Although Los Angeles has the nation's largest Spanish-speaking population, broadcasters at Spanish-language stations here are paid significantly less than their counterparts at rival English-language stations, according to the first academic study of pay disparity in the local broadcast news business.
The study was released Wednesday by UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center, and it points to "a dramatic disparity between Spanish-speaking broadcasters and their English-language counterparts, particularly in terms of income, benefits, working conditions and union representation."
The report's principle author, Abel Valenzuela Jr., an associate professor of Chicano studies and urban planning, took salary surveys from 114 local Spanish-language broadcasters in L.A. over the last year and conducted in-depth interviews with 14 of the respondents.
"They had a pretty good inclination that they were making less than their English-language counterparts," Valenzuela said. "The industry is small enough that broadcasters talk to one another and, frankly, word gets around."
For English-language broadcasters' salaries, UCLA relied on data from the broadcasters' union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which now includes a Spanish-language media project.
According to AFTRA, on-air talent at English-language TV stations have a median salary of $200,000 and on-air talent at English-language radio stations have a median salary of $90,000. That's 70% more than their competitors at Spanish-language TV stations, whose median income averages $60,001 and Spanish-language radio broadcasters, whose median income average hovers around $41,000.
"We're not talking about a difference of a few thousand dollars," Venezuela said Wednesday. "We're talking three times the amount in TV and two times the amount in radio."
Valenzuela and coauthor Darnell Hunt, a professor of sociology and the director of UCLA's Center for African American Studies, used median salaries, not averages, because they wanted to avoid skewed data as a result of high salaries paid to anchormen and -women.
The UCLA report shows differences are stark with regard to organizing workers. Every English-language TV station in L.A. has had representation, many for 60 years, but only two Spanish-language broadcast companies in L.A. have union representation.
