Foreign-language stations (Was Re: The NAB, part 2)

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Sven Weil wrote:
>
>WHile I agree with Mark regarding the lack of public service or coverage
>on automated stations during a crisis, I have to disagree with his inclusion
>of the so-called "ethnic" broadcasters.  People who can understand the
>programs of Greek, Polish, Spanish, CHinese, Hebrew/Yiddish, etc. , stations
>WILL get the information. THe reason why some of these stations exist is
>because -- lets face it -- NOT EVERYONE CAN SPEAK ENGLISH FLUENTLY
<snip>

        I second Mr. Weil's observation. When the recent hurricane
clobbered Puerto Rico, one of the local TVs in Connecticut did its
live-shot from WLAT/1230/Manchester (a close-in Hartford suburb). The
station was serving the non-English speaking and bilingual portions (in
other words, almost everybody) of the Puerto Rican community with non-stop
news and information. Many, many Puerto Ricans here, of course, have family
on the island. WLAT threw away the format almost as if the hurricane had
hit Connecticut. Part of the time they were rebroadcasting one or more of
the San Juan stations.
        WRYM/840/New Brtain, a fulltimer since last year, is heavy on news,
information and talk. It runs the Spanish CNN news every 30 minutes (they
have a headline feed of around 2 minutes at :30) and does local news. I
didn't think to listen to what they were doing when the hurricane went
through Puerto Rico. WSPR in Springfield also seems to be doing more and
more talk/news programming.
        There's a lot of differentiation among the Spanish-language formats
that non-speakers can't really pick up on too well. And I count myself as a
non-speaker, although I can pick up a few things listening. Every once in a
while there's a phrase I recognize, like "Monica Lewinsky" <g>.

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