Reporters at San Francisco’s leading Spanish-language TV news station make roughly one quarter less in base pay than their English-language counterparts, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This despite the fact that KDTV/Univision’s evening newscasts attract more viewers in the 25-54 demographic than every other newscast in the Bay Area save the top-rated KGO-TV.
Worse, the language-based salary disparity seems to be not an exception, but the rule:
While the foreign-born Hispanic population in the United States grew 25 percent between 2000 and 2006 to 17.6 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, analysts say the advertising world has been slow to adapt to the demographic changes in Spanish-language media – and the effects have trickled down through the media food chain.
So while the Spanish-language news audience may be growing, many advertisers don’t perceive Hispanics to be the “right audience,” according to bilingual television advertising expert Roxane Garzon.
Sigh.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.