The biggest minority, still underserved
Like others, Latinos need their public television

Originally published in Current, Feb. 10, 2003
Commentary by María Agui Carter

It’s official. Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States, according to figures released in January. These results from the 2000 census signal a seismic shift in the American population and should prompt a comparable change in the way public TV perceives its audiences. PBS has a golden opportunity to serve these viewers and earn their loyalty.

PBS must diversify its programming to survive. The system has lost both viewers and members. It’s suffering not only from cable competition but also from a major change in the country’s demographics. PBS must reel in the quarter of the population that is not only of color, but also younger on average than the traditional PBS viewer. The median age for the Anglo population is 38; for African-Americans, it’s 29; for Latinos, 25.

It is clear from the many initiatives well under way that executives at CPB and PBS are pushing to create a public TV system that reflects the changing face of America, both in staffing and programming. But it is not clear that the system is responding.

We must face the fact that year after year, minorities continue to be underserved by public television. The problem is particularly acute for Latinos, who make up 12 percent of the general population but 18 percent of the TV viewership ages 18-34. According to Nielsen, U.S. Hispanics accounted for 84 percent of the growth in the U.S. adult 18-49 demographics. Yet programming currently being developed for public TV is slow to include this audience. Current’s annual Pipeline listing, for example, shows few stations are even contemplating producing programs with Latino themes.

Production decision-makers may hold some misconceptions about Latino audiences. The image of foreign-born, Spanish-dominant Hispanics who watch only Univi-sion or Telemundo is outdated. Consider the results of a Miami study on language choice by Barbara Zurer Pearson and Arlene McGee: Only 2 percent of Hispanic junior high school students in the area report watching Spanish TV exclusively. Less than 10 percent watch it for more than half of their TV viewing.

The country’s Hispanic population is 36.2 million strong. That’s one person in eight. Most are English-speaking, and their preference for English is greatest in the younger segments of the community. Latinos represent a substantial consumer market—as a whole, the U.S. Latino market is already larger than the entire economies of all but 11 countries in the world. Over the next five years, the market is expected to exceed the gross domestic product of Canada, the eighth-largest economy in the world. Ameri-can advertisers are circling, hoping to capture the loyalty of this community. And Nielsen reports that Latinos watch television at a higher rate than the general population.

If Univision doesn’t do it, who will?

PBS is in a position to create the kind of programming that no one else delivers for the Latino population. Univision and Telemundo provide solid news programming, but their decisions are driven by advertising and entertainment objectives: Latin-American soap operas that dominate primetime, game shows, Jerry-Springer-style talk shows, MTV-type music countdowns, and news oriented strongly toward Latin America. These channels occasionally offer sensationalized public affairs programming but no high-quality long-form documentaries. There are no nature or science documentaries, no series devoted to history or the arts, and few stories that meaningfully reflect Latinos’ experiences.

PBS could fill this void in general programming that addresses and incorporates the needs of this audience. These efforts should not be confined to a new digital channel in Spanish or local programming about Latinos in Los Angeles or San Antonio. Nor would such smaller-scale efforts make sense given today’s economics of program promotion and outreach.

Traditionally, PBS has operated under the assumption that minorities are not interested in watching public television. The notion may come from audience research showing that minority audiences watch less public TV than other channels, with the exception of some children’s programming. But that does not mean those audiences are not available to PBS. Imagine if a supermarket chain concluded, after analyzing its sales for the year, that customers weren’t interested in purchasing cars because they weren’t buying any at their supermarkets. Of course people won’t buy cars from you if you sell tomatoes.

It is circular and self-defeating reasoning to assume that minorities won’t watch public TV because they don’t already do so. Audiences will come when they learn that you serve them. That also means widening outreach and publicity to reach more diverse audiences. For example, you might not put an ad in the Wall Street Journal for a program on hip-hop, but you might hire street teams to promote it. (Street teams are groups of neighborhood youths who promote a new product in person to other youths in the area.)

Speaking to shared experiences

But what programs should public TV offer to serve Latinos? It is a heterogeneous population that defies easy categorization. To begin with, Latinos are not one race; they can be black, white, indigenous, Asian and every combination thereof. They come from a multitude of countries. What would appeal to this huge, diverse population?

Most Latinos in America share a few things, the most salient of which are the process of racialization, the immigrant experience, and the Spanish language.

Racialization: Although they may arrive from anywhere in Latin America, Hispanics are soon transformed into one category, "Latino," in a society that does not distinguish between Latin nations as it would between European ones. This "racialization" creates a common experience for all Latinos, who must navigate a society that has generally exhibited a very low opinion of them.

Latinos rank among the least favored of all new Americans, according to a study examining public opinion data over a 30-year period, Thomas Espenshade and Maryann Belanger found. The pervasive view that Latin Americans are inferior and more likely to commit crimes, abuse welfare and do poorly in school powerfully shapes the Latino experience. Harvard Uni-versity education professor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco argues that young Latinos "struggle to develop a healthy identity and sense of self in the context of such toxic attitudes and beliefs."

Who but public television will take on the mission to educate the American public and combat these destructive stereotypes? PBS could serve Latinos and contribute to public understanding by making more programs that look at the historic roots of American racism, such as Joseph Tovares’ "Zoot Suit Riots" (presented on American Experience), which examines the 1943 race riots between Anglo sailors and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, or films on the historic contributions of Latinos, such as The Fight in the Fields, about Cesar Chávez, the leader of the Chicano civil rights movement, produced by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles. There are not enough of these programs in the works for PBS.

The immigrant experience: Two-thirds of today’s Latinos are immigrants or children of immigrants. More than the average American, they are citizens of a hemisphere, still active in the culture, economy and politics of their ancestral nations. Even those Mexican-Americans whose families have lived here for hundreds of years have ongoing relationships with Mexico. Thus programming about Latin American and Latino economics, politics, sports, and the environment would interest Latinos.

There is so much more that could be done. In public affairs, for example, producers could explore the history of U.S.-Latin American relations, Latinos in the U.S. armed forces, or the effects of NAFTA on both sides of the Mexican border. In the arts, public TV could carry documentaries on Latino arts and culture, biographies of internationally influential authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, or tributes to such great artists as Tito Puente.

Spanish language: Use of Spanish is growing at a phenomenal rate here. Spanish is now spoken by 20 million Americans. As comedian George Lopez put it, when coaching a Japanese executive struggling to give a speech to an American audience, "Speak Spanish, you’re in America!"

But in fact more than 90 percent of Latinos also speak English, or English and Spanish, at home, according to the U.S. Census. The press generally makes much of the growth of Spanish-language television, and the big commercial networks have begun to respond. ABC World News Tonight and Monday Night Football are already broadcast in Spanish through the SAP channel.

However, programming for Latinos does not mean just translating existing programming into another language. It means creating programming that speaks to the experiences and interests of this population. Commercial cable and networks are scrambling to get just this kind of original programming on the air—for example, Nickelodeon’s new sitcom Taina, about a spunky Latina teenager’s adventures; Showtime’s boxing drama, Resurrection Boulevard, and ABC’s comedy, The George Lopez Show.

Although PBS made a laudable commitment to airing and partially funding the dramatic series American Family, written, produced, and starring Latinos, the high cost of drama will make it hard to compete with commercial TV in this arena. All of the commercial networks’ new Latino-themed shows feature modern Latino families facing the typical challenges of school, office and family dynamics. The shows also feature bits of Spanish dialogue and wordplay, as well as a heightened sensitivity to the differences between Latinos’ interior and exterior lives.

Most welcome of all, these shows offer something other than the tired stereotypical Latino characters in other TV shows such as the gang member and the maid.

While PBS may not be able to afford sitcom production, it can serve many of the same audience interests in other ways. To give one example, Latino stand-up comics regularly use Spanish/English language wordplay as well as Latino "insider" stories in their deliveries. Even one Latino-themed series of this kind would attract Latino audiences to public television, helping them to identify PBS as a source of programming that addresses their lives directly.

PBS can outshine the competition in documentaries. Most of the program types that appeal to Latinos also appeal to general audiences. Latinos have been a part of America for hundreds of years, and their stories are ultimately American stories. Non-Latinos are interested in Latino stories, just as Latinos are interested in other worlds, as covered by Nova, Frontline and the like—especially if these programs incorporate some Latino on-camera authorities, expertise, and issues.

Diversifying the talent pool, too

Key to creating more diverse programming is creating a more diverse pool of program makers. One of the more visible efforts to achieve this end is the CPB fellowships program. CPB fellowships that train production assistants or send independent filmmakers to festivals and conferences are wonderful long-term professional development opportunities for individuals. But if we want to see a recognizable impact on programming and content that reflects diversity today, CPB must bring in more mid-career professionals who are ready to do substantive work in the system. Until senior-level production executives at stations are persuaded to participate in these programs as teachers, mentors or supervisors, the fellowships won’t give top PBS decision-makers the opportunity to get to know promising producers of color for their next projects. Executive producers who receive CPB funding could be asked to round up experienced producers and pair them with CPB fellows on their next project.

Not all fellowship programs need to cost a lot of money. For example, some could offer substantive critique sessions for producers to pitch program ideas to executive producers and programmers. CPB fellowships currently focus on producers, but the system could benefit from fellowships for writers, programmers and others.

Diversifying programming is not just about choosing new subjects or putting ethnic faces on the air. It’s also about perspective. When more producers and programming executives of color help define public TV content, general programming will take on the complex dimensions that will serve the needs of more diverse audiences. Until then, PBS will struggle under crippling misconceptions such as the belief that a program on Benjamin Franklin is for general audiences while a program on Cesar Chávez is target programming.

Good stories well told are universal, whatever the ethnicity of the subject. After all, Latinos have been viewing "European-American" programming for years. Programming of interest to Latinos and African Americans and Native Americans and Asians can also be appealing to broad general audiences. After all, minorities should also make up the "public" of public TV.

María Agui Carter is an independent producer. Her documentaries have aired locally on WGBH and nationally on PBS. A Charles Warren fellow in American Studies at Harvard University, she is working on "Rebel," a film about the telling of history, centered on a Latina woman who fought in the U.S. Civil War.

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