Everything about Univision totally explained
» For the similar-sounding film format, see Univisium.
Univision is a
Spanish-language television network in the
United States and
Puerto Rico. It has the largest Hispanic audience, largely due to repurposed
telenovelas and other Mexican programs produced by
Grupo Televisa.
Joe Uva is the
CEO of
Univision Communications, Inc.
Univision is headquartered now in
New York City, after years of being in
Los Angeles, and its major production facilities/operations are in
Miami. It is available on
cable in most of the country, with local stations in several markets with large Hispanic populations. Most of these stations air full local news and programming in addition to network shows. Univision's major programming is closed-captioned in Spanish, but unlike main competitor
Telemundo, it almost never provides English
subtitles.
The network was sold on
March 12,
2006, to a consortium led by Californian billionaire
Haim Saban (who had previously owned the entity
Saban Entertainment),
TPG Capital, L.P.,
Providence Equity Partners,
Madison Dearborn Partners, and
Thomas H. Lee Partners for $13.7 billion or $36.25 per share plus $1.4 billion in acquired debt. The buyout left the company with a debt level of twelve times its annual cash flow, which was twice the norm in buyouts done over the previous two years.
History
In
1955, Raul Cortez founded KCOR-TV, channel 41 in
San Antonio, Texas. It was the first Spanish-language television station in the United States. However, the station was a money-bleeder, even after a call letter change to KUAL-TV. In
1961 Cortez sold the station to a group headed by his son-in-law Emilio Nicolas, Sr. and
Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta. Nicolas had helped produce channel 41's variety shows, while Azcarraga was the owner of Telesistema Mexicano, forerunner of Televisa.
The new owners quickly turned the station around, and in
1962 signed on
KMEX-TV, channel 34 in Los Angeles. This was the beginning of the
Spanish International Network, the first foreign-language television network in the United States.
Over the next 20 years, SIN would acquire other high-rated Spanish language television throughout the Western United States, then expanded the market to
Florida, New York City, and
Chicago.
1986 was a pivotal year for the station group and the network. Nicolas sold his stake in the network to a partnership of
Hallmark Cards and
Televisa. The new group changed the network's name to Univision. Univision's new CEO, Joaquin Blaya, was to sign the contracts for two programs that would change the network. Blaya signed
Cristina Saralegui, who became a famous talk show host, and Mario Kreutzberger, better known as
Don Francisco, who brought from Chile his famous program
Sábado Gigante. Also, the network began production of its first morning television show. The program was
Mundo Latino, anchored by Lucy Pereda and Frank Moro, who were both Cuban. Moro left for Mexico to continue his career as a soap opera actor and the network brought in
Jorge Ramos.
In 1988, the network began to produce television shows with a national audience in mind. The first production was titled "TV Mujer" (Woman TV). The program was a magazine styled show aimed to the Hispanic woman living in the United States. Anchored by
Lucy Pereda during its first year and
Gabriel Traversari, the program consisted of a melange of cooking and entertainment segments.
Pereda was replaced shortly after finishing her first year by Mexican-American Lauri Flores who hailed from
KXLN-TV in Houston, Texas where she was director of programming, promotions, special events, and public information as well as producer and host of a local community affairs show "Entre Nos". During Ms. Flores' time as host of
TV Mujer, the show remained the number one daytime show on Spanish-language television, according to Strategy Research Corporation's (SRC) 1989 fall sweeps performed from May to November 1989, outperforming its time period competition by 33 percent. Telemundo's
Dia a Dia, launched before the arrival of
TV Mujer, saw its rating diminishing.
A model from
Sábado Gigante became the add-on host in its last year, hired to sit in while Flores was on maternity leave --
Jackie Nespral. Jackie became a formal host during the show's final season.
TV Mujer begat a series of other programs: "Hola, America", "Al Mediodia" before they were all canceled never really getting the ratings of the original concept.
Univision then decided to expand news programming in the afternoon and launched "Noticias y Mas" with the before mentioned Nespral and a team of three other anchors: Ambrosio Hernandez, Myrka de Llanos and Raul Peimbert. In 1990, Hernandez bolted for the local Telemundo station,
WSCV to anchor its evening news programming, being joined by Peimbert shortly after that being wooed to anchor the new Telemundo evening news. Nespral left to join the weekend edition of the "Today" show leaving De Llanos on the anchor desk by herself. Univision had other plans for the moribund show. They revamped it, changed the name, the theme music and installed a weekend reporter to be De Llanos' partner: Puerto Rican born Maria Celeste Arraras who joined the now tabloid news program called "
Primer Impacto".
In 2002, Univision entered into a
local marketing agreement (LMA) with
Raycom Media to operate two television stations in Puerto Rico:
WLII in
Caguas and WSUR in
Ponce. At the time, WLII had a longtime LMA with another Puerto Rican station,
WSTE, which Univision honored. It was also around this time that Univision resumed broadcast expansion by signing affiliation agreements with stations in
Raleigh, North Carolina (
WUVC),
Cleveland, Ohio (
WQHS),
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (
WUVP) and
Atlanta, Georgia (
WUVG) among many others — most of which were acquired from
USA Broadcasting and had previously been affiliated with the
Home Shopping Network. Both WLII and WSUR were sold to Univision in 2005.
In 2003,
WIIH in
Indianapolis, Indiana began broadcasting, owned and operated by
LIN TV affiliated with Univision.
In late 2004, a feud began between Univision's chairman, 78-year old entertainment guru
Jerry Perenchio, and the 36-year old head of Televisa,
Emilio Azcárraga Jean. The dispute was about Univision's continual editing of Televisa's programming, and failure to pay for transmission of Televisa produced sports and specials. The feud intensified to the point where Televisa's most famous stars have been banned from appearing on any Univision-produced shows and specials. In addition, Televisa has filed a lawsuit against Univision for
breach of contract. In recent years, Univision also lost several key on air personalities to Telemundo, including long time weekend news anchor
Maria Antonieta Collins, tabloid news anchor
Maria Celeste Arraras, and sports announcer
Andres Cantor.
Univision previously overtook the now-defunct English-language networks
UPN and
the WB, now the
CW Television Network as the fifth-most popular network overall, and in the 18-to-34-year-old and 18-to-49-year-old
demographics it sometimes ranks higher than that. More
advertising on TV is targeted toward those age groups than toward any other part of the viewing audience.
On
February 9,
2006, Univision Communications confirmed that it was putting itself up for sale.
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the
News Corporation, stated that his company was considering buying Univision, but backed off that position. Other expected bidders announced were
Time Warner,
CBS,
Disney,
Grupo Televisa of Mexico (under a partnership due to foreign ownership laws),
Bill Gates, and several private equity firms.
Tribune Company was rumored to be interested in buying Telefutura.
Then on
June 27,
2006, Univision announced that it accepted a $12.7 billion dollar bid from a group of private equity investors led by TPG Capital, L.P. and Thomas H. Lee Partners. The investor group also included Madison Dearborn, Providence Equity, and children's television mogul
Haim Saban — founder of
Saban Entertainment. This marks Saban's return to broadcast ownership, as Saban (minus partner
Shuki Levy) was 50% owner, along with
News Corporation, of the Fox Family Channel (now known as the Disney-owned
ABC Family Channel). On
March 27,
2007, federal regulators approved the sale. According to the
Los Angeles Times, the deal was closed and the ownership change was made official on that same day.
However, Univision's shareholders filed two class-action lawsuit against the company and its board members to stop the buyout. One lawsuit claims that the board members structured the deal to only benefit the company's insiders and not the average stockholders. The other lawsuit was filed on behalf of a shareholder identified as L A Murphy, who claims that the board put its own personal interests and the interests of the winning bidder ahead of shareholders, and also failed to adequately evaluate the company's worth. In the meantime, more lawsuits were filed, one against Univision's records division for heavy handed tactics, and the other from a winner of a "Despierta America" $30,000 makeover contest for breaking its own rules and cancelling the makeover right in the middle of it. A long awaited trial, it's expected to start in April 2008, at a Los Angeles court.
Also, Univision yet again continues to gain broadcast penetration and has done so since 2004, with stations in
Detroit,
Seattle,
Portland (Oregon),
Minneapolis and
Nashville, among many others.
On
June 25,
2007, Univision made history in the television ratings with the finale of
La Fea Mas Bella, which beat all English-language television broadcasting networks with a 3.0 rating out of 9 share, making it the most watched show for the night and the 2nd most watched show of the week.
On September 9, 2007, Univision hosted the first Spanish-language presidential debate in the
United States at the
University of Miami.
On March 29, 2008,
Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and
Bill Nye the Science Guy were taken off of the
Planeta U Saturday morning children's block.
On April 5, 2008, the children's block was replaced with
Planeta U, with the brand-new shows like:
Dora the Explorer,
Go, Diego, Go!,
Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks,
Inspector Gadget's Field Trip and
Beakman's World.
Primetime Schedule
News/News Investigation shows are in
red; Reality/Game Shows are in
green; Primetime Talk Shows are in
blue;
Telenovelas are in
purple.
Current Daytime Telenovelas
Current Primetime Telenovelas
Current Late-Night Telenovela
Saturday Morning Telenovela
Upcoming Telenovelas
Shows
Univision's shows include:
Various prime-time telenovelas and specialty shows from Mexico also air. They are edited to fit U.S. as well as Univision broadcast standards. (see below)
Telenovelas and Other Shows
Univision has contracts with
Venezuela's
Venevisión and Mexico's
Televisa to showcase some of their novelas and other shows. They are listed by the year in which they first went on the air in their respective countries. On
July 6,
2006, Univision and Televisa reached an exclusive program licensing agreement in which the network and its sisters,
Telefutura and
Galavisión would lose all rights to all programs produced by or for Televisa after 2017, unless a new agreement is reached before then. Meanwhile, at this time little is known about Univision's agreement with Venevisión. Also, on
May 14,
2007, Univision signed a deal with
Walt Disney and
ABC to produce programs for the network. Programs include a Spanish version of ABC's
Desperate Housewives (
Amas de Casa Desesperadas).
Other Properties
In addition to the Univision network, Univision Communications owns several other properties. They include:
The Galavisión cable television network.
The TeleFutura broadcast television network.
21 full-power and 9 low-power television stations that air Univision programming.
22 full-power and 15 low-power television stations that air TeleFutura programming.
1 English-language television station, MyNetworkTV affiliate KUVI-TV, Bakersfield, California.
1 Spanish-language Independent station, WSTE in Ponce, Puerto Rico -- operated under a Local Marketing Agreement.
Univision Radio: a group of 47 radio stations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.
The Univision and Fonovisa record labels, as well as 50% of the Disa record label.
Univision.com (also known as Univision Online), an official website that launched in 2000.Further Information
Get more info on 'Univision'.
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