Former CNN Host Rick Sanchez Speaks “Next” Generation

By: Victor Escalante, NewsTaco

According to syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr., former CNN host Rick Sanchez, may be coming back to a new media TV channel. Mr. Sanchez kissed his day job goodbye by attacking Jon Stewart for mocking him as a buffoon. In defense of “let’s get real,” Rick does have a history of acting less than a shining example of Latino journalism, but that argument is for another day.

According to Mr. Sanchez his exile into the wilderness has led him to the burning bush of the Promised Land for media, Latino centric Spanglish media properties. Many of us in media have known about this phenomenon for many years. There is a vast amount of bilingual consumers that do not fit the “traditional” segmentation marketers and media have used to target them. They are the Generation Equix and the Millennials now called “Generation Next” that are bicultural and bi-lingual.

This was a demographic  that was staring us in the face pre-social media revolution. Alpha voices in old media, me included, were sounding the alarm to our bosses. This Latino demographic is the sweet spot for marketers and politicos. I’ll never forget the day the light bulb went off. My wife and I were sitting in a sold out concert in Houston, TX at a Shakira concert circa 2006. We were in the nosebleed section. And our tickets were more than  a hundred dollars. My wife saw and heard the music, I saw purchasing power of young Latinos with lots of bling and designer clothing.

On Monday, I returned with this epiphany like Jerry Maguire, to a Spanish weekly newspaper I worked at. As you might expect, they looked at me with glazed eyes, wondering what I had ingested. With the passage of time, I realized I did not have anything this “Next” generation wanted. In that moment, my personal blogging was born.

These young guns wanted content that was informative, stimulating and relevant. They wanted images that resonated with them, not just stories and images of crime and downtrodden Latinos. One of my first attempts went viral, this is pre-Facebook, Twitter, and all other social media. I was on the right side of history. But the powers to be were more focused on doing more of what was not working and in time surviving the devastating impact of social media on advertising revenue.

Which leads me back to the take away from this story. We have reached the tipping point of developing Latinos that are now driving change in old media and business models. This combined “Next” generation is highly engaged and extremely vocal about their views and purchasing wants. Some marketers get it and they are exploiting this sweet spot, catering with products and services at a neck braking speed. This week I searched for a quinceanera card  in English with a Latino theme  in a general market pharmacy. I could not find anything closely Latino. Did it keep me from purchasing? No, but that is what I wanted. Would I have paid more for what I was searching for? Most definitely!

The new boomer is part of the “Next” generation. We are educated, bicultural, bilingual, very engaged, and highly vocal. Don’t take my word for it. Go take the test to find out how millennial you are. Early reports from the annual conference of Latinos in Social Media are tremendously encouraging. We have arrived.  We need to take our destiny into our own hands. How? By voting, pushing education, supporting each other, and driving our personal narrative.