And, likely, there will be some growth. Immigration will not stop, Current Spanish listeners will not change habits. Most second generation will listen to some Spanish radio. Current + immigrants +second gens = greater than current total shares.
Your assumption that 2nd Gen will remain loyal.....possibly.....maybe not.
You are also assuming that other formats will fail to attract listeners from Hispanic homes.
You are assuming that although they remain in America for many years, these people will never venture to listen to non Spanish programming (as they tend to do with television).
Not necessarily true.
I never said second generation will exclusively use Spanish language media. I said they will use it part of the time.
Fortunately, we have several laboratories. New York had is entire Puerto Rican migration from the late 40's to the late 60's, and these migrants now have third generation grandchildren, so three generations can be studied. First geneation remains totally loyal to Spanish radio, the second uses both and even the third uses some, although not much.
Then there is San Antonio... were there is even a format playing all Spanish music with all English jocks and commercial sin either langauge... aimed entirely at third generation and beyond. The station is the #1 non-English station in San Antonio. And in this market, the first generation is loyal to Spanish radio, the second generation shares.
You don't suppose a company with abut $4 billion in value might have spent a million or so researching usage to determine the formats of the future and the best way to reach Hispanics?
First generation does not in any appreciable number, no matter how long in the US, change its music taste. So there is no change in radio listening, no matter how much English a person learns. One thing is drama on TV, and another is suddenly acquireing a taste for System of a Down when you grew up on Vicente Fernández.
Very little population in the Hispanic community is over 55, with the percentage being less than a third of the percentage of non-Hispanics in that demo. The average age is just over 20... so deaths are a very small factor, and will be more than compensated for, at current rates, by family runification, for example. Shares can increase slightly, in fact. Still, they have been realtively flat from about 1998 to 2005, with a slight increase (and vastly more stability) in 2006 with the implementation of language proportionality.
In earlier posts you passionately disagreed that "illegals" had any impact on ratings. Now...you use "family reunification" which in many, many, instances (including non-Hispanic examples) involves "illegal" or "undocumented" aliens. So now, because it conveniently supports a theory, you use that as part of the argument that shares will rise. Hmmm.
"Family reunification" is a special class of immigrants who are legal and who are given pirority over, let's say, the lottery, because they already have legal residents in the US. There is nothing remotely related to "illgals" in reunification visas.
When Arbitron talks about the effect of births, they specifrically mean "the effects of the birth rate of 12 years ago on the population now 12+" as should be obvious. Since Arbitron currently only counts 12+, then in thier context, "births" means "new people coming into the youngest demo." But, with PPM counting 6+, this will change in 10 months. Since the "birth rate" per Aribitron is vastly above the Hispanic death rate, this means total share can increase a bit. But it will definitely not go down. [/quote]
Wonderful. But when YOU cited the 50% increase in population originally, you had said it was from the census, not Arbitron. And you (nor anyone else in our business) know what birth/date rates will do in the next decade enough to say "definitely".
OK, I was not clear enough. The Hispanic birth rate has been sustaining the population of LA (MSA) for nearly two decades. The Black population has fallen in numbers and percentage, and the non-Hispanic white population has not grown enough to keep the same percentage of the market. The Hispanic group has grown, and as it reaches 12 years of age, is part of the Arbitron sample.
Arbitron uses Census data. Always has. They get annual revisions from Claritas, who uses the Census updates and other data to make a better projection. But Arbitron data comes from the Census. In the case of radio related population, the 12+ Census data shows the effect of births... just that those births were 12 years prior. I can not see how this is a difficult concept, as there is no variation in the way humans age: we all get a year older each year.
It is extremely unlikely that there will be a decrease in Spanish listening over the next decade... it is extremely likely listening will increase at least a bit even with immigration reform.
I am not predicting individual staitons... I am predicting demographics based on decades of history and what we know about the listening patterns of first and second generation Hispanics.
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I can tell you that predicting future listening habits based on the past is a dangerous game that doesnt always work out very well. And if you're not willing to predict individual stations, at least understand that many of them have the possibility of seeing their audiences erode and shares drop. We've already seen it with some in the past couple of years.
There is a big difference in predicting stations and the overall market.
For the market, we have literally thousands of studies done about la ngauge usage, music taste formation and retention, etc. And we have historical data from places where immigrants of all types had radio in thier langauge (New York had Italian radio... two stations... 50 years after the last significant Italian migration to the US. Chicago still has Polis stations). Broadcasters have looked at the music and radio tastes of Hispanics who are first generation but have been here 5, 10, 20, 25, 30 years and so on. The second generation has been studied extensively, even leading to the creation of very specific Spanglish staitons in a dozen or so of the largest Hispanic markets.
Who will win on a station basis? New stations come... generally in this market with better signals... and drive out the bad signals. Like 93.5 and 103.1 that are not in Spanish any more. AMs drop Spanish as Hispanics don't use AM the way non-Hispanic whites do. Some stations are more committed, and spend more on talent and promotion. Old leading jocks get tired and boring (Humberto Luna was #1 for 20 years, and now he is getting a 0.7 on KHJ AM). Better programmers win, bad ones lose. I can¿t predict the next trend, let alone the next book. The PPM will change the pecking order of Spanish radio, just like it has in Houston.
I can predict movie box office based on trending and competitive entertainment sources, but I can not predict which movies will be a success. I can predict sales of breakfast cereal, but I can not predict indivudual brands.
The fact is that the existing shares will sustain Spanish language staitons (however radio is delivered) with total certainty through the next decade, and probably further... because the first generation community is so young. And the shares may grow, based on the usage of Spanish radio by Hispanics born here, who can add to the existing shares. And there will be formats like KXOL that are designed for second gens, based on the growing size of this group.
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