By: juan josé garcía  (Page 2/7)

On the other hand, perhaps it might be useful to stress the statistics. According to the Census of 2000 in the United States, Hispanics were then 35.3 million, or 12.5% of the population of the country, and predicted to be 43.5 million this year, 14.7% of the population. Of these, a little over 24 million would have been born within national territory and the rest in foreign countries. This Census anticipated a Hispanic population of more than 80 million (20%) by 2020. By 2050, more than 154 million or 30% of the population of the United States are expected to be Hispanic.

I could be among the 40 million García of the United States, the Pérez and the Fernández that will be around. But those who "still speak Spanish," to return to Rubén Darío, are becoming fewer although there are many more that do understand spoken and written Spanish. From this comes the necessity to distinguish between diverse mass media types should be employed to reach the Hispanics in the United States.

First things first

Everything began with a word pronounced before the beginning of the world; I paraphrase the first verse of the Gospel according to St. John, which immediately speaks of the three people, and with it, it indicates that community demands communication, since "my thoughts are enough to walk along by myself" (Antonio Machado), even though the poet does not even say that thoughts come hidden in the meaning of the word. Words are not only the essential instrument of communication, but the essence itself of mass media. By means of photography, film, illustrations, and music that are used to send messages, the receiver explains the meanings to himself with words.

The three traditional ways of communication with Hispanics in the United States are the written press (newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, etc.), radio, and television. With the elements that I have successfully obtained with the aid of my companions, especially Olga Casabona to whom I owe the statistics, I am going to make an outline of today’s status of the written and electronic press (radio and television) in the United States before I speak of my own newspaper, La Opinón of Los Angeles.

Electronics

As I indicated in the beginning, in 1970 I traveled to Mexico with the sole purpose to "witness" soccer on television, and that in 1981, I had to find a way to follow the assault to Spanish congress. Nowadays, I do not even have to leave my chair, or bed for that matter, to follow the king sport or the eventful journeys of the Parliament. Two weeks ago, I flipped through the channels on my television and noticed that at 11 in the morning, eight television channels were giving the daily news in Spanish. Six television chains, plus one or two independent channels, cover the national territory 100%. The three three major ones: Univisión, Telemundo of NBC, and Televisión Azteca . These also have smaller chains— Galavisión and Telefutura are of Univisión , and Telemundo has Mun2 . That is not counting the sport chains in Spanish – ESPN Deportes , Fox Deportes , and GolTV .