Apparently, not everything was possible for CNN Latino. The 8 hour news and entertainment service block that was syndicated in several stations around the country will soon be history – barely one year since its launch Jan. 28, 2013.
CNN Latino will cease operations later this month. A CNN en Español spokesperson would not give a specific date.
“CNN Latino staff will be impacted, but CNNE staff personnel will not,” confirms Isabel Bucarám, CNNE’s spokesperson. She would not elaborate as to the number of employees that will lose their jobs with the cancellation of CNN Latino.
This is the network’s official statement about the closure:
“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.”
When it was first announced, CNN en Español billed CNN Latino as a new service that would produce Spanish-language syndicated “relevant content” for U.S. an underserved audience: U.S. Latinos.
At the time of the initial announcement, Cynthia Hudson-Fernández, SVP and GM of CNNE and Hispanic strategy for CNN/U.S. said in and interview with Media Moves that they were creating “a unique product that had a unique spin for the U.S. Hispanic market,” saying the network was replicating “a formula that we’ve been successful with in the past….. Many years ago, CNNE used to produce newscasts that aired on local stations.”
Evidently, that formula didn’t work.
CNN Latino debuted on KBEH-DT Channel 63 in Los Angeles. Months later, stations in New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa and Miami picked up the service, some of them producing local shows in addition to the syndicated programming.
In L.A., the local station produced “Sin Límites,” hosted by Elizabeth Espinosa.
Sarykarmen Rivera quit her job at Telemundo Austin to join CNN Latino Tampa Bay as anchor of a local news magazine morning show called “Buenos Días Tampa Bay.”
Even María Elvira Salazar was recruited for CNN Latino in Miami.
No word yet on whether any of those shows will survive after CNN Latino’s closure, but it seems unlikely.