Here’s a collection of stories that caught our eye this week:
Latest trend for Hispanic girls — destination `quinces’ – In planning her quince celebration, Nicole Lora of Pembroke Pines pictured herself joining her father for the requisite formal dance in a traditional quinceañera ball gown. Then Nicole discovered a relatively new trend in the centuries-old tradition of celebrating a young Latin girl’s coming of age: the destination quince. Now, Nicole — along with parents, cousins and an entourage of about 20 people — will mark her 15th birthday with a weeklong cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas, tiara and tulle gown in tow. The destination quince, similar to its bridal counterpart the destination wedding, is part of a burgeoning market aimed at the increasingly affluent quinceañera — or, more accurately, parents of quinceañeras. Disney World began this spring offering quinces packages, the priciest of which can exceed $20,000. Southwest Airlines has signed on as a corporate sponsor of a national quince expo that travels to major Hispanic markets, including Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago. Miami Herald, online.
Ad Market Grows for Hispanic Cable Networks – Negotiations in the $1.55 billion Spanish-language broadcast television upfront are winding down, but another increasingly distinct annual ad market is just getting under way. Advertisers have another $100 million to $125 million set aside for Hispanic-targeted cable networks such as Univision’s Galavisión, the largest of these outlets with 7.4 million Hispanic subscribers, Telemundo’s bilingual mun2 and Fox Sports en Español. There are about a half-dozen others, including Discovery en Español, the bilingual GolTV and Sí TV, the digital broadcast network LATV, and ESPN Deportes. Negotiations are expected to continue through the summer. Marketing y Medios, online.
Migration is a two-way street for many Mexicans – The plan was simple: Go to the USA. Get a job washing dishes. Make enough money to start a business back home. Five years after he arrived in New York, Manuel Faustino had accomplished it all. So earlier this month he collected his last paycheck, packed his bags, and went back home to Mexico. In the debate over illegal immigration, much attention has been focused on Mexicans and other foreigners who want to stay in the United States indefinitely, even become U.S. citizens. Often forgotten are the people like Faustino who work for a short time in the USA, then return home because of family ties or other reasons. There are no reliable data on how common such cases are, but Mexico is full of taxi drivers, waiters or salesmen who can rattle off the names of tiny towns in Michigan or Oregon where they picked vegetables or worked in construction for a few years. USA TODAY, online.
Hispanics Tune in to ABC ’Just for Laughs’ – ABC’s new hidden-camera show, ’Just for Laughs,’ had the last laugh in the Hispanic TV ratings, leapfrogging a host of Fox programs for the top spot, according to figures released by the Nielsen Media Group for the week of July 23-29. ’Just for Laughs’ earned a 4.5 rating to lead all others and deny Fox the No. 1 spot in the Hispanic TV ratings for English-language programs for the first time in five weeks. But Rupert Murdoch’s network managed to dominate the rest of the top five with a heavy dose of animation on Sunday. A 9 p.m. episode of ’Family Guy’ placed second with a 3.9 rating while its 9:30 p.m. showing tied for third with fellow Fox programs ’Hell’s Kitchen’ and ’American Dad’ with 3.8 marks. Fox has held at least a share of the No. 1 slot since mid-June. During that stretch, five different Fox programs – ’So You Think You Can Dance,’ ’Hell’s Kitchen,’ ’Family Guy,’ the MLB All-Star game, and ’The Simpsons’ – won or tied for No. 1. Prior to this week, the last non-Fox program to top the chart was ABC’s broadcast of the NBA Finals during the June 11-17 ratings period. Hispanic Business, online.
Immigrants Lift U.S. Housing Market – Patricia Ortiz and her husband Sebastian cut back on dining out, nights at the movies, and even opted for a civil wedding ceremony instead of a big church affair so they could afford to buy their $389,000 three-bedroom colonial. In doing so, the Panamanian natives helped lift the nation’s slumping housing market. With rising purchasing power, the nation’s growing number of foreign-born residents are keeping the bottom from falling out. And amid slow demand from an aging and slow-growing native population, immigrants are fueling predictions of a rebound. Assuming Congress doesn’t impose further restrictions, immigrants – both legal and illegal – and their native-born children are forecast to provide the bulk of coming years’ growth in home buying demand, nudging the market back up and aiding the broader economy. Forbes, online.
New U.S. Hispanic Magazines Have Roots in Mexico – U.S. publishers of consumer magazines are taking a page from their Mexican counterparts and launching Latino-targeted U.S. editions that are based on the editorial content and formats of their widely read sister publications south of the border. Maya Magazines Inc. and the newly renamed Televisa Publishing are two Miami-based companies with plans to debut new titles this fall. Megazines Publications, also based in Miami, rolled out bimonthly women’s title Kena in April. Hitting newsstands in September will be the premiere issue of Nueva, (or “new,” as in new woman), an English-language monthly aimed at Latinas between 25 and 44 who are first, second and third generation. Marketing y Medios, online.
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