Political piñata. Part 4. The US Hispanic market is not Bollywood.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• Absent a steady influx of walled out Mexicans and island bound Cubans, where will growth come from for US-based Spanish-speaking media outlets?**
• Let’s see.
• The latest conventional wisdom in our neck of the marketing and media woods was that Telemundo is catching up with Univision because it distributes content created on US soil by & for US Hispanics.
• As opposed to Univision who seems to remain partial to its decades-old formula of importing canned shows from Televisa’s telenovela mill in CDMX.
• I beg to differ.
• Bigly.
• It is a flawed theory.
• Why is soccer, a sport originated at some British boarding school, the most popular sport in the planet?
• Why is pizza, a dish allegedly concocted in the south of Italy, the most popular meal in America?
• Why is “Pewdiepie”, some Swedish weirdo with a broken accent and a warped sense of humor, the most colossal star on YouTube, followed only by distant second “Hola soy Germán”, a slightly less weird Chilean dude?
• The US Hispanic market is NOT Bollywood.
• Bollywood: an insular cultural phenomenon with little appeal to foreign sensibilities.
• We must remind ourselves the good old Hollywood adage: nobody knows anything.
• Which is to say, there are no rules or dogmas in this business.
• Everything and anything is possible.
• The US Hispanic market has a good chance at projecting itself internationally.
• At the very least in the Spanish-speaking world.
• In any case, the little cottage industry created around the above mentioned debate over content created on US soil vs content created south of the border has become an afterthought overnight, whether it is valid or not.
• It has been rendered irrelevant.
• The existential threat is totally new now.
• EVERYONE IN OUR INDUSTRY, EVEN STAUNCH RIVALS SUCH AS UNIVISION & TELEMUNDO, MUST PUT THEIR DIFFERENCES ASIDE AND CIRCLE THE WAGONS NOW.
• If a Nazi-style Homeland Security patrols start roaming the streets, who’s going to shop, let alone hang out, at the bodega, taquería, pulpería, changarro or mon & pop restaurants in the Latin neighborhoods?
• Let’s review some potential new scenarios (not mutually exclusive):
• —-There’s a new star in the US Hispanic market: Puerto Ricans.
• The only segment of the US citizenry who speaks Spanish and whose children will keep doing so.
• Who knows what the future might bring.
• Another possible angle:
• ——Counter programming.  
• In other words, doing away with the domestic market centric worldview of US Hispanic media.
• US-based Spanish speaking media might have to start producing content with an international projection, suited for the palate of, say, Cubans still living on the island.
• Or Argentines for that matter.
• Or Brazilians.
• Or Turks.
• If Turkish soaps are so successful all across Latin America, why can’t US made content carve a niche for itself south of the border too.
• US Hispanic media landscape has been an inbound one way street for as long as we can remember.
• Our model has been solely based on importing content for far too long.
• We might as well turn the tables, for a change.
• There are 500 Hispanics down there.
• We have a sound infrastructure on US soil to produce quality content.
• The best in the world.
• All we need is to do it efficiently and competitively (easier said than done, I know).
• —-What if the US Hispanic market becomes underserved due to the Trumpist conventional wisdom that Hispanics don’t matter?
• There will still be a 60 million-strong underserved and underrepresented population.
• Does it add up?
• Why not.
• Let’s cross our fingers & soldier on.
• —-Last but not least: music.
• Even if the everyday use of the Spanish language fades away in coming years due to lower incoming immigration, Latin music is here to stay.
• And it will grow.
• The benchmark?
• Hip Hop.
• Two decades ago, Hip hop was just a niche in the Grammys.
• An afterthought.
• Today it pretty much rules the charts & reigns supreme in mainstream pop music.
• Latin music will follow the same path.
• We must steward it if we want to stay relevant and solvent.
• To be continued next week.
• **A friend of mine who’s into far-fetched conspiracy theories believes that the Obama admin’s termination of the so-called “dry foot wet foot” policy that used to allow Cuban refugees to legally settle on US soil was a last minute backroom deal between the outgoing and the incoming regimes.
• You know, political horse trading.
• It allowed the Dems to get back at a constituency who supposedly supported Trump AND it was a politically cost-free way for the new guard to shut that other pesky spigot of Latino freeloaders who take away American jobs and game the welfare system.
• A win win.
• Crazy, huh?
• Politicians: you never know what they might be up to.
• Lemme tell you, it is not unheard of among staunch political enemies to pull off this kind of dealeos.
• In fact it is quite a tradition in the soon-to-be-drained DC swamp.
• If you like hot dogs and the rule of law, just don’t ask how sausages and legislation are made.
• Tom & Jerry don’t hate each other, it’s just for show.
• Remember that the new POTUS prides himself on one thing above all else, even above his yet to be disclosed net worth, his pussy-grabbing feats or the size of his fingers: his uncanny ability to cut deals.

Political piñata. Part 1: 

Political piñata. Part 2: 

Political piñata. Part 3: