Charter Communications Inc.’s Riverside, Calif., cluster will launch The History Channel en Español, tying the service’s addition to the premiere of a biopic on Mexican-American activist Cesar Chavez.
Charter is adding the service -- which will premiere The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle March 27 -- to its Latino tier.
The population of Riverside County, southeast of Los Angeles, is 1.5 million, according to the 2000 census, with Hispanics then accounting for 36% of that total. Their numbers have continued to grow since then, making Riverside-San Bernardino No. 17 among the top 20 Hispanic dominant market areas for television, according to Marlene Braga, directory of programming and production for The History Channel.
To publicize the launch, Charter invited civic leaders, teachers and other VIPs to an invitation-only screening of The Fight in the Fields.
The two-hour documentary -- a social history of a farm workers’ strike for better working conditions and pay, led by Chavez against grape growers in Delano, Calif. -- premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won a “CINE Golden Eagle,” among a slew of other awards.
