Why is that television believes children can get down with Spanish while adults cannot? For whatever reason, prime time TV (with rare exceptions like Freddie Prinze‘s “Freddie”) doesn’t want to bother with bilingualism, even though Latinos are a perfect demographic: 600 billion in buying power, median age of 26, average household size of 4 members, yadayadayada…

There’s a huge rise in the use of Spanish and bilingual dialogues in mainstream children’s television programming. We’ve posted before about Dora La Exploradora, but she’s not alone.

But now PBS Kids’ has more Latino offerings. ”Dragon Tales” was revamped last year to highlight Latino issues and include Enrique, an immigrant who is Puerto Rican and Colombian. ”Jay Jay the Jet Plane” added a new bilingual plane named Lina. PBS Kids Go!, a 24-hour cable station to launch this fall, will include two hours a day of shows in Spanish with English subtitles, said Lesli Rotenberg, a Public Broadcasting System senior vice president.

The Disney Channel will debut ”Handy Manny,” a preschool cartoon centered on a bilingual Manny Garcia and talking tools, later this year. The Cartoon Network, meanwhile, has ”Mucha Lucha,” a Mexican wrestling cartoon, while the animated ”Maya & Miguel” is produced by Scholastic Entertainment and aimed at Spanish-speaking kids just starting school.

At a time when Freddy Prinze’s dad was the only “bilingual” character on TV, “Sesame Street” was emerging as the only multi-cultural option for children. The same seems to be happening now. Why?

Census 2000 showed that Latino communities are the nation’s fastest growing — and the biggest five-year Latino age group is infants to preschoolers. (Among non-Hispanics, the biggest group is 40- to 44-year-olds.)

Next time you think about how liberating it is that your kids have more Latino cartoons to watch, think also about whose dollars they are after: yours via your children. Smarter than targeting you outright, no?

Via / Happy News