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Spanish Radio down in both SA and Austin

Interesting blog in today's Taylor on Radio-Info:

New estimates for “Spanish-dominant” speakers are changing some Arbitron markets.

The year-to-year drop for Spanish-dominants in San Antonio was a whopping 31%. It was 16% in Sacramento and 14% in Austin. Chicago was down nearly 9% and Dallas 8%. The only markets showing significant gains were Denver (up 14%) and San Francisco (up 6%). Arbitron gets its language-preference estimates from Nielsen Media Research, and Nielsen has modified its procedures toward an address-based sample as opposed to a local landline phone sample. The sample size is smaller, and thus Nielsen’s grouping the last six years of data instead of two years. That does a better job with cellphone-only households and has a higher response rate. But for this transition, there are notable changes. Remember San Antonio? Univision’s regional Mexican KROM is off 6.6 to 5.2 and its cume is down more than 50,000. Remember Dallas? Total Spanish shares are off, about the same percentage as the drop in Spanish-dominants. But in Las Vegas, a couple of Spanish stations are rocketing upwards – and Vegas is one of four markets where Arbitron just instituted “Language Usage Weighting.” (The others are Tampa, Orlando and Washington DC.) Yesterday’s TRI pointed out that in Vegas, Univision’s “La Nueva” had zoomed 4.1 to 4.7 to 5.6 since the December book. Lotus’ Spanish variety hits KWID jumped 3.6-4.2-5.1. Not every Spanish station is up in such markets. Because sometimes we’re going to see another factor – more young Hispanics tuning in English-language radio, even if they’re classified as “Spanish dominant.”
 
From my years in San Antonio I have multiple friends who are 3rd and 4th generation in the US and they rarely if ever speak Spanish (it does get irritating when I want to practice my Spanish and they won't help out.. :), I'm stuck watching the Novellas but they talk too fast.. )and when my friend do speak the language, it's with familia and then it's the grandparents. Not sure how much immigration has slowed, but I wonder if there are as many puro Spanish speakers coming into the country anymore as there used to be? America seems to have almost a unique ability to meld folks into the culture.
 
I wonder how Houston is holding out. There are tons of Spanish speakers out here. I'm starting to wonder if there are any 3rd or 4th generation hispanics like in SA.
 
Regarding Houston - This is purely anecdotal, your question brought this incident back to my mind (and I still laugh at it :) ) I was walking through River Center Mall in SA a couple of years ago and we were behind a group of young African-American ladies. One of them turned to her friend and said 'I'm not prejudiced, but there are just too many Mexicans in this town, we don't have this many in Houston', I had just taken a drink and almost spit it out...so while I don't know the exact numbers, I wonder about the visibility of the population....
 
CTHank said:
Regarding Houston - This is purely anecdotal, your question brought this incident back to my mind (and I still laugh at it :) ) I was walking through River Center Mall in SA a couple of years ago and we were behind a group of young African-American ladies. One of them turned to her friend and said 'I'm not prejudiced, but there are just too many Mexicans in this town, we don't have this many in Houston', I had just taken a drink and almost spit it out...so while I don't know the exact numbers, I wonder about the visibility of the population....

obivously, they lived there before 2000 when the shift from black to hispanic really started to take off in Houston. A good example is Sharpstown, a neighboorhood in which I used to live. They tried to market the mall as Urban which was done a decade too late in my opinon. But it is really taking off with PlazAmericas. I don't know what part of Houston they are from, but they don't seem to listen to radio unless it is 92.1, 97.9, 95.7, 96.5, 99.1, 102.1, or 104.1. They are probally from Katy, Cypress, or Brookshire or some other outskirts of Houston proper.
 
sdh483 said:
I wonder how Houston is holding out. There are tons of Spanish speakers out here. I'm starting to wonder if there are any 3rd or 4th generation hispanics like in SA.

SA is roughly 50% Hispanic, but only about 22% are considered Spanish dominant for a net of 11% of the population being predominantly Spanish speakers.

Houston is roughly 30% Hispanic, and half are Spanish dominant, so 15% of Houston is Spanish dominant.

Also consider that bilinguals, in Arbitron, are considered to be English dominants, no matter which language they favor. Research done in SA shows that most bilinguals there are "first English, second Spanish" while in Houston, it is the other way around.

So, you are about twice as likely to hear Spanish on the street in Houston as in SA if you sample all kinds of neighborhoods.

Supporting that, about 25% of Houston 18-49 listening is to Spanish language stations, while in San Antonio, the figure is around 14%. That shows that bilinguals in both places use Spanish radio, but in Houston more of them use it than in SA; this more or less supports the fact that Houston has many more bilinguals that favor Spanish and will, of course, use Spanish language media to some extent.
 
willdav, you're right. Now that I think back, it would have been 98 or 99, I moved up to the Highland Lakes in late 98...man time flies when you get old... ;D
 
Interesting post about the trends and big picture, David Eduardo. I'm sure the big question that no one seems to have asked yet is what the tipping point will be that leads Spanish-language stations to flip to an English format.
 
MisterRadio said:
I think this is another weakness of the People meters. I am willing to bet that the Hispanic population is way undersampled.

It's not undersampled. The PPM sample has very precise proportionality in Hispanic and non-Hispanic metered persons and households, and is also very close to perfect in Spanish Dominant Hispanics and English dominant Hispanics.
 
daypart said:
Interesting post about the trends and big picture, David Eduardo. I'm sure the big question that no one seems to have asked yet is what the tipping point will be that leads Spanish-language stations to flip to an English format.

The tipping point (a good term, by the way) will come when revenue forces a decision. We'll see more English language stations specifically targeting second generation and beyond Hispanics.
 
I don't know if it is the same under CC, but I recall when the Beat originally launched in Austin on KQBT 104.3 it was a Hip Hop format targetting Hispanics.
 
fredcantu said:
I don't know if it is the same under CC, but I recall when the Beat originally launched in Austin on KQBT 104.3 it was a Hip Hop format targetting Hispanics.

... but it needed a significant if not dominant position among non-Hispanics to work. Just like the comparable one in SA.

The strategy was to super serve Hispanics musically, but without going totally out of the mainstream. This is the same strategy originally taken by B-96 in Chicago... be the #2 CHR to non-Hispanic whites, but the #1 CHR to Hispanics. Because there are plenty of potential CHR listeners whose tastes lean urban, this is a successful idea in markets with larger percentages of Hispanics.
 
DavidEduardo said:
MisterRadio said:
I think this is another weakness of the People meters. I am willing to bet that the Hispanic population is way undersampled.

It's not undersampled. The PPM sample has very precise proportionality in Hispanic and non-Hispanic metered persons and households, and is also very close to perfect in Spanish Dominant Hispanics and English dominant Hispanics.
But the overall number of meters is so low that one has a huge influence on the ratings. I heard of one PD saying that a guy went on vacation one time and 50,000 listeners went with him. I know that is an exaggeration, but there is an underlying truth to that. Also, David I was wondering how you know about the samples. I was under the impression that information was kept secret.
 
MisterRadio said:
Also, David I was wondering how you know about the samples. I was under the impression that information was kept secret.

There is a sample report pages and pages long in each eBook for each market. Additionally, there are sample reports that show the placed meters, daily in-tab, distributio by demo and ethnicity, etc., which are available to subscribers.

There is also descriptive material on the methodology in the Arbitron Purple Book available on their website or at http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Arbitron/WI11DOM.pdf

Additionally, a panel is by nature a mirror in miniature of the composition the group under study.

What is privileged information is the identity of the panelists, their addresses, etc.
 
fredcantu said:
I don't know if it is the same under CC, but I recall when the Beat originally launched in Austin on KQBT 104.3 it was a Hip Hop format targetting Hispanics.

Sort of the same, but with more jocks, when Entercom owned the 104.3 frequency. Then Entercom sold it to Univision and as a result flipped it to Que Buena. BMP decided to revive the Beat at 104.9 but it was short lived.

104.3 was The Beat, then Coyote, and then back to the Beat. My post is based on the second incarenation of the Beat on the 104.3 frequency.

2008, Austin had 92.5, 98.9, 104.3, and 104.9, and 107.7 broadcasting in Spanish.

2012, Austin has 92.5, 95.1, 97.1, 104.3, 107.1, and 107.7 broadcasting in Spanish. Add 106.3 too.

So the number of Spanish Language FM's have gone up in Austin on PPM vs. Diaries. The number of Hispanics in Austin have risen according to US Census, I would say PPMs are painting a better picture of listenship than that of the Diaries. I just wish they would do more sampling.
 
The signals have a lot to do with Spanish FM ratings in Austin.
Austin doesn't have any full market FM signals doing Spanish.

92.5 recently moved in-market, but only class A.
97.1 translator
104.3 rim shot licensed to Taylor
106.5 translator
107.1 rim shot licensed to Bastrop
107.7 rim shot licensed to Georgetown

Back in Austin Spanish FM radio's hey day, BMP had Regional Mexican on "Exitos" and later "La Ley" on full power 98.9 and simulcast the Spanish pop format "Digital" on 92.5 Elgin & 104.9 Dripping Springs to cover most of the market.
 
fredcantu said:
The signals have a lot to do with Spanish FM ratings in Austin.
Austin doesn't have any full market FM signals doing Spanish.

KLZT is a pretty decent C2 and its 65 dbu covers about 90% or more of the Hispanic population of the metro.
 
willdav713 said:
So the number of Spanish Language FM's have gone up in Austin on PPM vs. Diaries. The number of Hispanics in Austin have risen according to US Census, I would say PPMs are painting a better picture of listenship than that of the Diaries. I just wish they would do more sampling.

The biggest change is the adjustment of the data Arbitron uses to achieve proportionality in Spanish dominant and English dominant Hispanics... which shows that a considerably lower percentage of Austin MSA Hispanics are Spanish dominant than previously reported. This affects the total shares of Spanish language stations, as their market is mostly concentrated among Spanish dominants.

Arbitron would be glad to increase the sample size in Austin if all the subscribers agree to pay for the incremental costs...
 
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