By contrast, "when you only make 22 shows per year, every original episode is a jewel, and it is sold that way," said a former Spanish-language television executive who did not want his name used because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
Among some advertisers, there's a suspicion that Spanish-language viewers don't have a lot of money to spend.
"The image in much of corporate America is that these are not upscale folks," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a think tank that studies issues affecting the Latino community. "In reality, hundreds of thousands of Hispanic families have joined the middle class -- over 3 million families in Texas and California alone."
When Henry Cisneros was president of Univision from 1997 to 2000, "we had Pampers" ads, Pachon said, but "what we needed was American Express and Delta Air Lines."
Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, an investment firm that finances builders who make homes for working families, said some advertisers needed to be educated about the facts: Latinos, like immigrant groups before them, are moving up the economic ladder. And they watch Spanish-language programs in addition to shows on English-language TV.
Apple Inc. is among the companies that spend little, if any, on television ads in Spanish, even though iTunes, Apple's online music stores, has a large inventory of Latin music.
"They are not advertising to young Latinos using the music that they are into," said Carl Kravetz, an advertising executive who is on the board of the Assn. of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. "If you are not talking to people, how do you expect them to know about you?"
An Apple spokeswoman didn't return calls for comment.
Companies that do advertise in Spanish have found it effective, after careful study of unique cultural preferences.
"We look at our brands and we say, which are the ones that it makes sense to support in Spanish?" said Tony Gerst, vice president of multicultural marketing for Clorox Co. "Do we have a critical mass?"
Clorox learned that Latinos bought liquid bleach and Kingsford charcoal, for instance, but weren't interested in cat litter or KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce.
Procter & Gamble discovered that Latinas were more likely to prefer scented products compared with the general market. So Danielle Gonzalez, senior vice president of Tapestry, one of the nation's largest advertising companies, created a mini-\o7novela\f7 -- "\o7El Secreto de Jazmin\f7" -- to sell Secret body spray. The five 30-second episodes, which ran every day, featured a young woman who surmounts her problems by wearing lavender and floral scented body spray.
