Commentary

Fusion Might Benefit From Pew Research

It’s still up in the air how the joint Univision-ABC News venture will manifest itself. Programming announcements and other clues should start to flood in soon as it nears launch later this year.

Called Fusion, the venture is a multi-platform attempt to reach Hispanics with English-language content. It is starting to find distribution as Disney cuts multi-network deals that include it along with ESPN and other properties.

Of course, the Pew Research Center is unbiased and cannot be bought. So, the Fusion owners got some research bolstering their case on the ad sales and distribution front for free this week.

The study conducted by Pew’s Hispanic Center just might find its way into PowerPoint and other presentations. The top-line is tailor-made for any pitch: more Hispanic adults are consuming at least some news in English, with 82% saying so in 2012, up from 78% in 2006. Not huge to be sure, but in the right direction if you’re launching a network looking to dovetail with that and likely to increase as more bilingual Hispanics become news consumers.

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Those who received some news in Spanish dropped from 78% in 2006 to 68% in 2012. Further, a third of Hispanic adults in 2012 said they get their news exclusively in English, up from 22% in 2006.

Now, Univision occupies an interesting spot. It, of course, wants Fusion to thrive, but doesn’t want that one-third of Hispanics gravitating to only English-language news to get so high that its news programming on Univision has major ratings drops.

Of course, Pew points out that the number of Hispanics in the U.S. is growing so the potential for Spanish-only news consumption to grow remains. Univision might just win on both fronts.

 

 

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