SiTV: New network

My brother is C.O.O. of this new network called Si TV
They launched yesterday.
I dont have Dish network but if anyone has it, check out the channel and give an honest assesment. I think it is ch159 between MTV and ESPN. (I guess its sorta like a B.E.T. for latinos)

I'm so proud of my older brother. You dont understand, he is 45yrs old and has been working towards this for decades. I've seen him just keep pushing and pushing all these years. Acting like he's a somebody with something to do even when he was a nobody. He would always tell me "Its not what you have but what people THINK you have".
He's played that L.A. game for years, worked for some spanish TV stations, then Sony television in Latin America, moved to Miami then left his Vice President of Latin media for Sony to take off on this venture of starting a new network. Its taken about 4 or 5 years but its reality now. Amazing, simply amazing.
I'm so f*cking proud of my big brother.

Heres an article he sent.
Si TV launch now a reality

Hollywood Reporter

By Andrew Wallenstein

When he first began pitching Si TV several years ago, Jeff Valdez had an important meeting with EchoStar Corp. senior vp programming Michael Schwimmer. As the gatekeeper to more than 9 million subscribers signed up to EchoStar's Dish Network, Schwimmer represented a crucial distribution opportunity for Si TV, an English-language Hispanic-targeted network Valdez has been developing for more than five years.

True to his reputation as a no-nonsense executive, Schwimmer abruptly shut off the video presentation after two minutes. "My heart jumped out of my chest," Valdez recalled as he watched Schwimmer pull the tape out of the VCR. "I was about to wet myself."

But contrary to his fear his life's work was about to join the heap of aborted channel startups, Valdez got a vote of confidence from Schwimmer. "He said he didn't need to see anymore because he got what we were about," Valdez said.

When Si TV launches Wednesday, EchoStar has slotted the channel between MTV and ESPN in Dish's "America's Top 120" tier. Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications also granted the channel carriage, sending the channel's initial distribution to about 8 million. Although still a small digital channel, Si TV has already signed up such major advertisers as Wal-Mart, Sears, General Motors and Sony Music.

In the heavily consolidated multichannel universe, how does a scrappy independent channel secure significant distribution and advertising? The Si TV strategy reflects a new understanding of ethnic viewers, targeting their younger, more assimilated ranks with English-language programming that can appeal beyond Hispanics to a generation less hung up on racial categorizations.

Si TV won't be alone for long. Last week, Hispanic-targeted media venture Voy said it will launch its own English-language cable channel in July. Last month, Los Angeles-based channel LA TV expanded to a full-day schedule in anticipation of a national launch.

"This market is much larger than just one network," Voy Network president Andrew Thau said. "There are plenty of examples of multiple networks serving one market in cable."

The increasing number of viewers who don't speak their parents' native tongue develop more discriminating palates for programming outside Spanish-language networks, which mostly import hoary genres like telenovelas, and mainstream U.S. broadcasters, whose depictions of ethnic characters are minimal at best. The 2000 U.S. Census estimated the nation's Hispanic population at about 38.8 million, or about 13% of the U.S. population.

"We're not putting Hispanics on TV," Valdez said. "We're putting talented people on TV who happen to be Hispanic."

Si TV also will have on-air personalities who aren't Latino on its growing slate of original programming, including talk show "The Rub," which discusses issues related to love. The channel also has entries in the comedy and variety genres as well as the reality series "Urban Jungle," which relocates sheltered Caucasians to the barrio to expose them to a new reality complete with mass transit and minimum-wage jobs.

The multiethnic mix reflects the viewership Si TV seeks, and it's larger than you might expect. All together, blacks, Hispanics and Asians comprise more than half of the viewership in the 18-34 demographic in major U.S. markets. "Everyone thinks of them as a niche, but they account for more than 50%," Valdez said.

Spanish-language programming giants Univision and Telemundo get 45% of that audience at best. Spanish iterations of many popular cable networks including ESPN also exist, and the category keeps growing: The History Channel said Monday that it will launch a Spanish-language version of the network in the spring.

"It's not that a giant market doesn't remain for Telemundo or Univision," said Howard Horowitz, whose cable consultancy Horowitz & Associates has long studied the industry's multicultural market. "But there is a major opportunity for those looking to the future to the second generation of U.S. Latinos."

At least three-quarters of the 44 million Hispanics expected to comprise the U.S. population by 2010 will live in English-dominant or bilingual households. With buying power more concentrated among the acculturated segment of the population, even Univision and Telemundo have their eye on the segment, with respective fast-growing spinoffs Telefutura and mun2 targeting with "Spanglish" channels that alternate between Spanish and English.

Cable operators and satellite providers also have been keen to target minorities because they are heavy media consumers. A survey of Latino cable subscribers in urban areas conducted last year by Horowitz & Associates found that almost one in four have upgraded to digital cable; 30% of English-speaking Latinos are digital subscribers versus 19% among Spanish-speaking Latinos.

"The challenge for Si TV or Voy is that when you aren't isolating a segment of the audience, you have to compete with NBC, ABC and MTV," Horowitz said. "The programming has to be up to snuff."

Hispanics may not even be the only ethnicity getting their own English-language channel. A pair of English-language channels seeking carriage, ImaginAsia TV and WorldAsia TV, are targeting the Asian market -- which is one-third the size of the Hispanic population but growing even faster -- as well as crossover viewers. In addition, foreign-language programr International Channel will expand its primetime English-language block "Asia Street" next month.