This year, the Latin Grammy people are trying something new. The awards show honoring the best in Latin music (for the most part in Spanish) have decided to…broadcast in Spanish!

Attributing low ratings in past years to the fact that the awards were directed towards English speakers, they’re officially switching the format to all español for this Thursday’s broadcast. No longer on mainstream network CBS, the awards are moving over to Spanish-language Univision. God, these people are smart.

“We had this dream with CBS about promoting this type of music to people who did not know about it and we thought the best way to do that was in English,” said Latin Recording Academy President Gabriel Abaroa.

But those efforts apparently backfired as the number of U.S. viewers who tuned into the awards show dropped sharply, swinging from a strong 7.5 million in 2000 to just 3.2 million last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Who signed off on that idea? Any bozo could have told you that mainstream America isn’t going to one day be like “Yeah, thanks to the Latin Grammys, I’m really into “Regional Mexican” music now! I love that new Bukis CD!”

The idea must have come at the height of the Ricky Martin explosion.

“Five years ago, there was the crossover energy where all of a sudden, ‘Time Magazine’ and ‘Newsweek’ were saying things like the ‘Latino Wave was coming.’ But it didn’t really happen that way,” Abaroa said.

In getting back to their “core audience”, the Grammys will feature some big names: Juanes, Marc Anthony, Aleks Syntek, Bebe and Obie Bermudez are expected to show. The show airs at 8:00 pm/7:00 pm central this Thursday on Univision.

Via / EiTB24.com