TELEVISION - Nielsen ends separate Latino TV survey - The move is a nod to the clout of the Spanish language market.

Ratings giant Nielsen Media Research today plans to pull the plug on a separate service that it created 15 years ago to measure the size of Latino TV audiences. Latinos are now so important to the overall TV ratings picture that it would be misleading to relegate them to a separate system.

So Nielsen's sole source for national ratings will come from its influential "people meter" survey, which is produced daily from the TV program choices made by viewers in about 12,000 homes equipped with Nielsen set-top boxes. That panel includes about 1,400 Latino families.

"We've had to work real hard to get to where we are today," said Hector Orci, chairman of La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, a Los Angeles advertising firm. "Trying to get Nielsen to change its methodology is like moving a mountain -- a very big mountain. This move says that Latinos make up an important market that continues to grow."

Said Danielle Gonzales, managing director of Chicago-based Tapestry, a top agency that specializes in Latino media: "This is a turning point -- the television industry has acknowledged the strength of the Hispanic population."

The move to one system comes as major media companies and advertisers are eager to reach Latino consumers. There are more than 44 million Latinos living in the U.S., making up about 15% of the total population. Some studies have estimated the collective buying power of Latinos in the U.S. at more than $800 billion a year.

"We are approaching a critical mass of consciousness by the industry and marketers who have discovered the enormous economic buying power of Hispanics," said Don Browne, president of Telemundo, the Spanish-language network owned by NBC Universal. "They see who is moving through their stores and who is buying their products and services -- and it's increasingly Hispanics."

The history of the separate Hispanic Television Index that Nielsen is now scrapping shows just how much Spanish-language TV has evolved.

When it debuted in 1992, the system, which measured viewing by Latinos of both English- and Spanish-language programs, was considered groundbreaking for seeking to figure out what Latinos were watching.