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Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest Hispanic audience, largely due to repurposed telenovelas and other Mexican programs produced by Grupo Televisa.
Univision is headquartered now in New York City, after years of being in Los Angeles, [1] and its major production facilities/operations are in Miami, Florida. 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 in March, 2006, to a consortium led by Jewish-Egyptian billionaire Haim Saban, TPG Capital, L.P. and Thomas H. Lee Partners for $12.3 billion or $36.25 per share plus $1.4 billion in acquired debt. On March 12, 2006 Joe Uva became the new CEO uf Univision Communications, inc.
Univision dates its origins to 1955, when KCOR-TV, later KWEX-TV, began broadcasting to the Hispanic community in San Antonio, Texas. That station was part of the Spanish International Network (SIN), Univision's predecessor. SIN was owned by Telesistema Mexicano, Mexico's largest private broadcaster and the forerunner of Televisa.
SIN or Univision's largest rated affiliate, KMEX-TV channel 34 of Los Angeles went on air in 1962 and some experts in the television industry considers KMEX-TV a launching point in the history of American Latino media. In 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, Illinois.
1986 was a pivotal year for the station group and the network. Emilio Nicolas, Sr., President of SICC sold the television station group to Hallmark Greeting Cards and Azcarraga, the owner of SIN changed the name from SIN to Univision. Univision's new CEO Joaquin Blaya was to sign the contracts for two programs that would change the network. Blaya signed Cristina, now a famous talk show host and Mario Kreutzberger who brought from Chile his famous Don Francisco of Sabado Gigante. Under Hallmark ownwership, Joaquin Blaya and Jose Cancela, the first morning television program by the network was launched, Mundo Latino anchored by Lucy Pereda and Frank Moro, who were both Cuban.
In 1988, the network began to produce television shows with a national audience in mind. The first production was titled "TV Mujer" (TV Woman). 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 Ch 45 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 , the show remained the number one daytime show on Spanish -language television, according to Strategy Research Corporation's (SRC) 1989 fall sweep performed from May to November 1989, outperforming its time period competition by 33 percent.
A model from "Sabado Gigante" became the add-on host in its last year, hired to sit-in while Flores was on maternity leave -- Jackie Nespral, who made the transition from entertainment to news as quickly as the program was cancelled.
"TV Mujer" begat a series of other programs: "Hola, America", "Al Mediodia" before they were all cancelled 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-51 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-TV 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, Cleveland, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Atlanta, Georgia among many others -- most of which where acquired from USA Broadcasting and had previously been affiliated with the Home Shopping Network. Both WLII and WSUR-TV were then sold to Univision in 2005.
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 is about Univision's continual editing of Televisa's programming, and failure to pay for transmission of Televisa produced sports and specials. The feud has 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 has also lost several key on air personalities to Telemundo, thanks to Cuban born Rey Rodriguez, including long time weekend news anchor Maria Antonieta Collins, tabloid news anchor Maria Celeste Arraras and sports announcer Andres Cantor. Little effect has taken place as it was proved that they were fine with the replacements of these personalities.
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 is putting itself up for sale. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, has stated that his company is considering buying Univision, but has since backed off that position [2]. 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. [3]
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, and Abercrombie & Fitch took its place on the S&P 500. The delisting of the stock ticker UVN will happen upon closing. [1] According to the Los Angeles Times, the deal was closed and the ownership change was made official on that same day. [2]
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. [6]
Also, Univision yet again continues to gain broadcast penetration and has done so non-stop since 2004, with stations in Detroit, Michigan, Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, among many others.
News/News Investigation shows are in <font color="F08080">red</font>; Reality/Game Shows are in <font color="00FF00">green</font>; Primetime Talk Shows are in <font color="87CEEB">blue</font>; Telenovelas are in <font color="FF00FF">purple</font>.
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)
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. [3] 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. [4]
Univision also shows live soccer matches such as the Football World Cup.
In addition to the Univision network, Univision Communications owns several other properties. They include: