El Gordo y la Flaca of Hispanic Advertising

The Hispanic television upfronts are always great for networking. For several days, you get to share food and drinks (sometimes too many) with some of the main players in Hispanic media and advertising. But besides the fun, there’s never really much in the area of news or ideas to come out of these events.

Until today.

This morning, right before Fox Sports en Español’s upfront presentation at Cipriani, an advertising exec I like and admire suggested I become something like “El Gordo y la Flaca” of Hispanic media and advertising. If you know El Gordo y la Flaca, you know that nothing escapes them when it comes to Latino celebrities. So, this exec told me, I should try to do the same with the chismes surrounding Hispanic media.

I guess that was sort of what I attempted when I started this blog, but I couldn’t have put it better. That might be my true calling and perhaps my new title: Latino Media & Advertising Gossiper. After all, serious journalism seems so pasee these days.

Of course I will need your input -and chismes- to make it happen. Write to me, even if you wish to remain anonymous. Who knows? this “business” might prosper someday to hire my very own team of paparazzi.

Stay tuned for highlights on Azteca America, Telemundo and Univision upfront presentations in New York City. 

Have visa — will rent

The good thing about immigration-related stories is that they still manage to surprise me.

Take Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas with a population of 27,000. According to the New York Times, some 6,000 residents of the suburb this week voted on a contentious proposal to ban landlords from renting apartments to illegal immigrants. 68 percent voted in favor of the ban.

I wonder if those same voters in favor of the ban will be happy to have their gardeners, maids and cook sleeping in parks. Well, after all Dallas is no New York so they might be able to endure the weather.

One more fun fact about Farmers Branch. It is one of 88 municipalities in 27 states that have tried to pass rental bans or English-only provisions aimed at illegal immigrants since 2006.