Talk Television in Mexico

Mexican diva Maria Felix interviewed on television

Among television programs, talk television is the perhaps the easiest to produce.  A television host/hostess invites a guest (or guests) into a studio barren of everything else other than the chairs and they talk and talk and talk (except for the commercial breaks).  Most of the time, the guests are not paid for their appearances.  Of course, just because talk programs are relatively cheap to produce does not mean that they must dominate the airwaves.  After all, there has to be a large and willing audience first.

We will now cite some survey data from the 2002 TGI Mexico study.  This is a survey of 10,316 persons between the ages of 12 to 64 years old interviewed during 2002.  Among these respondents, 27.4% said that they frequently watched talk/interview shows on television.  In the next chart, we show the incidences by age/sex groups.  It appears that talk shows are more popular among the younger people.

(source: TGI Mexico)

In the next chart, we show the incidences of talk show viewing by socio-economic level and education.  Here the patterns are inconsistent.

(source: TGI Mexico)

The absence of strong patterns in the preceding chart is due to the fact that the talk show genre consists of very different sub-genres.  Here are some examples:

• Talk shows that feature scandalous behavior by common people.  In the USA, these would be the shows hosted by people like Jerry Springer, and they have their Latin American counterparts.  The audiences to these shows would be expected to be downscale.

• Talk shows that feature interviews with celebrity entertainers.  The audiences would be expected to be young and middle-class.

• Talk shows about economic and political matters.  The audiences would be expected to be upscale.

The detailed catalog of these patterns would have to come from people meter measurement systems that provide television program ratings.

(posted by Roland Soong, 5/29/2003)