The Telenovelas Beat the Crappy Reruns

Almost a year ago, Obama offended DC’s chattering class for appearing on Univision’s Sunday show, Al Punto, but not appearing on Fox News Sunday. But as I noted at the time, Al Punto is actually a more popular show than Fox’s Sunday swill.

And, as it turns out, the White House can justify blowing off Fox for Univision not just to reach out to Latinos rather than white racists. According to Univision’s corporate communications, Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS’ Face the Nation in that demo as well.

And last week, Univision as a network was actually more popular than any other.

Univision was the most popular network among television viewers aged 18 to 49 years old last week, the first time a Spanish-language station has beaten the English ones in this key demographic in the United States.

Soap operas reaching key points in their stories combined with a desultory week of reality and reruns at the English broadcast networks made the milestone possible.

Maybe the advertisers could do something about the ginned up anti-Latino racism fueling politics of late, since they’re going to want to stay in good graces with the increasingly powerful Spanish-language network?