Traditional Latin American Media
on the Internet

The Internet is growing rapidly in Latin America.  Initially, the high costs of equipment and access inhibited the adoption.  Today, the costs of the personal computer equipment, the ISP charges and the telecommunications charges have all been coming down quickly.  At the same time, both the public and the private sectors have recognized the importance of the Internet.  Therefore, there are observable efforts to bring the Internet into schools, businesses, government offices, homes and other places.

Free Internet access centers in Buenos Aires, Argentina
(photo credit: Roland Soong)

The Internet is in fact the name of a collection of services.  Apart from the World Wide Web, there are also other services such as chat, newsgroups, list servers, e-mail, file transfers and so on.  Nevertheless, the World Wide Web is the most recognizable service to consumers.  In order to lure people to sign on to the World Wide Web, there has to be attractive and compelling content.

It would have been impossible to build up all the contents for the World Wide Web from scratch in a few years.  Rather, much of what appears now on the Internet has been re-purposed from elsewhere.  Most visible are the websites from the traditional media, namely, television, radio, newspapers and magazines.  Not all traditional media can be transplanted onto the web; there may be degradation as well as enhancement of the contents in the process.  Still, traditional media companies are attracted to the world wide web for a variety of reasons, and the barriers to entry are fairly low.

This web site, Zona Latina, contains the most extensive listing of Latin American traditional media websites that we are aware of.  So this is a good place to discuss the state of traditional media websites now.  We point out that this information is dated circa October 1999.  Given the state of growth of Latin American internet, things may be radically different within months.  As of this date, the number of Latin American media websites listed on Zona Latina is distributed as follows: 

* Spanish- or Portuguese language and/or latino content only

The number of websites per media type does not translate directly into visitor traffic.  There may be more magazine-based websites than anything else, but there is no guarantee that they have more visitors.  In the next table, we show the number of page views for these media types on Zona Latina during the month of September, 1999 (for details).

These numbers do not bear a monotonic relationship to the number of web sites per media.  So while we have more magazine web sites than any other media, they collect the fewest number of page views.   We will make a few points here:

• Newspapers are currently the most popular media destinations.  We can think of a number of reasons.  First of all, the web presence of a newspaper is a guarantee of minimum quality, in the sense that one expect to see fresh content on a daily basis.  Secondly, newspapers are the best source of information on the web.  On a regular basis, people may not be able to read many of these newspapers.  But whenever a major event occurs, we would observe a surge in the page views to our newspaper links page.  So if there is flooding in Mexico, people will come and read all of the newspapers in the affected region.  In this manner, the World Wide Web is providing an invaluable service, more than what the traditional print media were able to offer (that is, there is no physical outlet for buying or otherwise accessing the printed copies of these local newspapers in a timely manner).
   
• Radio websites are almost as popular as newspaper websites.  Whereas the newspapers serve as information sources, radio websites are often entertainment providers through streaming music.  At this moment, the audio delivery technology is mature enough to deliver music of reasonable quality over the Internet, which can be played in the background.  One of the difficulties faced by radio websites will be how to establish a clear brand identity and reputation.  Whereas a newspaper has a clear identity by being the newspaper of record for, say, Tabasco (Mexico) or Salvador (Brazil), this is harder for a radio station that plays salsa or samba music.
   
• Although television is the largest media industry in Latin America, it does not dominate on the world wide web in the same way.  At this time, due to the limitations on telecommunications technology, television stations cannot effectively stream video signals to most users.  Therefore, television websites are currently used to serve the broadcast/cable television channels through providing programming information and schedules.  News sites such as CNN en Espaņol are closer to being newspaper than television websites.
   
• The large number of magazine websites reflects a couple of opposing tendencies.  On one hand, it is fairly easy for anyone to set up a magazine website.  Unlike a newspaper, it is not necessary to come up with fresh and topical content everyday, and the subject matter can be virtually anything (e.g. psychoanalysis, Santeria, astrology, bananas, bullfighting, heavy metal music, Gabriela Sabatini, german shepherd dogs, etc.).  This explains why there are so many magazine websites around.  On the other hand, the large number of magazine websites of very uneven quality is the cause of consumer confusion and indifference.  There is perhaps room for web sites that help consumers to filter through the clutter, in the manner of book reviews.

(posted by Roland Soong on 10/9/99)

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