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Spanish Sports Talk in Philly
- Thread starter joshzz
- Start date
Bull fighting? Huh?
Most Hispanics in the Philadelphia area are from the Caribbean. There is no bullfighting in that zone.
And they generally don't play soccer there, either.
A
atrainradio
Guest
WTTR 1680 carries the Phillies games in spanish. I think that is as much as it is coming towards a ESPN deportes, even though I think 1680 should become ESPN deportes. But I don't care either way.
I think the original poster and maybe most other folks don't fully understand the dynamics of the Spanish-speaking radio audience. David started to discuss it. The simple fact is, people from the Caribbean don't have the same tastes in music or sports as those from Mexico and Central America. This is why existing ESPN Deportes stations in New York and Miami perform so poorly in the ratings.
ESPN Deportes is mostly about Mexican and International soccer. I'd imagine most of the hosts and commentators have Mexican accents and some shows originate from Mexico. Sometimes Deportes carries live games from Mexico, Latin America or Europe. This would be of little or no interest to someone who's roots are in Puerto Rico, Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Soccer is not a big sport in those places and certainly Mexican soccer holds no interest. It would be like an American radio station carrying programming from AM 1089 TalkSport from London, with British-accented hosts discussing soccer and cricket.
But I'm sure some GMs think Spanish-language Sports Radio is as generic as English-language American Sports Radio, which is how Deportes wound up on 860 for a while in Philadelphia, and why it's on 50,000 watt 1050 in NYC. Perhaps someday someone will put a Spanish-language syndicated sports service together for the Eastern U.S. and Caribbean, talking about American baseball, basketball and football, and the baseball leagues in Puerto Rico, the DR and Cuba. But since such a station would not get much interest in the rest of the U.S., it may never happen.
ESPN Deportes is mostly about Mexican and International soccer. I'd imagine most of the hosts and commentators have Mexican accents and some shows originate from Mexico. Sometimes Deportes carries live games from Mexico, Latin America or Europe. This would be of little or no interest to someone who's roots are in Puerto Rico, Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Soccer is not a big sport in those places and certainly Mexican soccer holds no interest. It would be like an American radio station carrying programming from AM 1089 TalkSport from London, with British-accented hosts discussing soccer and cricket.
But I'm sure some GMs think Spanish-language Sports Radio is as generic as English-language American Sports Radio, which is how Deportes wound up on 860 for a while in Philadelphia, and why it's on 50,000 watt 1050 in NYC. Perhaps someday someone will put a Spanish-language syndicated sports service together for the Eastern U.S. and Caribbean, talking about American baseball, basketball and football, and the baseball leagues in Puerto Rico, the DR and Cuba. But since such a station would not get much interest in the rest of the U.S., it may never happen.
Those are all good comments.
Just as soccer is not a subject of interest among the dominant Greater Antillean group in Philadelphia, bullfighting is not really considered a "sport" anywhere in Latin America. It's considered an art, not a sporting event. But that distinction aside, it was never practiced widely save in Mexico, the Grandcolombian nations and, to some extent, in Perú. And at least one nation, Ecuador, had a general election to make the practice illegal in most provinces and to prohibit the final killing of the bull in the "moment of truth".
Doing all sports for the Caribbean audience is not likely to happen. There are only two markets big enough to be of interest, Miami and New York. Puerto Rico does not take fondly to "imported" radio programming which has never worked there due to extreme differences in accents and the strong rivalries which border on hostility between Cuba, the DR and Puerto Rico.
Oddly, local league teams in PR and even the DR are not followed by much of the population. And in both PR and the DR, only a small, small percentage follow mainland basketball or American rules football. So it's hard to find anything to talk about, as was the issue when a group I was working with thought about doing all sports in PR... to the extent of even buying a station and changing its calls to WDEP for "deportes" or "sports". Ultimately, the idea was abandoned as impractical due to lack of compelling ongoing content.
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