Discrimination prevents minority ownership and affects advertising revenues

Anglo advertisers’ interest in the Latino market does not mean that discrimination did not get in the way. In 1986, a group of black and Latino advocacy organizations and media outlets brought a complaint before a special congressional hearing arguing that they could not land lucrative national accounts due to advertisers’ discrimination. The testimony was largely given by black station managers who said advertisers often approached them based on market showings, then backed off when they saw the station was black. However, the issues raised had ramifications for all minority stations and give some insight into the thoughts of legislators and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) at the time.

One of the most interesting arguments raised was Representative Matthew Rinaldo’s contention that such advertiser discrimination was not just socially offensive, but an affront against the free market.

When such discrimination occurs, it is not the result of the free market functioning as it should in our type of democratic society- it is a distortion of the market. It has been suggested that such discrimination in advertising materializes either as outright intentional discrimination, or as an uninformed stereotyping of the buying patterns of minorities.

Two committee members got into a heated debate when one said that wealthy minorities should not receive preference in buying stations. The other responded:

When you talk about a level playing field, because when they want to compete in the marketplace to get telecommunications properties, even though they have the ability to purchase those telecommunications properties, they are discriminated against because they are black. That is why, and we want to broaden the spectrum and allow for our rich black, Hispanic and other minorities and women prospective owners of broadcast properties, to be able to compete in the marketplace. That is the essence of our free enterprise capitalistic system that we are faced with today.

The argument, paradoxically, was that government intervention was necessary to make the market function as it naturally should-- blind to the skin colors of consumers. In capitalism, money became the great equalizer; if you had it, you had the power and the forces on the supply side had to cater to your demand. Racial discrimination was a malfunction of the free market.

Under this idea, in the 1980s and 1990s, Latinos, a long disenfranchised minority welcomed as workers and rejected as citizens, were again welcomed into American society—this time as consumers. Big business did not care if your skin was white, black or brown—as long as your money was green.

From 1970 to 1990, the population of “Persons of Spanish-origin” in Fresno county grew from 25.2 percent to 35.5 percent, the surrounding counties of Kings, Madera and Tulare showing similar increases. Fresno was soon one of the top radio markets in the U.S., ranked 73rd in the nation out of 260 by 1990, and over a third of that market spoke Spanish. The field of Spanish-language broadcasting was looking lucrative and corporations took notice. In the 1980s, Fresno was the fastest growing market in the U.S., growing at a rate of 44 percent, a full eighteen percentage points ahead of the closest contender.

In 1949, KGST was one of five stations in the Valley; by the year 2004, it competed with 29 other AM and 54 FM stations, over a third of them broadcasting in Spanish.

Commercial vs. public media

The debate over to what extent the U.S. government should fund public media outlets goes back to this nation’s first radio broadcast. The U.S. has taken a much more hands-off approach than countries like Britain and Mexico, eschewing state-sponsored media, and the public airwaves have been largely dominated by commercial stations. Under the Reagan administration, further cuts were made to public broadcasting, leading to vocal outcry, especially from minority-owned public stations. At that time, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the government founded to promote community-controlled radio, adjusted funding on a formula which increased the government’s contribution in proportion to donations from listeners. While that may have worked when listeners were primarily middle- and upper-class whites, it was a disaster for minority stations like Radio Bilinguë whose target audience was largely lower-income. Radio Bilinguë also suffered cuts at the state level in the early 1980s.

Cutting public radio funds was just the start as the Federal Communications Commission deregulated the industry, easing restrictions on multiple station ownership in both individual markets and nation-wide. The community service requirement that originally brought KGST’s “Comentarios and Entrevistas” program into existence has since been lifted. Radio became more and more corporate controlled, raising the question of whether the public actually had access to the public airwaves and whether those who did had the public’s best interests at heart.

Radio Bilinguë and Radio Campesina argue that they do not. Commercial stations are ratings driven; they will give the people what they want, not what they need, part of the reason for the rise of Spanish-language shock-jock anchors akin to Howard Stern. The economic aspect of their operations can make hiring news reporters prohibitively expensive, especially when they can sell as many advertisements with a cheap music format. KGST is the only Spanish-language commercial station in the Valley with local coverage, and news director Stella Romo said she no longer is able to go out and report because there is no one to cover for her as she is the entire news department.

The commercial nature of Spanish-language radio, which brought Spanish to the airwaves in the first place, sometimes prevents it from serving the informational needs of the Latino community, leading to an information gap, which Radio Bilinguë and Radio Campesina have aimed to fill. They were not the only ones concerned with getting information to Spanish-speakers; in 1979, the University of Maryland and the Johnson and Johnson Co. co-sponsored the U.S.’s first national conference on Latino public service programming. Several congressmen, Federal Communications Commission and media representatives attended. An assistant secretary from the Department of Housing and Urban Development said that the lack of informational programming targeted at Spanish-speakers had cut them off from many opportunities enjoyed by others.