Those were the words of Urban One Regional Vice President Deon Levingston at Radio Ink’s Hispanic Radio Conference last week. More specifically Levingston was talking about politicians and how both Urban and Hispanic stations give them too much free airtime and do not demand that political ad dollars follow.
Levingston said the Democratic party takes the African American and Hispanic communities for granted. “The (advertising) dollars don’t follow them into our stations. They want it for free. We need to get the information out, but we need to have the dollars follow that access.”
Levingston came to the panel, hosted by RBR/TVBR Editor Adam Jacobson, with stats to back up his demands for more revenue. He said the Hispanic and African American population in the United States is now 30% and those formats are only getting 6% of the advertising dollar. He added that part of the challenge is that when you give political consultants and strategists the data, they don’t believe it.
There are 60 million Latinos in the United States, making up 18% of the population. 1% of elected officials in the country are Latino. Levingston says those numbers need to change as well.
Perhaps a contributing factor to the low number of elected officials has to do with there not being many Latino strategists working in the political arena.
Levingston says the way all of this changes is by the Hispanic and African American communities working together. “That’s how we will grow our political ad dollars.”
Our 2021 Hispanic Radio Conference was a smashing success.
See some pictures from the event HERE.
Register for our 2022 event in Miami, and get the early bird registration special, HERE.
