Latino TV Re-Creates U.S. Images

The format for “Desde Hollywood” (“From Hollywood”) goes something like this:

Tuesday nights on KMEX-TV (Channel 34) in Los Angeles and other Univision network affiliates nationwide, suavely self-confident host Luca Bentivoglio sits on the edge of his chair in a one-on-one interview with “Young Guns” star Lou Diamond Phillips. Or the impeccably groomed Bentivoglio may chat attentively with Robert Redford, Sting, Raul Julia and other luminaries. Each interview--whether the celebrity guest speaks Spanish or a voice-over translation is provided--comes sandwiched between Madison Avenue commercials, frenetic video montages of Hollywood glitz, the latest movie trailers and rock music video clips.

If the flavor’s familiar, it should be. Bentivoglio’s “Entertainment Tonight”-like half-hour is one of a new crop of domestically produced Spanish-language television programs modeled, to varying degrees, on proven staples of U.S. television.

Univision has also introduced a new 30-minute rock-video program, “Tu Musica” (“Your Music”), and even a 3 1/2-hour Spanish-language game show, “Sabado Gigante” (“Giant Saturday”). Competing network Telemundo has answered with “MTV Internacional,” which is derived from the cable TV rock video channel, while L.A. station, KVEA Channel 52 has produced a “Donahue”-styled show, “Cara a Cara.”

The new TV images of U.S. Latinos are being energized by the growing globalization of Spanish-language TV, say programmers, as well as the increasing competition for the nation’s 20-million Spanish-speaking audience. The faces on the screen are also youthful, often U.S.-born, and often involved with Hollywood’s recent string of Latino-themed and acted movies. But though the programs’ molds may say made in the States, their flavors are distinctly Latin.

For example, Bentivoglio’s rock video show “Tu Musica” aired on Univision, features Yolanda Miro, its 21-year-old hostess whose beauty is distinctly mestiza, or a blending of the European and Indian. Instead of the blond, light-skinned image once favored by Spanish-language TV, Miro is dark-skinned; her features are fiercely sensual and her dark brown hair is wildly curled.

“She represents the real Los Angeles”--a city, like some in Latin America, peopled by majorities whose Indian, European, African and Asian genes have commingled for centuries, Bentivoglio said.

“Before, the programming formulas (in Spanish-language TV) were very conservative and very cheap, but they were also antiquated, a style of television that had no future,” said Rosita Peru, Univision vice president and director of programming. “We are more aggressive today.”

One reason for the new energy is the slow but steady fulfillment of promises made by the two U.S.-based networks--Telemundo and Univision--to increase domestic programming. But Univision and Telemundo will no longer settle for their older, loyal viewers. Both are competing for the younger viewers lured to English-language TV.

To do this, traditional forms of programming, such as the telenovela (the Latin soap opera), are being upgraded while new shows are being created to woo an audience with changing tastes and interests.

So far, Telemundo has boosted its use of domestically produced programming to more than 38% of its total of 15 hours aired each week, network officials said. Univision’s share of domestic programming stands at 14% of 24 hours aired each week, most of it produced in-house. Those figures may not be earthshaking by U.S. standards, but untilrecently as much as 90% of Spanish-language TV programming in the States was imported from Latin America.

Simultaneously, the world’s 304-million Spanish-speaking persons--most of whom live in the Western Hemisphere--are becoming a more attractive and accessible audience to international TV programmers in Europe and the United States. “Desde Hollywood” is seen in 12 Latin nations, including Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, while “MTV Internacional” is seen in nine.

“I would like Spanish-language TV to become a real alternative for bilingual viewers, more than merely the only option for the monolingual Spanish-speaking people,” said Rita Herscovici, associate producer of talk show “Cara a Cara,” which is produced by Telemundo’s KVEA-TV Channel 52 in Los Angeles. “We want to augment our production values so we can be like mainstream TV, but also maintain our Hispanic traditions.”

These new shows are also defying the conventional wisdom that only Latin America can produce TV programs cheaply. “Desde Hollywood,” claims Bentivoglio, the show’s executive producer, is produced for a fraction of what it costs to produce a similar show in English by using a small, five-member staff.

The same is true for “MTV Internacional,” a condensed one-hour version of MTV’s 24-hour English-language cable programming. “MTV Internacional,” hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Eddie Trucco, is aired by Telemundo stations on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and features MTV’s extensive library of music videos and high-tech animation.

And so it goes for other domestically produced shows, including Univision’s top-rated game show, “Sabado Gigante.” Officials for both networks declined to disclose the production budgets for these programs. Still, both network and local station officials insisted that the bottom line isn’t their prime objective.

“Whether the show is cost effective isn’t the point,” insisted Harry Abrams Castillo, “Cara a Cara’s” executive producer. “In order to compete and win today, you have to present new alternatives that are going to lure younger viewers. There are lots of telenovelas we could air more cheaply, but I may not get the audience I want. I’ll just be continuing what has been done for the last 20 years.”

A common thread running through new shows such as the New York-based “MTV Internacional,” which debuted last month, and the 7-month-old, Los Angeles-based “Desde Hollywood,” is the way in which these shows place Latin artists in a new mainstream context.

Typically, the new TV shows do this by running state-of-the-art-videos by artists such as Spain’s Radio Futura, or Santana or the Miami Sound Machine side by side with their non-Latino counterparts.

“The 50/50 mix is deliberate,” said Liz Nellon, MTV’s international vice president. “We feature artists like Los Lobos, Ruben Blades and Lisa Lisa working side by side with (Spanish) artists like Los Hombres G (The ‘G’ Men), Miguel Bose and (Mexico’s) Emmanuel, who is huge everywhere. It’s exciting for us. Before, there was no way for me to see these bands, unless I was actually in Spain.

“We are looking for an exciting global sound that will unite audiences worldwide. That’s been the major focus of our company. So you have to look to the Hispanic market, because that’s where the cool music is. That’s where the new hip-hop sounds are coming from, and also the new kinds of ‘roots’ sounds from groups like Los Lobos.”

Nellon admits that the small number of quality Spanish-language rock videos being produced sometimes makes her job a tricky balancing act. But she believes this will change as the major record companies move in and fill the demand created by shows like hers.

These shows also take advantage of Hollywood’s recent crop of Latino-themed and-acted movies such as “Stand and Deliver” and “Born in East L.A.”

“Imagine a young university guy in Ecuador seeing ‘Stand and Deliver’, “ said Rosa Bosch, the American Film Institute’s Latin film coordinator. “If, before he saw Hollywood as a place that was only for whites, now he sees (U.S.) Latinos, who may not have attained complete equality, but who are now pushing hard for it.

“Consciously or not, this reflects an image of Latinos who have stopped participating in their own misrepresentation, who have become personally empowered. That has to be positive.”

Other image makeovers are just as premeditated. “Cara a Cara,” which airs Thursdays at noon on KVEA and Telemundo’s San Francisco and Houston affiliates, tries to quench a long-ignored thirst for public dialogue in the Latino community.

Each week a live audience inside KVEA’s Glendale studios engages hostess Maria Laria and guest panelists on topics ranging from gangs or drugs to the war in Central America, the presidential race, Latino discrimination against Latinos, even a debate this week over the controversial film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Future shows plan to touch on issues such as abortion, Panama’s controversial Gen. Manuel Noriega, and the Latina dollar-dancers who charge male customers for the pleasure of dancing with them at special dance clubs.

“I think (KVEA) sees the show as way of opening up (a community) in a very dynamic way,” Herscovici said. “The Hispanic community hasn’t had a channel to say whatever it wants about this new country.”

But “there’s another reason we are doing ‘Cara,’ ” Herscovici added. “I think that the show’s slowly shaping the decision-making process in the Hispanic community. It’s giving them courage. Now they have a place to express their views and hear their problems spelled out, which will in turn make it easier to express their views in the political arena.”