo stated that they don't fill out Nielsen surveys, but where's the proof that they don't?
Regardless, advertisers that buy Spanish language media know what audience they need to reach and I'm sure they're aware of the media they use. Some would also be aware of any undercounting and factor it into their buying decisions. It's naive to think that this population isn't part of a thriving economy and an important part of the Spanish language business and media ecosystem..
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