(07-13) 17:20 PDT -- As their contract negotiations intensified this week, the newsroom employees at San Francisco's leading Spanish-language news station - KDTV Channel 14 - should have been in a strong bargaining position. Not only is the newsroom full of coveted bilingual journalists, but for the past two ratings periods KDTV has beaten most of its Bay Area English-language competitors in various ratings contests.

But when it comes to Spanish-language television news, high ratings don't translate into high salaries. Many KDTV reporters and producers, like their counterparts at Spanish-language stations across the country, earn roughly one-fourth less in base pay than their competitors at English-language stations, even if the 6 p.m. newscast they're producing is attracting more viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic than every Bay Area station except KGO-TV.

Their plight is echoed across the country. While the foreign-born Hispanic population in the United States grew 25 percent between 2000 and 2006 to 17.6 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, analysts say the advertising world has been slow to adapt to the demographic changes in Spanish-language media - and the effects have trickled down through the media food chain.

So while the Spanish-language news audience may be growing, many advertisers don't perceive Hispanics to be the "right audience," according to bilingual television advertising expert Roxane Garzon.

"There's still a perception in the marketing world that most of the Spanish-speaking audience is poor and uneducated," said Garzon, who is broadcast media director for Casanova Pendrill, which buys time on Spanish-language TV for corporate clients such as Kohl's, L'Oreal and General Mills. While Spanish-speaking households may have lower incomes, she said they tend to be brand loyal, regardless of price.

Still, advertising rates for Spanish-language programming are one-third to one-half of what they are for English-language programming, she said.

While major market TV journalists aren't holding up will-report-for-food signs, base pay for many Spanish-language TV journalists (about $70,000) can be around one-fourth less than their English-language counterparts in town. Photographers and news writers at KDTV are paid roughly a third less at top union scale than some of their English-language counterparts in the Bay Area, according to figures supplied by union officials familiar with the disparity.

In general, salaries vary wildly among top TV reporters, many of whom have contracts that run into the low six figures. But there is little doubt about the pay differential at the base salary scale level, according to analysts and union officials.

Others see another cultural perception behind the pay difference that has little to do with the price of advertising detergent or toothpaste.

"Why are brown people who speak two languages paid less?" said Carrie Biggs-Adams, a union organizer for the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. She has helped negotiate contracts at Spanish-language stations across the country. "In any other profession, there is a premium placed on being bilingual. But for some reason, not here."

"It demonstrates a larger problem across the culture of Latino people earning less," said Mari Castaneda, associate professor of communication at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an expert on Latino media.

Said a spokesperson for Univision, the Spanish-language network that produces local newscasts in 14 cities: "It is Univision's policy not to comment during labor negotiations."

The newsroom staff at KDTV and their colleagues around the country are at the end of a media/advertising money trail that analysts say hasn't recognized the full consumer power of the Spanish-speaking market. And for some of the journalists at Spanish-language stations, there aren't a lot of other career options in their chosen field.

Because of increased media consolidation over the years and shrinking budgets, news organizations have been shutting foreign bureaus and cutting back on overseas coverage. Since Univision dominates the Spanish-language TV news market, there is a limited number of domestic employers.

"The way a top anchor at an English-language station gets more money is to threaten to go to the station across the street," said Doug Darfield, Nielsen Media Research director of multicultural measurement. "But that possibility doesn't exist for the most part in the Spanish-language market."

"And if you have an accent, you can't work at an English station," said one former employee of a Univision station in California. She asked not to be identified for fear of being blacklisted by other stations.

Jessica Aguirre, an anchor at KNTV in the Bay Area, worked at a Univision station in Miami before moving to the CBS station in the same market. But her crossover is still uncommon.

"I think it is possible to make the transition - I did it myself," the U.S.-born Aguirre said. "But I do think it is much easier for Latino journalists who were raised in the U.S. and for whom English is their first language, or as in my case, a person who is completely bilingual."

Many Spanish-speaking journalists are torn between their desire to serve their audience and a dissatisfaction with their pay and benefits, said Federico Subervi, who heads Texas State University's Center for the Study of Latino Media and Markets.

In a 2004 survey for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Subervi found that 78 percent of Hispanic journalists said they were motivated to be in the business by their desire to inform and educate the Latino community. But 42 percent said they were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with their salary.

However, many Spanish-language journalists won't have a lot of leverage with their pay needs until advertisers better understand the market. Univision only accepts Spanish-language advertising, and analysts said many companies don't want to devote additional money to create Spanish-language ad campaigns.

Slowly, advertisers are starting to change. Advertising spending in Spanish-language media increased 3 percent over the previous year to $5.78 billion in 2007, according to a Nielsen Monitor-Plus study released this week.

The question remains how much of that will trickle down to the employees of local news stations.

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.