Move is music to their ears

Nothing nullifies a pop culture trend in the United States like being dumped by a major TV network. So when CBS dropped the Latin Grammy Awards from its lineup earlier this year, it might have appeared to casual viewers that the 5-year-old Grammy spinoff was headed to oblivion.

Ratings had nose-dived for the annual Latin music showcase, so there were no peeps of protest when it was bumped from CBS’ fall schedule. In the end, the bold experiment in bicultural broadcasting failed to attract the wider audience it sought and lost the Latino base audience it thought it had.

For most English-speaking Americans, the show and the music simply fell off the radar, unnoticed and unlamented.

Is the Latin music community, therefore, licking its wounds and heading into Thursday’s sixth-annual awards ceremony with its collective head bowed? In fact, just the opposite seems to be the case.

Many Latino recording artists, producers and label executives say CBS’ decision is the best thing that could have happened to the awards program, which honors music in 43 categories from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking communities throughout the world.

This year, the ceremony moves to Univision, the country’s No. 1 Spanish-language network, which claims to reach 77% of all U.S. television households. The L.A. affiliate is KMEX. For the first time since it was launched at Staples Center in 2000, the show will be produced in Spanish primarily by Latinos and for Latinos, with little concern about who else may tune in.

Many in the Latin music world expect the move to improve ratings and boost the international audience through Univision’s licensing of the show to channels throughout the Spanish-speaking world. They’re also hoping to avoid the awkward -- in some cases offensive -- emphasis in previous years on pairing Latin artists with non-Latin celebrities and requiring all participants to speak English.

“Univision is the best channel to air the Latin Grammy Awards, because it will be given a higher priority,” said Juanes, a Colombian singer-songwriter and multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy winner. “In the end, the show will be seen by more people.” Univision programs frequently dominate the top 10 of the local Nielsen TV ratings; during the summer, it was the fifth most-watched TV network in Los Angeles, averaging 3 1/2 million viewers.

Producer Emilio Estefan was a key figure in creating the Latin awards within the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammy Awards. The Latin Grammys, Estefan recalls, were launched in an atmosphere of celebration for the crossover success and potential of artists such as Ricky Martin and Shakira, many groomed in his own Miami production house. But the show never found its audience on CBS.

“The Latino didn’t identify with the telecast because the music was always watered down,” said Estefan, a Latin Grammy trustee and husband of singer Gloria Estefan, who performed on the premiere telecast. “The first year was great for the Latin Grammys. After that, we were losing our identity -- and the very reason for having a Latin Grammy in the first place.”

The awards were launched on the cusp of the so-called Latin Explosion, a wave of popularity that carried Latin artists to the top of the U.S. pop charts with hits such as Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” At the time, the country seemed to be ushering in a new era in pop culture as national magazines featured cover stories about the Latin boom.

Producers of the Latin Grammy debut rounded up almost every well-known Latino name at the time -- from actors Jimmy Smits and Andy Garcia to singers Shakira and Christina Aguilera. Jennifer Lopez presented an award to Carlos Santana. Meanwhile, Martin joined Estefan and singer Celia Cruz for a tribute to the late Tito Puente.

But the Latin Explosion soon fizzled, and with it the crossover cachet of the Latin Grammys. With no new hit acts to shake their bon-bons on English-language television, the show simply ran out of recognizable Latino names. The Latin Grammy Awards never regained the mainstream appeal -- nor the ratings -- of that first show, which drew 7.5 million viewers (compared with 28 million for the regular Grammys earlier that year). Last year’s show drew just 3.3 million viewers.

“It became a strange animal,” said veteran manager Fernan Martinez, who has guided the careers of major stars such as Juanes and singer Julio Iglesias, a pioneer of Latin pop crossover in the 1980s. “It wasn’t commercial for either of the two markets, the Hispanic nor the North American.”

Under Michael Greene, the former head of NARAS, the Latin Grammys were conceived as a vehicle to showcase Latin music for the general public. Reached by e-mail, Greene declined to comment on whether he considered the experiment in cross-cultural programming to be a failure.

Others were not so reticent.

“I hate to break it to you, but there never was an English-language audience” for the show, said Jose Behar, head of Univision’s family of music labels.

Neither CBS nor Univision officials would talk about the program move. In keeping the show on the air despite declining ratings, CBS executives often cited the value of diverse programming as a key goal.

Although the Latin Recording Academy often trumpeted the program’s international reach, the telecast had little exposure and almost no impact in Spain and Latin America, label sources say. Because it was mostly in English, the show seemed strangely foreign in countries where, ironically, most of the music it was honoring came from.

Moves to improve ratings at home, such as naming comedian George Lopez as host, created even more alienation in Mexico and other countries, where self-deprecating Chicano humor doesn’t work, even when it can be understood.

“It was not perceived as a Latin event,” said Walter Kolm, Miami-based vice president of marketing and A&R; for Universal Music Latino, who hails from Argentina and has worked in Spain and Chile.

This year, rare are the names on the roster of performers and presenters who would be familiar to mainstream viewers, even assimilated Latinos.

Who in the heartland has ever heard of Reyli, the Mexican pop singer who’s sold 500,000 copies of his debut solo album? Or Spanish singer Bebe, this year’s most feted artist with five nominations, including four in major categories?

Both will perform Thursday. In the past, such emerging artists with unique personalities and substantial Spanish lyrics would have created a quandary for the show’s producers. They may have been simply left out of the show. But even established Spanish-language stars who earned a performing spot on the program were often paired with non-Latin artists -- for ratings, not artistic reasons.

Sometimes the pairings worked, as when Juanes sang with Black Eyed Peas at the show in Miami in 2003. More often they fell flat, as when the curly-headed Spaniard David Bisbal sang with Jessica Simpson last year at the Shrine Auditorium.

At worst, the cultural couplings produced ethnic gaffes, as when Justin Timberlake, a presenter at the 2002 awards, referred to Leah Remini, his female co-presenter, as “my hot tamale.”

Then there were the slights behind the scenes. At last year’s show, one industry insider recalls, Latino celebrities lobbying for spots as presenters were told bluntly by producers that “we don’t need any more Hispanics.”

Mexican pop singer Alejandro Fernandez, who is scheduled to open Thursday’s show, said he found the whole experience insulting.

“You’d get there and they’d practically warn you not to speak Spanish,” said Fernandez, whose father, mariachi superstar Vicente Fernandez, was an early critic of the show for overlooking the large Mexican music market. “Of course, it was an insult. Now, the show should have a different concept and artists should definitely get a different treatment than they used to get.”

Label executives are happy too. They no longer have to navigate cultural chasms to convince producers that their artists deserve a spot on the telecast. And with Latin CD sales up almost 30% in the first half of this year -- compared to overall CD sales, which are down 10% from the same time last year, according to industry figures just released -- they don’t have to convince anyone that Latin music has plenty of fans out there.

Kevin Lawrie is a Los Angeles-born executive who made a mark in Mexico in recent years by developing talent for Sony Music, including Reyli and singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. Now based in Miami, Lawrie recalls the response from Latin Grammy producers when one of his hit acts, the R&B-styled; pop duet Sin Bandera, was pitched to perform on the CBS show.

“Could they sing with Sting?” producers asked.

Maybe that would draw viewers, but it made no sense to Lawrie.

“I would sacrifice ratings for the integrity of the music any day,” says Lawrie, who on Jan. 1 assumes his new post as president of Sony BMG’s Latin region, including the U.S. Latin market. “The interest of Univision is to reach its market, and that means doing a TV show that more appropriately represents Latin music.”

Ken Ehrlich, veteran producer of the regular Grammy telecast and, until this year, also the Latin Grammy show, did not respond to requests for an interview.

The question remains: Will the show do any better on Univision? The industry is optimistic. The network knows its target audience and intensely promotes its programs. Plus, artists and executives give Univision high marks for its existing award shows, such as “Premio Lo Nuestro,” a people’s choice awards that drew 6.3 million viewers in February, ranking third, ahead of ABC and Fox, among the four U.S. networks among adults ages 18 to 34.

This year’s Univision show “is going to be an eye-opener for the [major] networks,” predicted Estefan. “They let go a production that is very important, and they’ll regret it 10 years from now.”