Much of what the Obama administration does is lost even on their most ardent progressive supporters. That’s because people who don’t speak Spanish don’t have much occasion to watch Univision. Programming on the network routinely outperforms at least some of the English-speaking networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC). When the president announces his immigration reforms, the traditional networks won’t be covering it, but Univision will. And the timing of the address seems specifically designed to capture the maximum possible Latino audience.
Shortly after President Obama scheduled his Thursday primetime address to announce new executive actions on immigration, his top White House communications advisor, Dan Pfeiffer, took to Twitter to boast. “Great timing,” he wrote, noting a rather glaring non-coincidence.
As it turned out, Obama had arranged to start speaking at the very moment Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language television network, planned to begin broadcasting the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards, one of the network’s biggest shows of the year, with a 2014 viewership of nearly 10 million.
Indeed, Univision promptly announced that it would delay the start of the live event to take Obama’s remarks, in translation, ensuring the President a massive platform in the most crucial political demographic, even as many of the English-language networks said they would skip the address. The chances are high that the leading lights of Latin pop music will follow up his words tonight with on-stage celebrations of the President’s actions.
The White House, not to mention its Republican rivals, long ago learned the power of a network most American cannot even understand.
In a situation like this, the administration wants to maximize how many eyeballs they can get for the speech, but they also want make sure that the people who will actually be happy about his announcement and who will benefit the most, whether directly or indirectly, will be part of his audience. They can’t force the old networks to air his speech, but they can take advantage of the Latin Grammy Awards on Univision.
And it won’t interrupt Duck Dynasty so real Americans will not be impacted at all.
Smart. I hope he makes a clear contrast with the opposition. No more of this nebulous criticism of Washington. It’s probably not the best time to try and get credit for not giving the undocumented access to health benefits.
I look forward to the usual suspects on twitter/blogs planning to “support the President” by watching Univision finding out the speech will be delivered there by a Spanish translator and then clicking over to CNN instead. Idiotas.
Can you ever go a whole day without sneering at non-Hispanic whites?
Sneer?
Lemme see if the logic works:
You don’t speak Spanish= something bad?
Non-hispanic whites= audience for Duck Dynasty?
I’m one of those Mayflower Americans who’s willing to share this country not only with the people my ancestors displaced but the people who followed us with their crazy customs and beliefs.
We’re all real Americans.
Deal with it.
I can only claim to speak for one non-Hispanic white person–me–but I will say that I don’t feel sneered at.
Nor did I for that matter. Booman and I have our differences, but on that particular matter there was nothing to suggest sneering at me or my demographic.
his comment was aimed at the networks decision not to air the speech (so they can air Duck Dynasty and the like), not at viewers as I read it
300 years of southern white, Bible thumping, gun toting/loving culture and all they’ve produced is “Duck Dynasty” and “Honey Boo-Boo.” (A nod to “The Third Man.”) And even for that, it required “Hollywood” to put it together.
no, I beg to differ; that’s not Southern Culture that’s the media white noise/ sleep remedy. How about the richness of Southern literature? now if culture were valued there would be a talk show discussing the great Southern writers.
How popular are the great Southern writers in the south as compared with their popularity in other parts of the country?
If not for black musicians in the deep south, what would their music be like?
I think there is music that is played in Nashville.
I like to call it “Celtic-American ethnic music”.
Didn’t know that Nashville is considered part of the deep south.
To much of the US, it might be. To those of us who live in the region, I’d think of the “Deep South” as including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia – or at least significant portions of those states. The music that would be representative might include plenty of jazz, blues, zydeco, and if your more of a hip-hop fan, “dirty south”.
some of that, though, is actually hollywood stereotyping southern culture. Remember the duck dynasty guys were largely country club republicans before they grew the beards. They’re still gun toting idiots, but of a different flavor.
I agree that there’s a lot about southern culture that is very problematic, but these shows seem clearly to be shot through a non-southern lens.
The Duck Dynasty guys were the ones that understood and knew how to exploit their southern culture to make themselves rich. Hollywood just went along with the stereotypes the duck guys gave them because it looked like a moneymaker.
Tennessee Williams. Faulkner.
They were a little better than Duck Dynasty.
Some of the cultural argument the right makes against liberals is true – we kind of do hate lower middle class southern whites.
I am a bit guilty of that too.
But we do make it easy for them.
Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, James Dickey — the list is quite long. Reminds me that I should be reading more novels by contemporary southern writers.
One of my favorite politicians and supreme court justices is Hugo Black, but is he appreciated in the south?
Southerners introduced me to Flannery O’Connor so she’s popular with a few.. can’t say how popular they are overall, but we should promote the best part of our (USAian) culture more.
Can we make a new rule? If the networks don’t show the speech, their talking heads can’t bloviate about it evar
PSA: Don’t forget to have an extra serving of Post-Racial Wheaty Flakes in the morning to deal with the backlash.
Yes, the speech has been deemed “too political” for corporate teevee viewers to watch in prime time, but of course not too political for their pundits to summarize (i.e. mischaracterize) for the citizens on the 6 o’clock news. This is the surely the route to infomed citizenship. Also, too, another installment of Your Lib’rul Media!
As for “new rules”, all the broadcast networks have somehow divined (who, exactly?) that this prime time prez speech on immigration is improperly “political”, but Bush Junya’s prime time speech on immigration in 2008 was “bipartisan” and hence permissible for the Guardians of Citizenship to safely air. Thank goodness we have such careful baloney slicers working for the nation, whatever would we do without their protection?
So the prime time announcement of new national immigration regulations with the force of law is too “political” to be aired, eh. So when is a prez’s prime time speech not “political”? As Clausewitz observed, even war is “politics by other means”. Onward Braindead Soldiers!
Frankly, Jorge Ramos & crew on Univision are my primary source for info on immigration issues. They do in-depth reporting, interviews, and analysis you just can’t get in the English language press.
Go Mr. President!
There is an angle that I haven’t seen much discussion of.
In my view, what the Republican “base” mostly wants is not to have to look at Mexicans on the streets of their towns and, most particularly, not to have to hear them speaking Spanish among themselves. There is an extremely strong panic threat reaction to hearing a language spoken that they do not understand. (This ties back to a sense of entitlement to eavesdrop on everyone else’s conversations, which is foundational to rural civilization and is one signpost of the fact that rural and urban civilizations have nothing whatsoever in common.)
This is why they want deportation to remain the letter of the law, even if they are not (yet) willing to fund a realistic effort to make it happen.
The base would be content (as content as they can be with anything, which seem like not much) if the undocumented workers were out of sight and earshot.
There is a notorious law-breaking agricultural operation down the road from here, which was using undocumented labor for a while. They had a couple dozen of them living in a broken-down old farmhouse. Everybody knew they were there and it was all good for a long time, because the Mexicans were not allowed to show their faces in town. But the employers were so brazen about breaking every law or regulation they could think of, just for the sake of it, that eventually they got raided, else the arrangement could have gone on pretty much forever.
This lizard brain desire not to see or hear Mexican/Latino immigrants also explains why nothing short of deportation is ever adequate for the “conservative” base—“the law as been broken!” and thus there can be only one possible penalty: physical removal.
But they’re NOT racists, nosirree! Just lovers of the majesty of the law!
I will always be grateful to Univision for showing the World Cup matches on broadcast TV. (I don’t have cable.) Their announcer said the name Schweiiinsteiger with great relish.
I noticed that, too! Sometimes I was fairly certain the announcer was saying Schweinsteigger’s name just because he liked the way it sounded because Schweinsteigger wasn’t actually near the action.
My sister just e-mailed this to her entire address book:
House GOP panel: Defunding immigration order ‘impossible’
So, when do the impeachment hearings begin? This should be interesting.