If you haven’t noticed it yet, don’t worry. As Monday, October 28th gets closer, we’ll all inevitably be inundated with English, Spanish and Spanglish television, radio and out of home advertisements telling us… that FUSION is coming! Yes, Fusion, the love child of major US networks Univision and ABC – the one they are concocting to lure the highly coveted English-speaking Latino viewer – will launch precisely next Monday.
Although the elephant in the room is still: (shhhhhhh…) will anyone be watching?
I won’t go into that today. Suffice it to say as consumers of entertainment who happen to be Latino and who sometimes prefer to consume our entertainment in English (notice I said sometimes), we are already inundated with less than stellar programming in both English and Spanish. As one of my friend’s put it so eloquently hace unos días. We have more choices than ever before. We like culturally-relevant content. But it has to be authentic. We’re also quick to call your bluff. And we can do it in two languages!
How you like them apples?
Alright, alright… so some of the promo material I’ve seen so far is compiled below for you. My personal favorite, and something I really am looking forward to seeing myself, is the fusion (ba-dum-dum) of Good Morning America and Despierta América next Monday. I never would have expected to see this level of immersion of our cultura in mainstream media, and vice versa. Honestly, I’m excited about it!
There’s also this English-language news and entertainment show featuring veteran Univision reporter Jorge Ramos. I’ll have to watch this one to make an educated opinion… but I am sort of intrigued.
De más, Fusion continues to be touted as “A new world. A new network. Not everybody gets it.”
Should we check in with Mundo Fox, Nuvo TV or Jennifer Lopez to see how things are going in this brave new world?
What’s your take?