Alphabet Soup

How Exclusion Can Foster Independent Development

It has been argued that the globalization of media and the creation of media conglomerates have yielded productions without a sense of identity that panders to a general audience, resulting in the exclusion of cultural minorities. Programming churned out by major network, particularly in the United States, endeavor to appeal to the widest swath of the population so as to attract advertisers and ultimately increase their revenue. However, the major networks’ goal of appealing to a mainstream audience has created an opportunity for specialty networks to appeal to niche audiences. These networks appear to thrive as new specialty channels are added to the television lineup almost weekly.

Specialty channels present themselves to niche markets targeting a variety of demographics ranging from gender to age and special interest to cultural programming. Examining the proliferation of non-English networks, specifically Spanish-language channels, illustrates that media can facilitate the preservation of minority cultural identity and even the creation of a different media-state within a nation-sate.

Data from the 2010 Census illustrates the trend of minority population growing at a significant rate. Figures from the most recent count indicate that in the last decade the Hispanic population “accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population increase.” As the Spanish-speaking population grows so do the opportunities for niche networks. Television networks like Telemundo and Univision have progressively spread into new markets in an effort to pursue their growing target demographic. The expansion into new markets to reach a target audience directly contributes to an increase in viewership, greater advertising dollars, and ultimately revenue to support the production of in-house production. An article in Miami Today details how the increase of the Hispanic population has generated substantial revenue that can be funneled into independent content production. The networks’ ability to produce Spanish-language programming in the U.S. decreases their reliance on Venezuelan and Mexican imports fostering an independence essential for tailoring programming to the Hispanic-American population. Producing content suited specifically for a community of people within a nation-state rather than for a general population that may share nothing more than a common language exemplifies a media success in supporting minority culture in the nation-state while circumnavigating trans-national media and program imports.

This success demonstrates that the exclusion of minority culture and language from mainstream media can support the creation and success of an entirely different media-state within a nation-state. Perhaps under certain conditions, exclusion from mainstream media can yield a separate medium that creates programming that preserves cultural integrity where it may have been lost if incorporated in major network programming in the first place.