Clemenseando

Univision's Compliance Plan For Children's Programming

Univision secured the FCC's consent decree authorizing the instant transfer of its station licenses to new owner Broadcasting Media Partners, Inc. by making a twenty-four million dollar "voluntary contribution" to the US Treasury and establishing a "compliance plan" designed to prevent future violations of the Children's Television Act.

Plenty has been written about the fine but less, I suspect, will be said about the ten-point compliance plan. For the record, here are the details in all their dryness. (You can read the full text of the plan for yourself starting on pages 33 and 34 of the consent decree. Next Monday Multichannel News will publish an article of mine on Spanish-language children's programming. I cover the Hispanic television industry as a freelance reporter.)

The plan's purpose is to ensure that Univision stations broadcast three hours a week of educational and informative programs for an audience of kids fifteen and under.

The first item in the plan is the hiring of a "children's television compliance officer". Next and within sixty days Univision is to set up the "Educational/Informational Television Programming Advisory Committee" (EITPAC) and fill it with "outside professionals in the field of children's education". Univision appoints all the members.

Univision is to "make its own independent, good faith determination that each proposed program qualifies as E/I under the FCC's rules". The compliance officer will secure a written report and verification from the program producer or distributor that the purpose of the program is to educate and inform children. The network's legal department will review the report as well as some program episodes to ensure they are, in fact, educational and informative.

EITPAC has to file a report with the FCC every six months evaluating Univision's compliance. Again, members of EITPAC will be appointed by Univision. No word in the plan if members will be compensated for their time and effort.

Compliance officers will determine the "appropriate age range for each program acquired". They will also work with network lawyers to provide owned-and-operated stations to "fully and accurately complete FCC Form 398", which spells out how broadcasters are meeting the children's programming requirements.

Univision's legal department has three months to "conduct training sessions to ensure" the compliance officer and all Standards & Practices employees fully understand the network's E/I obligations. Company lawyers will also randomly select and review episodes of E/I programming to ensure they comply with FCC regulations.

The final point of the plan specifies any children's programming complaint will be "immediately" forwarded to the advisory committee, compliance officer and legal department. That's the long and the short of it.

I do not know if other broadcast networks have a similar structure in place. I do not know if the Univision compliance plan is laxer or tougher than what is in place at other networks.

That said, certain features do stand out.

Obviously, the post of compliance officer is vital. I emailed Univision's public relations manager early Tuesday evening and asked if a compliance officer had already been named. No response yet, but again it was after working hours. I wonder if Univision will make a point of letting educators, parents and viewers know of the existence of the compliance officer and how s/he can be reached.

As for the EITPAC, I wonder how independent they can and will truly be considering they are appointed and presumably can be dismissed by Univision. Will they volunteer or be paid? If paid, then how much? On what grounds can they be removed from EITPAC?  Will their names and contact information be prominently displayed on the Univision Web site? There are half a dozen or so prominent Latino experts in children's programming who enjoy a strong reputation (Professors Federico Subervi and Carlos E. Cortés come to mind). The presence of at least some of those experts would certainly allay fears about EITPAC's real independence. I asked the Univision's public relations manager if the members of the EITPAC had already been named. No response yet but I will follow up on Wednesday.

The plan makes clear Univision has no intention of producing its own children's programming.

Univision, however, will "make its own independent, good faith determination that each proposed program qualifies as E/I under the FCC's rules". Well, what is the alternative? A dependent, bad faith determination? Then again, arguing as Univision did that "Complices al Rescate", which centers on the kidnapping of a young girl, is both educational and informative might well be considered bad faith.

That the compliance officer will work with company lawyers to ensure Univision stations properly fill out FCC forms also seems like what someone should have been doing all along.

More later about the consent decree and the "divestiture trusts" to be used to avoid ownership ceilings.

Apologies for the incredibly dry prose but government consent decrees don't tend to be pageturners.

 

Q&A With The Photographer Horacio Salinas

I am a text-heavy kinda guy. I enjoy reading and writing articles that stretch on for five thousand words or more.  Normally, I don't consciously pay much attention to the accompanying photographs or illustrations.  And I am the kind of reporter who kvetches about losing words because "there's great art."

But, the photographs accompanying the NYT article "The Washington Back Channel" by Max Frankel (fine article, by the  way) knocked the wind out of me. The photo of the spiral reporter's notebook evoked a sensation of singular evil. It immediately threw me back to my years in Argentina and Chile where I interviewed many torture victims and relatives of the desaparecidos. I thought the photographer had to be an Argentine or Chilean immigrant. Well, I was wrong. 

The photographs were taken by Horacio Salinas who is the New York-born son of Argentine immigrants. I looked up his other work, which you can see here. On a whim, I decided to call him up and see if he might agree to be interviewed for my upcoming Web site LatinoPopCulture.com (nothing there yet) I left a message figuring that was the end of that. Quite graciously and quite quickly he returned my call and agreed to chat.

I am not an art critic and lack the language and understanding to write with intelligence about the aesthetic value of his photographs. Soooo I'll just reproduce part of the q&a. When the LatinoPopCulture.com site is up and running I will post a full transcript of the interview and some additional background information.

PS My digital recorder wasn't working for the interview (turns out it wasn't plugged in properly)  so the partial transcript is based on my typewritten notes. His answers are very close to verbatim. My questions are rough approximations.

Q: Did you read the article before taking the photographs?

A: No, no. I basically just knew about the story by following it. I knew about the reporter who had gone to prison and thought that was more of an interesting image to focus on. The notepad, I felt like, we made it look like a prison. I call that the Judith Miller picture.

Q: When I saw the photographs it made me think of the desaparecidos. Was that intentional?

A:  I didn't think it about that way. I am glad it had that darkness. I was feeling pretty dark. They said to me 'we want it to be very noir, old-school, black-and-white, like a detective film'.

Q: You sounded surprised when I mentioned the desaparecidos.  Were you?

A: Yeah, I've read a lot about that [period] but it never crossed my mind at all. I was just trying to look at it as the Watergate of this generation.

Q: Why the Blackberry?

A: We had to shoot a phone for the cover. That was a constraint [because] I always like to have my own ideas. The Blackberry and the phone were not my ideas. The two things that I wanted were the blinds and the notepad with the shadow of the spiral itself.

If I have to do one picture about a topic, I want that picture to say everything in a second.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a New Yorker, a Latino, the son of Argentine immigrants? All of the above? None of the above?

All of the above. I think of myself as a New Yorker who is the son of immigrants. Being Latin is a very big part of my life. I watched my dad struggle. He came here in his 20s with no money, no language, no prospects and said 'let´s have kids'. It is incredible.

If you enjoyed this post, then consider visiting this section of my blog. Thanks.

I am back

I am back after a long absence. Sorry I dropped out of the blogosphere without an explanation. I have been working like a wordslave. And saving up all my reporting and writing for paid gigs. Today is the first day in a very long time that I don't have a pending assignment looming over my head like the sword of Damocles. The focus this time around will be on producing quick comments like the one I just posted on a TelevisionWeek "special report" as well as longer and better researched pieces.  My work load until July is not too heavy so my output until then should be fairly steady. To readers new and old - welcome.

Thanks,
Luis

Televisión has an accent on the o

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a freelance reporter and cover the Hispanic television industry for Multichannel News, which competes against TelevisionWeek. Furthermore, I pitched a TelevisionWeek editor a number of story ideas in 2005. I never heard back from him. That said, I bear the publication and its staff no ill will whatsoever. The following post does not in any way represent the thinking (unofficial or official) of Multichannel News. This is a purely personal statement.

The TelevisionWeek "special report" "Hispanic Market: Adjusting to Life in the Mainstream" unintentionally begs the question of whether mainstream trade publications can adjust in order to cover the Latino television market.

 You don´t have to understand Spanish in order to cover Hispanic television but it sure helps avoid the many mistakes that appear in today´s TelevisionWeek article.

The story reports Fox Sports en Español has the rights to air the "Interlega" soccer tournament , which I take to be a reference to Mexico´s InterLiga championship. FSE also airs the "Copa Sudamericana" but not the "Copa Sud Americana" mentioned in the article and they certainly do not transmit the "Copa Liberatordes".

Please don´t think the reporter has it in for FSE. ESPN Deportes is described as a "Spanish network". Now, I bet general manager Lino Garcia would not mind being based in Madrid or Barcelona but ESPN Deportes is a Spanish-language network. Not a Spanish network.

Perhaps the reporter is single, which would help explain the reference to "suegas" instead of "suegras", which happens to be the name of the Azteca América show. Not "Suegas".

In the case of "Objectivo Fama" the reporter decided to add the letter c perhaps to compensate for the r stolen from "suegas".

Most baffling, though, is the reference to how ESPN Deportes will reportedly "herald its increased distribution via satellite-delivered DirecTV and Comcast's Dish Network". Wow, that´s a helluva story. I had no idea Comcast had purchased EchoStar´s DISH Network lock, stock and barrel. 

The earlier and silly mistakes can be explained but not justified by the lack of a Spanish-speaking reporter, copy editor and editor. The reference to Comcast owning DISH Network makes clear this article was not closely reviewed.

The most basic mistake in the article is "Fox Sports en Espanol" as opposed to "Fox Sports en Español".  The tilde may not seem important but it is all that keeps a Happy New Year (Feliz Año Nuevo) from being a Happy New Anus (Feliz Ano Nuevo).

For more translation gaffes turn here.