America has always prided itself on maintaining the great melting pot. According to recent Census Bureau reports, 8.8 percent of the U.S. population was born in a foreign country. More than a quarter of them--6.7 million people--were born in Mexico, but the next most-common immigrant homelands are the Philippines (1.2 million) and China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong (816,000). The Census Bureau also points out that nearly 18 million of us speak a language other than English or Spanish in the home.

An audience of that size is what television calls a good demographic--and DIRECTV has put together an ambitious package of channels to go after it.

Last summer, in conjunction with the Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Ethnic American Broadcasting Company (EABC), DIRECTV began offering subscribers a package of 10 foreign- language channels. In the months since, the roster of channels has grown to 13, broadcasting in eight different languages; an additional seven channels are expected to be available later this year.

What's broadcasting now is nothing if not exotic.

• For Arabic speakers, there are three channels: Arab Network of America (ANA), Egyptian Satellite Channel (ESC) and a service called Nile Drama, featuring news, sports, entertainment and religious programming.

• Natives of the Indian subcontinent can watch "Bollywood" blockbusters in Hindi on Sony Entertainment Television (SET) Asia and see everything from newscasts to soap operas to cricket matches on Network Asia, a subsidiary of News Corporation's Star TV.

• Eastern Communications (ECom) and The World Channel serve Chinese Americans with news and entertainment, including movies, in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

• Two channels, VIVA Cinema and Greater Manila Area (GMA), serve the Filipino community with comedy, romance, action and thriller programming.

• Elliniki Radiothonia Tileorassi (ERT) derives most of its programming from Greece's Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation and offers a mix of news, sports, movies, drama, music and educational programming for speakers of Greek.

• A similar type of programming lineup is available in Italian (on Ciao TV), in Ukrainian (through UBN, the Ukrainian Broadcasting Network) and in Russian (on WMNB-TV, EABC's flagship station and the largest producer of Russian-language programming outside the former Soviet Union). UBN is an especially attractive network for soccer fans; it carries all the European championship qualifiers for the Ukrainian, Russian and Armenian national teams.

Although EABC has been available through DIRECTV for less than a year, it has already attracted some 78,000 subscribers. Not surprisingly, the Chinese and Filipino services are its most popular. All of the EABC channels run 24 hours a day, and they all carry foreign-language advertising produced here in America by EABC. Getting any of them, though, is a tad tricky. All of these channels are located on the Galaxy 3R (G3) satellite, from which their signals are beamed down to DIRECTV subscribers and cable headends (the head city or county that receives signals directly). However, the G3 satellite is positioned at 95 degrees west latitude--too far away from the other DIRECTV satellites for you to receive these channels on an 18-inch dish. To get EABC, you need special hardware, the DIRECTV Plus package, which includes a slightly larger 21x36-inch dish. However, with DIRECTV Plus, you can receive both the EABC channels as well as regular DIRECTV. The hardware sells for about $400 and is available through EABC. Just call (888) 667-3881.

Finally, all of EABC's foreign-language channels are available by subscription only. Monthly prices (subject to change) range from $8.99 for Ciao TV to $14.99 for ERT to $19.99 for ESC and Nile Drama, to $24.99 for the Asian-Indian channels.

What's missing, at least so far, in DIRECTV's foreign-language programming is Spanish. EABC does not offer Spanish networks and has no plans to begin, so unless you can use your secondary audio program to hear selected movies in Spanish, you cannot get DIRECTV en Español.

That, however, could change as early as this year. Back in February, we reported that DIRECTV would launch the new DBS-4 satellite this summer. If that launch is successful, DIRECTV will relocate the current DBS-1 bird from 101 degrees west to 110 degrees west and begin airing a package of 15 to 20 Spanish-language channels from that platform.

In all likelihood, says DIRECTV spokesman Bob Marsocci, you will need a DIRECTV Plus receiver to get these channels, and at press time, hardware details had not been finalized. Still, says Marsocci, "We are planning on launching Spanish-language services later this year." As to which Spanish-language networks you might soon be seeing, Marsocci and DIRECTV are noncommital: "We're talking to all the leading Spanish-language networks here and in Latin America."

We called several of the leading candidates, but no one would comment--even off the record--about their chances. Here is the likely scenario, according to a veteran industry observer. Don't expect to see Univision, the leading U.S.-based Spanish-language broadcaster, or its cable cousin Galavision. Our observer notes that Univision's affiliation with Televisia--and its links to News Corporation's SkyTV Latin American operations--will likely keep Univision out of the DIRECTV fold. A substitute could come from DIRECTV's current Latin American service, now only available south of the border, or from the Canales ñ package, currently available only to big dish owners. Canales ñ's lineup includes two Spanish-language music channels, Discovery en Español, the Canal 9 superstation, CBS Telenoticias, Cine Latino, CNN en Español and Fox Sports Americas, plus six audio channels.

The earliest launch date for DIRECTV Spanish-language channels would be later this summer, once DIRECTV has completed its acquisitions of U.S. Satellite Broadcasting and Primestar.

Art Durbano is a contributing editor to Satellite DIRECT.