Latin Grammys Make Downbeat Showing

Onstage, the short history of the Latin Grammys has been defined by some sublime performances and a spirit of cultural exploration. Offstage, however, the life of the show has been turbulent, with political protests and the disappointment of a canceled broadcast in 2001.

Now add another grim note--the third annual Latin Grammys.

Preliminary ratings reports show that Wednesday night’s broadcast on CBS turned in a dismal showing, drawing an average of 4 million viewers. That’s a 45% drop from the audience for the show’s inaugural broadcast in 2000--or about a sixth of the U.S. audience for the regular Grammy Awards.

The audience for Wednesday’s show also declined steadily throughout the two-hour broadcast and left CBS a distant fourth among the networks in the prime-time race for the night.

The contract between CBS and the Grammy organization gives the network the option each year to broadcast the Latin Grammys and, though no decision has been made for 2003, network executives insist they view it as a long-term franchise. That may be, but within the Grammy community there were whispers in recent days that the Latin music ceremony needed big numbers this year to sustain it as a separate entity.

The cancellation of the second annual show--it was scheduled for Sept. 11 last year and was scrapped in the wake of the terrorist attacks that day--cost producers at least $2 million and delayed by a year the plan for the Latin Grammys to reach financial independence from the parent Grammy organization.

“It’s make or break this year,” one key former Grammy official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If the ratings aren’t through the roof, I doubt you will ever see this show again.”

Countering that point of view is the value of the show to CBS as far as ad revenues and long-term marketing. Many corporations have ad budgets earmarked for forums that specifically target Latino audiences, so despite meager ratings, the Latin Grammys remain lucrative for CBS. There is also the long-run demographic value of a show geared to attract the nation’s burgeoning Latino community, as well as other fans of a wide-ranging music scene that has gained footing in the U.S. mainstream.

“There’s tremendous demographic tailwind, this trend of the growing Latino population in the U.S.,” said Gordon Hodge, a media analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco.

“Even if [the Latin Grammy show] is not a short-term success, it seems to have a lot of long-range potential.”

Garth Fundis, chairman of the board of trustees for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, dismissed outright the chances that CBS will not be home to the Latin Grammys, and he said that the presence of the main Grammys show on the network added more security to its future.

“I think there’s a relationship with CBS,” Fundis said. “And there’s a relationship between this show and our show being on CBS. [The organizers of] the Latin Grammys have been very excited about the support they’ve gotten from CBS and the genuine interest.”

The inaugural telecast of the Latin Grammy Awards in Sept. 2000 failed to generate much tune-in on a national basis but did perform well in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. It finished that week at No. 47 in the Nielsen rankings of prime-time television shows. Its audience averaged 7.5 million, a third of the audience generated by televised awards galas such as, say, the Golden Globes. The second annual Latin Grammys never made it to the air.

This year’s edition of the show arrived Wednesday with less promotional advertising on CBS than in the previous two years. The show also had fewer marketing alliances and arrived without the U.S. pop culture heat that surrounded Latin music and Latin-heritage performers in 2000, when the show debuted with innate timeliness.

Jack Sussman, CBS network senior vice president for specials, said in the hours before the Wednesday night broadcast that “the ebb and flow” of music tastes have not diminished the show’s luster.

CBS values “high-quality programming and diversity,” and the Latin Grammys provide both, Sussman said. Indeed, the major networks have all come under fire in recent years for a lack of multicultural representations in their programming, which may make the Latin Grammys worth more than numbers on a chart would indicate.

And now there is competition on the horizon: MTV is launching its first-ever Latin American Music Awards, Oct. 24 in Miami. It will be shown in 22 countries in Latin America and will air in some abridged form in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

CBS’ Sussman sizes up the Latin Grammys with a long view.

“We would not have gone into this without the expectation that we would be creating another annual franchise,” Sussman said. “You do take these things year by year and you’ve got to be successful, but our goal all along has been to create an annual franchise.”

Still, Manolo Diaz, chairman of the Latin Recording Academy Board of Trustees, conceded this week that other networks and television syndicators have made overtures in recent weeks to check on the availability of the show.

“Anything that happens once a year and that does not have a long tradition there is always in need of showing it has the interest of a wide niche of consumers,” Diaz said. “At the end of the day, the effort that CBS is putting here has to make business sense and economic sense.”

The cancellation of the 2001 broadcast presented a challenge to the show’s organizers, but Diaz believes the damage is not irreparable.

“There is a rupture, and we have been one year without connecting with the crowds through television,” he said. “But I believe Latin music, at least internationally, is more fashionable than two years ago. If you go to Japan, France, Germany, Denmark--Latin music is very much in demand.”

The Latin music that gives the show its artistic core has been praised by music critics and connoisseurs, but it has also failed to register with the vast mainstream audience that networks covet. Carlos Vives of Colombia and Alejandro Sanz of Spain, both of whom performed Wednesday and collected major prizes, may be artistically worthy of the show’s spotlight, but they are not brand-name draws.

Another subplot in the Latin Grammys saga is the departure of its chief architect and most visible cheerleader, Michael Greene, the Grammy chief who stepped down in April.

Greene, who helmed the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences for 13 years, resigned after an ugly in-house battle and accusations of sexual harassment. Greene quit at an emergency meeting of Grammy trustees in which a report was presented on those accusations, although the academy then released a statement saying their investigation had cleared Greene of any misconduct.

Greene was hired as a consultant for this year’s Latin Grammy shows but is expected to leave the Grammy headquarters in Santa Monica for good in October. ( However, Diaz said Greene’s expertise makes him valuable enough that he may be considered as a contracted consultant for future Latin Grammy broadcasts.)

Greene said this week that the newly installed board of the Latin Recording Academy has “been handed the baby, and the baby is in very good hands.” He scoffed at the suggestion by some Grammy insiders that CBS or the academy itself has any second thoughts about the Latin Grammys franchise. “All of that is antithetical to the reality.”

He also cited the overseas vibrancy of the show, which this year reached 140 countries, including two major new markets, Brazil and Spain. The show’s inventory of advertising time was sold out two months ago, Greene said, with spot rates higher than in the 2000 broadcast.

Any new approaches toward the Latin Grammys will wait until the new leadership is put in place. The next chief executive of the academy will find the job’s powers whittled down from the Greene era. Grammy sources also say the salary for the next top executive will be reduced significantly from Greene’s $2-million base salary, a figure that swelled even higher with bonuses and, to the disdain of many critics, made him the highest-paid leader of any U.S. nonprofit organization. The new pay range is tabbed at $450,000 with potential bonuses that could push it up to $750,000.

The race to replace Greene has been narrowed to five candidates, among them California state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), who has been a vigorous advocate in Sacramento on music-related issues. The front-runner, however, appears to be Neil Portnow, the senior vice president of West Coast operations for the Zomba Group of Companies, the label home of the highly successful Jive Records. A vote on the matter by Grammy trustees is expected by the end of the month.