CABLE NETWORKS WOO LATINO VIEWERS IN ENGLISH
TELEVISION: Hispanic viewers find plenty of roles while advertisers reach more consumers.
By DIANNE SOLIS / The Dallas Morning News

Call Latinos a niche market, and television executive Jeff Valdez cringes.

"Left-handed Swedish people with brown eyes and a speech impediment - that is a niche market," said Valdez, who formerly made a living as a comic.

Latinos, especially young ones, are so numerous they are the new general market in major U.S. cities, Valdez said. That's why he's launched a cable network called SiTV focused largely on them. And the language of choice is English - not Spanish.

But SiTV is not alone in going after this group in English.

NBC's cable network Mun2 also offers pr ramming largely in English aimed at the same young demographic.

The network started off in 2001 with programming in Spanish but found that bilingual programming curbed channel surfing.

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