8/22/2023 0 Comments Hopefully not in spanish![]() ![]() 61% of that population spoke English “very well,” 39% spoke it less than “very well.” That amounts to 4,065,731 people 5 or older. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a 2021 survey found that there were 10,434,308 people in California 5 or older whose primary household language was Spanish. Since the Giants are supposed to be rational actors in the marketplace, driven solely by data, I’ll use this information to finish the thought. There’s not enough money in it for them to communicate. Call it marketing, call it community outreach, it’s a choice to discriminate against a key demographic because they speak a different language. What the article makes clear is that the two most important sports franchises in the Bay Area - based on the long season, I think MLB teams are more important fixtures in a community, even if they’re not as competitive on field as other franchises in the market - are simply not interested in investing in this facet of their business. Shea does a really nice job of presenting the possibility, “Hey, the Giants aren’t perfect, but at least they’re not the A’s” before smacking it down with his closing quote. The article spends as much time talking about the A’s side of this debacle (they only broadcast 71 games total in Spanish) and my cynical heart believes it’s in there as some sort of “balance” insisted upon by the Giants or an editor who gets pressured by the Giants. ![]() ![]() While the percentage of Hispanics in the Bay Area isn’t close to that of Los Angeles, it’s still significant: San Francisco is 15.7%, Oakland 27.2% and San Jose 31%. Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in California, according to the 2020 census. There are no doubt fancy metrics that show conversion rates for ads and broadcasts into in-game attendance, but I can’t help but feel that a full slate of broadcasts with a push through those games to get people to come to Oracle Park would wind up offsetting some of that increased “expense.” Shea’s next paragraph after quoting the Giants’ VP who oversees their Spanish language broadcasts, Jason Pearl, adds a key thought on this: ![]() It’s a perfect extension of the Giants’ top notch English language broadcasts and I would think that being the best would be a sufficient business reason for an organization in the entertainment business. I’m not bilingual, but I remember enough of my high school Spanish classes and whatever I’ve picked up osmotically by living in Los Angeles for 20 years, so the games are easy enough to follow, the broadcasters are smooth, and you can tell they’re really having a good time calling the games. No idea what’s causing it, but I suspected that whatever was going on there wasn’t happening on the Spanish language side, and that’s proven to be the case, so Tito, Erwin, and Carlos have gotten me through some games while I’m washing dishes. I’ve been listening to the Spanish language broadcasts this season because the MLB At Bat app, previously one of the best apps ever made, has slipped into being an awful experience, starting with the 2-3 minute delay on the English language audio feed. It’s a great quote for Shea to include, though, because the piece is largely about naming and shaming the Giants into correcting this issue. This sounds like something Gabe Kapler would say about a player right before he got benched. We’re not looking to make money, but we’ve got to be careful with how much we’re losing.” The goal is to find advertisers to offset that expense. “Tito is awesome, a Giants legend, and Erwin is our captain in the booth who cares deeply about the product,” Pearl said. Then there’s the matter of pay, which the 81-year old Fuentes reveals to John Shea in the piece, but which Shea only says is “a fraction” of what the English language broadcasters make and then it flows into managementspeak about cost: In the National League West, the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks have their Spanish broadcast crews travel to all 81 road games, assuring all 162 games will be on the air in that language, something the Giants haven’t had since 1998. This is a unique arrangement compared to the rest of the division: 35 games receive no Spanish language broadcast at all. The team does not travel their Spanish language crew (Tito Fuentes, Erwin Higueros, and producer Carlos Orellana) for all 81 road games. On Thursday, John Shea wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle that the San Francisco Giants have been discriminating against their Spanish language broadcasters for the past 25 years. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |