What Advantage Does Hispanic Radio Have Over Hispanic TV?

The popular media in the U.S. continue to heap praise upon Spanish-language radio stations crediting them with helping Hispanic community activists mobilize millions in support of immigration reforms that will allow undocumented workers to come out from the shadows of our economy and society and gain legal work documents and eventually citizenship.

A short story titled "To Marshal Immigrant Forces, Start at Ethnic Radio Stations" in today's Business section of The New York Times touches on this issue again. The piece, written by Lia Miller, rewrites the kind of brief that gives local radio credit for mobilizing Hispanics on the immigration issue. (The potential business implications of such positive attention to Spanish radio are enormous)

I am intrigued not only by the fact that this story and others give radio far more credit for impacting the grassroots than Spanish-language television, but that this story in particular identifies a Univision radio station as one that is staying out of the organizing role while maintaining a reporting role.

She writes in today's Times piece that: "Nomar Vizcarrondo, the news director for WADO-AM, a Spanish-language news, talk and sports station owned by Univision, said that while there had not been any special promotions on his station for today's marches and rally, immigration legislation had been the station's top news story for weeks."

I asked strategist Juan Bernal at FNG (who has a cool new "lense" on Squidoo here and occasionally blogs here) for his thoughts, which he shared with me by e-mail: "I believe that hispanics in the US have developed a stronger connection to radio due to the fact that they do not percieve it to be controlled by American interests, they feel it local, they get to know the host and share with them every day. It is also important to note that because of socio economic issues, radio penetration in Central and South America is far greater than tv and it is strongly embeded in the culture. I believe all these factors together play a role in the more powerful influence of radio than tv on today's US hispanic."