Pew Research Center just published a new fact sheet about the trends in Hispanic- and Black-oriented news outlets. The analysis, part of the Center’s bi-annual state of the news media project, finds that largely, newspapers and television aimed at both of these groups have recently had audience declines.
What, if anything, does it say about Radio?
There’s one key finding from Pew on that subject.
Average station revenue for Spanish-language news radio stations that are listed in the BIA Advisory Services database has largely recovered from declines in revenue in 2020.
All of the other big takeaways are focused on other media.
Pew takes a stab at Hispanic television first and foremost, and guess what? Its seeing an impact from streaming, OTT and FAST channels just as the total market is.
The two largest Spanish-language television networks in the United States, Univision and Telemundo both had declines in viewership.
Univision’s average audience declined in 2022 for all three national time slots studied: an 11% decline for the evening news time slot, from an average audience of about 804,000 to roughly 714,000; a 16% decline in late-night news; and a 7% decline for the morning news time slot.
Telemundo’s audience also dropped in 2022 – by 9% in the evening news time slot, from 479,000 to 435,000; and by 16% in the late-night news time slot. These declines continued a pattern that started for many time slots in 2021.
That said, could the numbers be skewed because of pandemic-era consumption of news programming?
That’s a question not answered by Pew, which is looking purely at the findings without a particular cause and effect.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSROOM STATIC
Pew also examined newsroom staff by race, and it finds that the portion of local TV newsroom staff who are Black is at 13.2% in 2022.
This is steadily above the percentages of 12%-13% that had been seen since 2018, according to a survey of TV stations from RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University. But, by comparison, the percentage of television news directors who are Black is smaller, at just 6%.
In 2022, 9% of the TV news workforce and 7% of TV news directors are Hispanic/Latino, both figures a decline from 2021.
Read the full fact sheet here along with its methodology. The Center also published a fact sheet about American public broadcasters, which you can find here.
