Disney's 'Cheetah Girls' courts Latino audience
LOS ANGELES -- The Disney Channel plans to welcome Spanish-speaking and Latino children to its audience as never before when it runs a Spanish-language version, with English subtitles, of its upcoming music-and-dance movie ``The Cheetah Girls 2" during prime time.
The children's cable network -- enjoying its highest ratings ever this year from the popularity of original movies such as ``High School Musical" and series like ``Hannah Montana" -- plans a big marketing push in the Latino community behind ``Cheetah" and its message of diversity.
``The Cheetah Girls 2," a sequel to the 2003 movie that became a huge hit with preteen girls, will be close-captioned in English and Spanish starting with its Friday premiere. On Sept. 15, it will run in Spanish with English subtitles.
Rich Ross, president of Disney Channel Worldwide, said the ``Cheetah" promotion simply plays on a strength the network already has with minority audiences, who tune in to the Disney Channel at greater rates than other English-language networks.
``It seemed that it was the right movie to make that effort," Ross said. ``We have to start trying more things to speak to more people."
The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies estimates that $5 billion is spent on advertising to the US Hispanic market.
The buying power of the 41 million US Hispanic consumers is expected to rise to nearly $900 billion this year and $1.1 trillion by 2010, accounting for 9 percent of all US buying power up from 5 percent in 1990, an AHAA spokeswoman said Friday.
Carl Kravetz, AHAA chairman and head of the Cruz/Kravetz IDEAS advertising agency, said Disney ``is no better or no worse than any other network" in trying to reach Spanish-speaking audiences. ``We are in an era of experimentation from a language perspective," Kravetz said. ``Networks are trying to figure out what it's going to take to attract Spanish-speaking audiences to English-language television."
CBS launched the first primarily Spanish-language program on network television in 2000 with the Latin Grammys, which have since moved to Spanish-language television.
The Walt Disney Co-owned ABC network this year remade the popular Spanish soap opera ``Betty La Fea" as ``Ugly Betty," and its sitcom ``Freddie" features a character who speaks entirely in Spanish with English subtitles.
But running the Spanish-language version of ``Cheetah Girls" is a first, Kravetz said.
``They are dabbling. They are trying different things to see what works," he said.
Anne Sweeney, the cochair of Disney Media Networks who recently won a Producers' Guild diversity award, said the company has gleaned its understanding of its marketplace through such initiatives as offering its prime-time programming dubbed in Spanish.
``If anything, this is going to be a huge learning experience for us. We are going to monitor it very closely," Sweeney said of the ``Cheetah" Spanish-language debut.
Disney wanted to emphasize diversity -- racial and economic -- as well as ``empowerment and unity" when it came up with the idea for the first ``Cheetah Girls" movie in 2003, about four New York teens who aspire to a recording contract, Ross said.
Only one of the Cheetahs -- Dorinda, played by soap star Sabrina Bryan -- is white, and she lives in a foster home. Group leader Galleria, played by former ``Cosby Show" star Raven-Symone, lives in a luxury brownstone with her fashion designer parents, a mixed-race couple. Her best friend, Chanel, is Latina and lives in a funky flat with her divorced-but-dating model mother, while brainy Aquanetta, who is African-American, lives with her father.
