CNN Cancels CNN Latino News Service

Despite that the single fastest-growing TV audience in the USA is made up of Spanish-speaking viewers, CNN has shuttered CNN Latino, its Spanish-language news division.

The Spanish-based news product was launched to great fanfare only about a year ago, with CNN’s first client being KBEH TV in Los Angeles.

In December of 2012, Cynthia Hudson-Fernández, general manager of CNN en Español and Hispanic strategy for CNN, said the network hoped to target bilingual Latinos in the USA by selling eight-hour blocks of Spanish-language news programming to local TV stations. “This is an alternative to existing networks. We feel that there is a huge opportunity for this type of programming,” she said then.

However, the experiment seems to have failed CNN, despite the growing Spanish-speaking audience in the US.

In a press release, CNN spokesperson Isabel Bucarám said, “CNN Latino was a bold effort to continue CNN’s commitment to the U.S. Hispanic marketplace. Unfortunately, despite the great efforts of many talented people, CNN Latino was not able to fulfill our business expectations, and we are discontinuing the programming this month. Over the course of the past year we learned a lot, and we will use what we learned to continue to innovate and evolve our presence in the Hispanic community.”

Bucarám claimed that few at CNN en Español would be laid off, but an unreported number of the newly hired CNN Latino staffers would face cuts.