• by Paul Gough , October 6, 2003

NBC's acquisition of Telemundo hasn't done much for the ratings of the Spanish-language network, which is struggling to stem a decline in viewership against Univision and a report from multicultural media giant Tapestry, suggests that isn't about to change anytime soon.

Univision continues to dominate the growing Spanish-language market in the United States by wide margins and across all television dayparts, finds Tapestry, a unit of Starcom MediaVest Group.

With a 67% share of viewers 18-49 in Nielsen's NHTI Nielsen Hispanic Television Index) sample, Univision controls two out of three of the key Hispanic viewer demographic.

At the same time, Telemundo's share of the audience has fallen from 24% in April 2002 to 18% a year later. It also wasn't able to capitalize on the growing number of Hispanic TV viewers, staying flat while Univision rose 8% and Univision's sister network, Telefutura, gained 80%.

Univision's primacy in the marketplace seems to be tied to its deal with Televisa to run popular telenovellas, the serial programming that has given Univision its greatest success.

While Tapestry notes that few changes will be made to Univision's programming - it only has 45 new hours of programming per week, compared to 68 hours a week for Telemundo and 79 hours a week for Telefutura - the Los Angeles-based network will produce two of its own telenovellas, including one featuring an interactive voting process that will have viewers decide which suitor will marry the lovelorn main character. One third of Univision's programming is telenovellas.

Tapestry predicts that nothing will alter the balance that favors Univision, and the race is for second place between Telemundo and Telefutura. The agency predicts that by the end of the 2003-04 TV season, both will have 16% of adults 18-49.

Telemundo's strategy to stem the decline includes focusing more on Mexican-themed programming, creating more U.S.-based productions, adding reality shows to the mix and spending more time mining the synergy between NBC and its network. Telemundo and Univision target the same age demographic - adults 18-49 - while their core audiences differ in geographic origin, with Univision centering on people of Mexican descent and Telemundo of central and South American decent. Telefutura targets a different demographic, a mostly male, adults 18-34. Where Univision and Telemundo focus on telenovellas, Telefutura counterprograms with game shows in primetime.

Tapestry's analysts predict that there will be more reality TV aimed at U.S. Hispanics, including "La Cenicienta" ("Cinderella") based on ABC's "The Bachelorette." Tapestry thinks the show "has all the right ingredients to become a big hit among Hispanic viewers. It adds, "The large variety of backgrounds among the competing bachelors will appeal to the viewers' country of origin pride as they root for their favorite beau."