New Americanos Poll Study Captures Hispanic Television Habits and Opinions. Study Reveals Some Surprising Twists: Over Half of Foreign-born Hispanics Watch TV in English, While News and Political Shows Beat Telenovelas as the Preferred TV Format

“In a new study, some 55% of Hispanics reported watching television in both English and Spanish, compared to the smaller percentages who reported watching TV in either language alone (12% only in English and 31% only in Spanish, while 2% said they do not watch television), regardless of whether they were raised in the U.S. or abroad. In fact, according to the study by Miami-based Encuesta, Inc. - a leading U.S. Hispanic marketing research and public opinion polling specialist - over half (57%) of Hispanics born abroad watch TV in English, while almost three-quarters (73%) of those born in the U.S. watch Spanish-language broadcasts.

Another surprising finding shows that news and political programs - and not telenovelas - are the TV genre that U.S. Hispanics watch most.

“This study shows that it’s not a good idea to pigeonhole Hispanics into two distinct groups that watch either Spanish-language television or English-language programming intended for the general market, which has long been the general approach,” says Lourdes Prado, Project Director at Encuesta, Inc. Instead, she suggests, there is a great deal of cross-over occuring. “On the one hand, there is a continuing emergence of options in English-language TV that are being well received by unacculturated, Spanish-dominant Hispanics. On the other hand, plenty of U.S.-born, English-dominant Hispanics are holding on to their Latin culture, and one way this is reflected is in their choice of TV programming and the language in which they choose to see it. This phenomenon is something important for marketers to keep in mind if they want to avoid talking past the Hispanic audience instead of engaging it.”"

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