Two's Company, but Tr3s is a Fiesta

Tapping into the growing Latino-American community,MTV launched "MTV Tr3s" on September 25, hoping to combine Spanish and English programming that will target Latinos age 12-34.

This new MTV network will be available on cable and satellite networks and will be packaged with many basic subscription programs to make it widely accessible across the United States. MTV currently offers MTV Espanol, a channel that mainly plays Spanish music videos intermixed with Latino news content. MTV Tr3s will assimilate MTV Espanol’s 13-million subscriber audience, changing the content to target the Generation Y demographic.

Realizing that reality programming and pop culture programming (i.e.- current MTV) are much more profitable than running music videos all day long (i.e.- old school MTV), MTV Tr3s will offer similar shows to the current MTV lineup. These shows will obviously be Latino-themed and will be presented in a mix of English and Spanish.

MTV is actively promoting the new channel through TV, Internet, and print advertisements. It also launched a social networking site called The Faces of MTV Tr3s that is intended to get users to build communities of friends in their geographic location in the US. These online communities will be the "voz" of the young Latino population, providing feedback to MTV executives and allowing them to shape programming in the interests of the community. As a reward for gathering friends to participate in the program, MTV offers selected online communities the chance to be introduced on MTV Tr3s in the near future.

The launch of this channel foreshadows the growing influence the young Latino community has in the United States. While the Latino population grows in number and buying power, expect to channel more marketing dollars towards this lucrative demographic.