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2018 Hispanic TV Upfront Guide Presented by HispanicAd.com
WHY ARE THE UPFRONTS STILL A THING?
By Adam R Jacobson, Publisher, Hispanic Market Overview
Many years ago, as an editor for the now-defunct music industry trade publication Radio & Records (R&R), I created a Special Report focused on what still safely called “Oldies” music, along with Classic Rock, as it applied to radio stations swiftly loosing ad dollars due to an aging audience. There was also this thing called the internet, and satellite radio services such as Sirius and XM.
Could Oldies or Classic Rock survive the 2000s? One did, one didn’t.
The theme of this report was “Roll With the Changes,” the title of an REO Speedwagon song one hardly ever hears on Classic Rock radio anymore.
This theme weaves perfectly with the state of the U.S. television industry today. There are many, many changes unfolding each and every day, and the question some in the media industry may be asking themselves and their team is this: What’s next, and what do we do?
For all of the talk of television being in its second Golden Age, television is also at a critical junction in its life as a primary and dominant delivery vehicle for visual entertainment.
Until 2017, Hispanic television was largely protected from the troubles brewing for its English-language brethren on both the broadcast and cable sides of the TV business. Today, it has been shoved onto the Video Entertainment Cyclone that rides up and down faster and bumpier than that rickety old rollercoaster down in Coney Island.
Is Hispanic television now imperiled, ready to be cast aside for digitally driven “over the top” (OTT) choices and social media galore?
You know the answer. And, hopefully, it is being loudly delivered the week of May 14, 2018, as the TV industry’s Upfronts once again take place across midtown Manhattan.
But ... why is Hispanic TV’s future still as bright as ever? Five years ago, this publication was distributed by both HispanicAd.com and Broadcasting & Cable magazine. Today, B&C/Multichannel News no longer publishes a monthly Hispanic Television Update, effective December 2016. The 2013 edition included features on Nuvo TV, Tr3s, and MundoFox. All three networks are defunct, with Tr3s in the U.S. now its Latin American feed. Lavish events in New York from Discovery U.S. Hispanic are now a thing of the past, too.
Meanwhile, Telemundo conducted an excellent pre-Upfront presentation to the press via video webinar from its gleaming new Doral, Fla., facility on May 10; it no longer has its own Upfront event and instead is rolled in to all of NBCUniversal’s networks. Univision conducted a bilingual conference call that included newly named President of Televisa Studios Patricio Wills; the company is the last to offer a Hispanic-exclusive Upfront Week event.
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