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.
