November sweeps have come and gone, and the news for the broadcast networks was a mix of bad weighing down the good. But for the Spanish-language networks, November was a strong month for sure.
   Both of the smaller networks, Telemundo and TeleFutura, saw growth in total viewers. Univision, while essentially flat, gained an appreciable boost in adult 18-49 viewers over a year ago.
    That’s based on Nielsen Media Research data released this week for the November sweeps, one of the four month-long periods through the year when Nielsen measures local TV viewing.

   In total primetime viewers, Univision remained basically flat year-to-year in November, averaging 3.5 million, down 0.5 percent versus the 3.52 million viewers it averaged in primetime during November 2003. The same trend held for total-day viewers, which were down 2.5 percent, to 1.38 million from 1.42 million.

  Yet Univision was up 6.1 percent in 18-49 primetime viewers, to 2.06 million this November from 1.94 million a year earlier. That growth was spurred by Univision’s 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. novela programming block, which year-to-year rose 13 percent among Hispanic viewers 18-49 and 23 percent among 18-34s.

   Telemundo showed promising growth in November in primetime too, even though the No. 2 Spanish-language network still only attracts roughly a third of the audience that Univision does.

   In primetime, Telemundo's total viewers rose by 16.4 percent, from 920,000 last year to 1.07 million.
Adults 18-49 rose by nearly as much, 10 percent, or by 274,000. Telemundo’s primetime growth has been fueled by the popularity of its 100 percent original lineup. 
   By contrast, Telemundo saw slippage in total-day viewing, with that audience dipping 1.5 percent over the year-long period, to 462,000 last month from 469,000 last November.
     But the strongest growth, in terms of percentages, was by Univision's younger-skewing sister network. Those gains put TeleFutura within striking distance of overtaking Telemundo for the No. 2 spot.

  In November, TeleFutura increased its primetime audience by an impressive 43.6 percent year-to-year, from an average of 580,000 in November 2003 to 833,000 last month. Likewise, for its total-day programming, TeleFutura rose by 45.2 percent year-to-year in November, from 290,000 total viewers to 421,000.