Satellite television companies increase Spanish-language offerings

A Wall Street Journal article describes how cable and satellite TV companies are beefing up their offerings of Spanish-language programming packages to win more Spanish speaking customers in the U.S.:

Pricing and other terms vary. Cablevision, for example, offers 31 channels in Spanish for $4.95 as an add-on to regular cable service. Dish Network’s Dish Latino, starting at $24.99, offers the same number of channels but can be purchased separately. Bright House’s 18-channel Hispanic Tier can be added to existing service for $3.95 per month. Comcast Selecto starts at $49.35, including basic cable service.

…

Dish Network declines to provide subscription figures for its Dish Latino package. DirecTV says its similar package, DirectTV Para Todos, had 900,000 subscribers at the end of October, far more than double the 360,000 it had in January 2004, according to senior marketing director Mark Ryan.

And there is still room for growth. According to Nielsen Media Research, the nation’s 11.2 million Hispanic-American TV households watch an average 17 hours of prime-time TV per week, four hours more than the overall U.S. average. Many of them don’t have or haven’t heard of the Hispanic programming packages.

Posted by Chuck on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 2:29 pm under Satellite TV.
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