Nielsen Deep-Sixes Its Hispanic Television Index

Nielsen is scrapping the Hispanic Television Index that it created 15 years ago to measure the size of Hispanic audiences. The ratings giant will now have only one source for national ratings - its influential people meter survey, which includes about 1,400 Latino families.
Latinos are so important to the overall TV ratings picture that it is misleading to separate them out from the general population, writes the Los Angeles Times. Nielsen’s move shows just how far Spanish-language television has come in 15 years.
The Hispanic index was created in 2002 after Spanish-language network executives said that ratings for their networks were misleadingly low, because there were not enough Spanish-speakers on Nielsen’s sample. At the time, the Hispanic Television Index gave networks immediate credibility with advertisers. But it was difficult to reconcile data from the Hispanic index with Nielsen’s larger sample, and side-by-side comparisons didn’t work, either. Too, the Latino population has grown, and the number of Spanish-speaking families on the larger sample has nearly tripled.

In 1992, Univision and Telemundo attracted an average of 2.5 million viewers during prime time, and Spanish-language TV advertising revenues reached $220 million. In 2006, Spanish-language TV ad spending topped $3 billion, and, with the addition of Azteca America and Univision-owned TeleFutura, there are four major Spanish-language broadcasters.