NAB CEO Gordon Smith moderated a panel of Hispanic Radio’s top CEO’s during the closing session of Radio Ink’s Hispanic Live conference Thursday. As always, these days, a big topic for discussion is how companies are adapting during a pandemic.
Univision Radio President Jesus Lara said their are four key points to the challenges facing Latinos during these times. He said the safety of his radio station’s talent and teams was his number one priority. The second was producing engaging shows remotely.
Then, the radio side coordinated with Univision’s television news teams to provide hourly updates, market-specific, for a three-month period, starting in mid-March. Lara said this was content his audeince craved. And finally, they needed to work quickly to change creative for advertiser.
He also saluted the Univision engineering team for shifting nearly immediately to accommodate work-from-home adjustments.
Meruelo Media CEO Otto Padron added that adjusting messages so his L.A. stations weren’t tone deaf to its listeners was very important.
The conversation also included a question from Smith about the prospects of Hispanic radio station ownership in the years ahead. The response from Padron? “Come on in! The water is fine.” He echoed comments made by Lara that radio ownership and targeting Hispanic consumers remains a vibrant business opportunity.
That said, Padron called on the NAB to push efforts to get FM radio front-and-center in the connected car’s audio entertainment dashboard. He also renewed now-dormant calls to get activation of FM chips in smartphones, while also seeking a shift of the PPM to a smartphone, as it reflected the habits of today’s consumers.
RBR+TVBR Editor Adam Jacobson contributed to this report.
