PhDance said:
[Today, there is about 0% native English speakers in PR. All the news happens in Spanish locally, and English casts are available on cable for those interested in Mainland issues.
Now that is fundamentally wrong. It is clear that you are substituting your beliefs and anecdotal experiences for hard facts when you make your statements. This is not the first time, either.
For many years, starting back in the early 70's, I worked to get San Juan and Puerto Rico included in the market rankers used by media companies. First, it was SRDS, which ranked San Juan in the 70's and 80's as market 31. To do that, I had considerable support from the Planning Board (Junta de Planificación) and PRIDCO (Industrial Development Corporation) among others, as well as demographers from the University of Puerto Rico.
At that time, I also saw statistics on things like Continentals and repatriates. Back in 1970, there were close to 200,000 Continentals in PR, mostly in management and technical positions at mainland company branches. Over the decades, the number has decreased significantly, and is currently estimated to be in the 20,000 to 40,000 range consisting of a few managers (and their families) and such and Continentals married into Puerto Rican families.
The other source of native English speakers is repatriates... Puerto Ricans who lived all or most of their lives on the mainland and who have returned. Many of these are English dominant, but many are in older age groups and have returned to retire where the cost of living is vastly lower. This figure may be as high as 100,000 based on data from the PR Department of Instruction, which has to deal with the children of these returnees in a 100% Spanish school system.
I'm not going to accuse you of being a Puerto Rican Nationalist (the movement to separate Puerto Rico from USA in terms of independence), but when you make statements like "there is about 0% native English speakers in PR", you are opening that door. If you have data that shows that you are correct in that statement, please share with us. I believe you were asked to show data before and you were not able to comply, so I doubt things will go differently this time.
Long ago, the PPD moved to remove the English requirement from the public school system. An effort to remove English as an official language, along with Spanish, passed about a decade ago, but was quickly reversed. However, it shows the effort to change the status of the time between the 30's and the 50's when nearly everyone learned some, if not good, English at school. The 75% or more of children who go to public school learn little, if any, English.
In 1970, there were 3 radio stations in San Juan alone in English (4 if you count underground FM "The Family"). Today, there is one (and a part English religious station). There was an English newspaper, now it is gone.
From data from the US Census:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf , the percentage of Puerto Ricans who spoke English in their homes was 14.4% of the population. Not 0%.
That does not mean English was spoken 100%. It means that there was the ability to speak in English, meaning the families or certain members were bilingual. 14% corresponds, pretty clearly, with the percentage of children who go to bilingual private schools. They can speak English, even very good English, but don't use it as their primary language.
As a cultural anthropologist at the UPR told me once, you can determine a person's culture (and language preference) by finding out what language they swear in if they hit a finger with a hammer or the language they make love in. In Puerto Rico, all but a tiny percentage would qualify as culturally being Hispanic and linguistically being Spanish dominant.
Anecdotally, my family, when I lived in PR, spoke good English... but in the home, we seldom spoke the language although we could. The exceptional times when we spoke English were when the subject matter sort of required it. And those were limited situations.
In any case, the most recent ACS data says that there are 167,000 English / no or little Spanish speakers on the Island. There are over 400,000 who are Spanish speakers who also "Speak English Very Well" (ACS, 2007) but that corresponds to the bilingually educated native Puerto Rican upper middle and upper socioeconomic class in general
That is 433,23364.8 people who speak english as their native language.
No, that is 400 thousand who consider themselves bilingual, not 400 thousand who are English dominant. Being bilingual and being dominant in a language are not the same thing.
Now, 71.9% of the population admitted to speaking English less than very well, however, you have to remember much of the population of Puerto Rico is in poverty, and likely are not within the concern of advertisers.
Poverty is relative. Advertisers seek almost exclusively middle and working class, not the top 15% to 20% that are consumers of "imported media" like cable, etc. The top TV and radio shows and stations have strong appeal in that 70% group you dismiss.
If the upper demos are (at best) speaking english at home or (at worst) at least bilingual, I'm sure that there could be money to be made in this demo if they knew what advertisers (that's read: higher end) to sell it to.
Most advertisers don't go after the very high end. And those that do, do it in Spanish as programming in English does not reach the "emotional buttons" of most Boricuas. It's been tried, over and over, and never works.
Just because tourist destination has a lot of people who can say some things in English does not mean that they are bilingual nor does it mean that there is any market for English language radio among that group.