by Joseph Torres
Hispanic Link News Service
It is hard to imagine NBC would ever broadcast just half an hour of local news daily on its networkowned stations in cities such cities as New York and Chicago. That would simply be unacceptable.
But that’s exactly what NBC has done with the Telemundo stations it owns in our nation’s largest Latino markets, located in our nation’s largest cities, according to a study released this week by Free Press.
When NBC bought Telemundo in 2002, it pledged to the Federal Communications Commission that it would increase investment in the network’s news operations at Telemundoowned stations. Instead, over the past decade it has gutted the Spanish-language network’s news operations, creating a huge disparity in how it respects its Spanish-language viewers. Free Press’s report reviewed the amount of news that aired on NBC – and Telemundo – owned-andoperated stations during the first quarter of this year. It found that NBC’s English- language stations aired an average four hours and 42 minutes of local news per day compared to just 48 minutes on Telemundo stations owned by NBC.
NBC’s local stations devoted about 20 percent of their weekly time to local programming; the average Telemundo station aired less than 3 percent.
In New York and Chicago, NBC stations aired more than five hours of local news. That contrasts to slightly more than half an hour for Telemundo. In Los Angeles, the NBC station aired four hours, Telemundo, less than an hour. In Denver and Boston, Telemundo stations offered none. The Free Press report serves as a reminder about the dangers of media consolidation. Companies seeking to merge always tout the societal benefi t of an informed community.
In 2002, NBC promised that the Telemundo network would receive the resources needed to compete locally as well as nationally with Univisión. Latino groups such as the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens were skeptical. They opposed the merger. Their fears were validated in 2006 when NBC eliminated the local Telemundo newscasts in several cities in such large Latino markets as Dallas, Houston, San Jose, Denver, Phoenix and San Antonio.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists called the cuts a “disservice to the Spanish-speaking community” that “undermine the principals of the First Amendment and the ability of local stations to “act as a watchdog for local government.”
Telemundo audiences are suffering from NBC’s past broken promises. Will history repeat itself now that the Comcast conglomerate acquired NBCU and Telemundo in January? Or will Comcast use its vast resources to re-invest in Telemundo’s local news operations?
“Considering Comcast’s enormous resources, there is no reason why it couldn’t broaden local news coverage for all Telemundo stations,” says former NAHJ president Verónica Villafañe. “Now more than ever, the need is evident.”
Unlike in 2002, the national Latino civil rights groups endorsed the Comcast-NBCU deal. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Comcast that, while unenforceable, calls for increasing the participation of Latinos throughout the company’s corporate governance, programming, workforce, procurement and community investment efforts. It creates a Latino advisory committee that will meet for the fi rst time this month. However, Comcast’spromises regarding Telemundo’s
news operations are marginal, at best. It now agrees to increase local news by 1,000 hours for the 10 stations that are NBCowned, but made that same pledge for only six of the 15 Telemundo-owned stations, a pledge that was added only after groups such as Free Press and NAHJ criticized the cable giant for treating Spanish-language stations like country cousins.
It promises “not to cut” local news for the remaining Telemundo stations – in effect, to continue doing nothing for local communities that aren’t being served. This is a far cry from Latino groups’ demands of NBC a decade ago. The fi rst order of business for the Latino advisory committee created by Comcast should be to call for local news parity for Telemundo with other NBC stations. It’s simply unacceptable for the committee to allow this offensive double standard to continue. (Based in Washington, D.C., Torres is the senior advisor for the media reform group Free Press. Prior to joining Free Press, Torres served as deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and editor of Hispanic Link
