Whittle Plans New Magazine, TV Ads for Hispanics

NEW YORK — Whittle Communications is planning a Spanish-language magazine and a series of daily two-minute television programs designed to reach the fast-growing U.S. Hispanic population.

The project, which will be launched in the spring of 1990, represents the Knoxville, Tenn.-based media company’s first effort to reach the Hispanic market, which the Census Bureau recently said has surpassed 20 million people.

It comes as a number of major advertisers including Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Burger King Corp. have launched ad campaigns to reach Hispanics.

According to Hispanic Business Magazine, national advertisers spent more than $550 million to reach this market last year, up 12% from 1987.

Whittle plans to sell advertising in both the magazine and the TV program in a package and is asking sponsors to make two-year commitments.

Peter Finn, the Whittle executive who has overseen development of the project, said all but “a couple” of 20 available advertising units have been sold out for the first two years at an annual price of $500,000 per unit.

He declined to identify any of the sponsors but said the consumer products giant Procter & Gamble Co., which has been the leading advertiser to Hispanics, had underwritten development of the project.

The magazine and TV programs will provide information on such topics as family health, nutrition, parenting, financial management and education, he said.

“What’s out there now is very much entertainment and celebrity-driven editorial,” Finn said.

The magazine, which will be published once every two months, will be called “La Familia de Hoy,” or “Today’s Family.”

It will be distributed at 10,500 locations with large Hispanic clienteles, including doctors’ and dentists’ offices, hospitals, clinics and beauty salons. Four copies will be left at each site for reading while waiting.

In addition, subscriptions will be available and tests will be made on newsstand sales and distribution through grocery stores in Hispanic neighborhoods.

Each issue is to be 56 pages long with 20 pages of advertising. As with another Whittle magazine project called Special Reports that is distributed in doctors’ waiting rooms, advertisers will be guaranteed exclusivity in their product categories.

But advertisers in this magazine will also get a chance to be on Spanish-language television.

Whittle plans to produce a series of two-minute informational features that are to air seven days a week on Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language TV network that reaches an estimated 85% of the estimated 6 million Hispanic households. It claims a weekly viewing audience of 14 million.

Finn said each of the two-minute features, many of which will be video versions of topics covered in the magazine, would include a 30-second commercial.

The features will be run five times a day during the week on the Univision network and three times a day on weekends.

Whittle is paying Univision an undisclosed amount for the time, and will provide other considerations, such as promotion in the magazine.