The Year Of Hispanic Print.

This is from a presentation given April 19th at the Miami Airport Hilton during the 16 annual National Association of Hispanic Publications convention. The speech was given by Kirk Whisler, President of Latino Print Network and the founding President of the NAHP.

In 2000 the U.S. Hispanic Print industry generated $827 million in ads-and another $222 million in circulation revenues for a total of $1.049 million-more than Spanish Language radio and nearly as much as Spanish Language TV. When Hispanic Print had a combined circulation of a couple of million selling $10-20 million a year in ads few national advertisers cared. Now everyone cares. The data in this speech is from The 2001 NAHP Media Kit & Resource Book and the upcoming 2001 National Hispanic Media Directory, a book co-authored by Kirk Whisler and Octavio Nuiry, and is for the year 2000 unless otherwise stated.

What kind of industry is Hispanic Print?

The publications collectively employ 12,797 people-900 more than a year ago. It’s important to note that they employee more than twice as many Hispanic editorial staff as all the mainstream newspapers in the U.S. combined. The combined circulation is 36.1 million copies.

The past two years have seen 113 Hispanic newspapers and magazines start up and 59 publications cease operation. The key difference is that the start-ups had a combined circulation of 9.5 million while those folding had 3.1 million. Hispanic print publications are actually one of the publishing niches most likely to succeed, not fail-as we can see from many in this crowd.

Local ad dollars totaled $575 million and have grown by 429% since just 1990. IMPRESSED? Well, National ad dollars have increased by 679% since 1990. In 1970 National ad dollars in Hispanic print totaled less than a million. By 1990 that figure was approximately $32 million. TODAY IT IS ESTIMATED AT $252 MILLION. Average ad revenues per copy produced was 68¢, up 9¢.

Circulation revenues now total $222 million, with 79% coming from newsstands. Daily newspapers account for 56% of that and glossy magazines 32%. Weeklies accounted for 4%.

The NAHP

When NAHP President Zeke Montes first served as NAHP President 2 decades ago we saw this organization top one million in circulation. The publications represented as NAHP members now have a combined circulation of over 10 million-and combined ad revenues of $380 million. Total circulation in 1995 was less than a third those numbers and ad revenues of $99 million. Any Fortune 500 CEO would be impressed with that growth.

NAHP members provide the vast majority of the audited circulation for ALL Hispanic newspaper and weekly magazines: The audited circulation of NAHP publications is nearly 6 million. The NAHP publishers collectively employ 4,800 people.

NAHP papers are NOW used by over 50% of ALL Latino households in the U.S. on a weekly basis, something not even Univision can claim. For many NAHP publishers circulation audits are very important. In following the lead of an American Association of Advertising Agencies survey that found that 96% of media buyers based their decision, in part, on whether the publication was audited.

Weekly Newspapers

There are now 272 Hispanic weeklies, so we, as an organization still have some room to grow. Many of these are in markets where we don’t have a member. An example of how we reached out this last year was that we now have 2 weeklies from Dalton, Georgia as members. Presently 74 weeklies gross a million or more a year and 41 have major home delivery programs.

Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic owned publications

In the last few years we have seen the folding of 30% of all Hispanic newspapers that are owned by major newspaper organizations. El Semanal, from here in Southern Florida, is a good example when it folded on two days notice last August. Some, like El Nuevo Herald, understand the market. Other just don’t get it.

The Future

Latino Print Network has five projections for this year:

1. As I predicted last year, the 2000 Census results, thanks to the hard work of The Bravo Group and the NAHP, is starting to influence more advertisers in going into our publications. We’ll see at least 10% growth in Hispanic print ad expenditures.

2. We will see at least 30 papers start home delivery programs in the next year.

3. We will see more than 100 Hispanic weeklies grossing over a million a year by 2003.

4. There are still major Hispanic markets where publications are not fully serving the community. We will either see existing publications grow or new publications come in to serve this underserved audience.

5. The publications that have home delivery programs, doing annual readership studies and, of course, are audited will be the most profitable.