Revamp and competition with Telemundo in the 1990s and 2000s
On April 8, 1992, Hallmark sold Univision to a group that included Los Angeles-based investor A. Jerrold Perenchio (a former partner in Norman Lear's Embassy Communications, who was outbid by the Hallmark-led consortium for the network in 1987), Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, and brothers Ricardo and Gustavo Cisneros (co-owners of Venezuelan broadcaster Venevision) for $550 million, in order to refocus its television operation efforts on cable provider Cencom Cable Associates, which it acquired the previous year for about $500 million. In order to comply with FCC rules on foreign ownership of television stations, the deal was structured to give Perenchio a controlling 75% interest in Univision's station group and 50% ownership of the network itself; Azcárraga and the Cisneroses held a 25% stake in the network and a 12.5% stake in the station group. The deal placed Univision under common ownership with competing cable channel Galavisión, which the Azcárraga-run Grupo Televisa owned at the time.[29] The Cisneroses' ownership of stake in Univision led to the broadcast of Venevision telenovelas from Venezuela, & eventually, to the co-production partnership of Venevision International and Univision of telenovelas. The consortium ended up selling Univision for $13.7 billion in 2007.[30]
The sale raised concerns by several Latino activist groups such as the National Hispanic Media Coalition – which subsequently filed a petition to the FCC to deny the sale of Univision and its television stations – that it would lead to a drastic reduction in Univision's domestically originated programming output in favor of lower-cost, imported Latin American content, and allow Azcárraga to potentially expand control of American Spanish language television in the manner of Televisa's near-monopoly in Mexican media.[31][32] Indeed, this concern was effectively confirmed in the release of an FCC filing for the Perenchio-Televisa-Venevision purchase in which Perenchio indicated "the programs offered[...] by Televisa and Venevision will include at least a quantity of programs sufficient to fill a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week broadcast schedule", with local content consisting only of newscasts. This led Joaquin Blaya to resign from his role as Univision's president in May 1992 – after Perenchio had earlier assured him that the amount of domestic national programming on the network and its nine owned-and-operated stations would not be reduced before the filing was disclosed – concerned that it would limit opportunities to increase the amount of local programming content on Univision's stations.[33]
Blaya was then hired by Telemundo as its president and chief executive officer, and was subsequently joined by four other Univision senior executives on that network's production and management team. The FCC expedited its review of the deal, and approved the purchase on September 30, 1992, stating that the consortium was quantified to acquire Univision and that it was "unconvinced" by the petitioners' arguments that it would dilute the amount of American programming on the network.[34] Subsequently, in January 1993, Univision canceled three U.S.-produced programs – the newsmagazines Portada ("Cover Story") and Al Mediodía and the variety series Charytin International – resulting in the layoffs of 70 production staffers based at Univision's Miami headquarters and at Al Mediodía's base in Los Angeles; although two of the three programs were replaced by Televisa series (Portada was replaced in its Wednesday night slot with the variety series El Nuevo Show ("The New Show"), a Los Angeles-based series hosted by Paul Rodriguez, which had aired on Saturdays for several years prior), Univision executives cited that all three programs were discontinued due to low ratings and not because of any plan to eschew American programming with imported content.[35] Televisa and Venevision's stakes in the network in exchange the two foreign partners get 14.7% of Univision's revenue also gave Univision access to a broad selection of programs from Televisa and Venevision are locked up until 2017.
In 1993, Univision owner Jerry Perenchio, in a swift and unprecedented move, after the acquisition, appointed a 27-year-old, Los Angeles native, Venezuelan-born, Miguel Banojian, known for his in-depth of the U.S. and Latin American Hispanic market, his impeccable professional skills, as well as his proven successful ratings track records to turn around the operations of the station group, but mainly Univision's West Coast flagship KMEX-Channel 34 Los Angeles, generating at the time of purchase of the company, approximately 40% of the overall Univision revenue. Under Banojian, the network increased monetary investments in the stations, expanding staff and resources, introducing new sets for its newscasts, hiring and appointing KVEA's main anchor Jesus Javier, reporter Pepe Barreto also from KVEA, as well as hiring Andrea Kutyas, joining news anchor Eduardo Quezada, who worked at KMEX from 1975 to 2003, to lead and reshape KMEX's 11 p.m. newscast, which became the #1 late news in the Los Angeles Market. The overall re-organization effort, included, the purchasing of new live production equipment, updated production units, new master control equipment; new station antennas with more transmission power and a new studio located in Westchester, replacing the Hollywood studio which served from 1962 to March 1993. Same year, A Mexico City-based "MEDIA HUB CENTER ALLIANCE" was created by Televisa AND KMEX; both companies shared its operational, technical and resources strengths to increase market presence, Miguel Banojian representing KMEX, Alejandro Burillo Azcarraga, Shareholder & Executive VP of Televisa and Félix Cortés Camarillo VP of News & Production operations of Televisa, signed the alliance which included shared news bureaus in Mexico City, Los Angeles, Tijuana, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston; Such alliance locked a leasing agreement of "Two" 24 hours transponders from its newly launched Geostationary "Intelsat 601", which served the satellite sharing between the two countries; the newly created satellite hub was later used by both networks to share programming and sales needs. One of the iconic marketing move to revamp the then dying "KMEX" station, Mr. Banojian and the KMEX group of engineers, also designed, created and launched what became, "The first U.S Hispanic Aerial Newsgathering operation", which included a brand new helicopter with call sign "Aguila 1" ("Eagle one" in its English translation). The news sets, production equipment, master control equipment, and antenna were upgraded. With all these operational moves, not only did KMEX-34 poise itself to acquire 70% of the Hispanic market share in Los Angeles market against its competitors including Telemundo, but achieved something unprecedented in U.S. television history: KMEX Channel 34 became the first Spanish-language television station ever to outperform English-language network stations (like NBC station KNBC, CBS station KCBS-TV, ABC station KABC-TV and Fox station KTTV) and overcame what had been Telemundo's national competitive edge against Univision.
Jesus Javier was hired as KVEA's main anchor, joined by reporter Pepe Barreto. Andrea Kuyas and veteran (1975 to 2003) KMEX news anchor Eduardo Quezada led the 11 p.m. newscast, which became the #1 late news in the Los Angeles market.
Also in 1993, KMEX agreed to share operational and technical resources with Televisa to enhance market presence. Banojian representing KMEX, with Televisa executive VP Alejandro Burillo Azcarraga, and Félix Cortés Camarillo, Televisa News and Production VP signed the "Media Hub Center Alliance", which included shared news bureaus in Mexico City, Los Angeles, Tijuana, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. The alliance leased two 24-hour transponders on the new Intelsat 601 to share programming and ads.
KMEX also purchased a new helicopter "Aguila 1" ("Eagle 1"), becoming the first Hispanic station in the U.S. to add aerial capability.
Univision increased its advertising rates and subsequently was able to acquire KXLN, the first Spanish-language television station in the Houston market. Perenchio also invested $37 million, in conjunction with Telemundo and A.C. Nielsen, to develop the National Hispanic Television Index to track viewership in Spanish language markets. Perenchio also implemented new programming requirements in which non-sports programs were no longer allowed to run 20 minutes over their allotted timeslot.[5]
In 1996, Perenchio took Univision Holdings public for the first time. Univision also appointed Mario Rodriguez as its president of programming; Rodriguez developed a strategy to provide programming that would appeal to both Latino immigrants and native citizens, and increased domestic programming production (much of which consisted primarily of news, talk, and variety shows) to encompass 52% of the network's schedule. Univision also adopted the standard Latin American model of programming its prime-time telenovela lineup to appeal to different target audiences (with novelas aimed children airing at 7:00 p.m., those aimed teenagers at 8:00 p.m. and novelas targeted toward adults scheduled at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific).[13] The following year, the network appointed former Housing and Urban Development secretary Henry Cisneros as its president and CEO, a post he remained in until his resignation in 2000 to head American CityVista, a contracting company that builds residential communities in inner cities.[36][37]
At the same time, citing its dominance in the Spanish-language television market, having consistently beaten Telemundo and other smaller Spanish language networks in the ratings, the network decided to refocus its efforts on attracting Hispanic and Latinos viewers who preferred watching programs on English language broadcast and cable networks to grow its viewership further. The strategy helped Univision to nearly double its ratings during prime time by 1998, ranking as the fifth most-watched American broadcast network by the 1998–99 season (beating fledgling English-language networks UPN and The WB), as it steadily began to attract bilingual viewers away from the English-language networks. In September 1998, the network added two new shows to shore up its struggling afternoon lineup leading into the highly rated Cristina. While one of the programs – the game show El Bla-Blazo – lasted only a few years, it experienced more long-term success with the newsmagazine that followed it, El Gordo y La Flaca ("The Scoop and the Skinny", although alternately translated as "The Fat Man and the Skinny Girl"), a Miami-based entertainment news program hosted by Raul De Molina and Lili Estefan, who had become popular with viewers for their entertainment reports on the network's news programs.[38]
In June 2001, 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, as part of a planned and protracted purchase of the two stations. At the time, WLII had long maintained an LMA with another Puerto Rican station, WSTE, which Univision maintained.[39][40] Also around this time, Univision resumed its broadcast expansion by converting several television stations that it had acquired into affiliates of the network, including those in Raleigh, North Carolina (WUVC), Baltimore, Maryland (WQAW), Cleveland, Ohio (WQHS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (WUVP) and Atlanta, Georgia (WUVG) – including one acquired from USA Broadcasting that had previously been affiliated with the Home Shopping Network, which was left out of the group's charter affiliation deals for Univision Communications' secondary network TeleFutura (now
In June 2002, Univision acquired Dallas-based Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., owner of Spanish language radio stations in markets such as New York City (WADO), Los Angeles (KLVE), San Antonio (KGSX, now KMYO) and Dallas (KESS), in a $3.5 billion all-stock transaction. Following the FCC's long-awaited approval of the acquisition, the group was renamed Univision Radio. The negotiations to merge the two companies followed years of on-again/off-again negotiations in which each company made an offer to acquire the other, as well as occasional takeover attempts of other television and radio station groups (HBC once attempted to broker a deal to merge with the Spanish Broadcasting System, and made a failed attempt to acquire Telemundo before Sony Pictures Entertainment and Liberty Media acquired that network in 1998).[41]
In April 2003, KMEX news anchor Eduardo Quezada left for KVEA and spent three years working as a news anchor before retiring in 2006; his oldest son, Eduardo Quezada Jr., is one of the news writers and editors at KMEX.
In late 2004, a feud began between Perenchio and Televisa head Emilio Azcárraga Jean, regarding Univision's continual editing of Televisa's programming, and the failure to pay for rights to broadcast Televisa-produced sports and specials. The feud intensified to the point where Grupo Televisa filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Univision in a U.S. federal court in June 2005, accusing the network of several actions, including "unauthorized editing" of Televisa programming; Televisa also barred its most famous stars from appearing on any Univision-produced series and specials.[42][43][44][45] Rumors also circulated that Univision would form a partnership with Televisa's longtime rival TV Azteca, which for a short period of time, bought airtime rights and allowed its video footage to be used on Univision's news programs.
During the 2000s, Univision also lost several key on-air personalities to Telemundo, including longtime weekend news anchor María Antonieta Collins (who left to host the morning program Cada Dia), Primer Impacto anchor María Celeste Arrarás (who became the host of a similarly formatted newsmagazine, Al Rojo Vivo) and sports announcers Andrés Cantor (known to many Americans for his exuberant announcement of "Goal!" during football matches[46]) and Norberto Longo. By the middle of the decade, Univision overtook UPN and The WB – which shut down in September 2006 and were replaced by The CW, which Univision also outranks – as the fifth highest-rated network in total viewership; since then, it also sometimes posts higher viewership in the key age demographics of Adults 18–34 and Adults 18–49.
Other key on-air personalities that joined Telemundo from Univision or Televisa in the 2000s are Lucero, Pedro Fernandez, Kate del Castillo, Aracely Arámbula, Raúl González, Blanca Soto, Laura Flores, Ana María Canseco, Cristina Saralegui, Fernando Fiore, Rodner Figueroa, fired for comparing Michelle Obama to a character from the movie Planet of the Apes, Barbara Bermudo, laid off by the network, Don Francisco, Natalia Cruz, Maria Elena Salinas, who retired in December 2017 after 36 years of news service, Arantxa Loizaga Lourdes Stephen, Felix Fernandez, laid off by the network, Jorge Ramos, who retired in December 2024 after 40 years of news service, and Maity Interiano, laid off by the network.
On April 7, 2005, Univision aired Selena ¡VIVE! ("Selena Lives!"), a three-hour tribute concert in honor of slain singer Selena (who was murdered via gunshot in March 1995 by a fan who worked as part of her managerial staff). The concert earned a 35.9 Nielsen household rating, becoming the highest-rated program that night on all of the network television as well as the most-watched Spanish-language program in American television history.[47]
On February 9, 2006, Univision Communications announced that it was putting itself up for sale. News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch stated that his company was considering buying Univision, but backed off that position (the company had already owned duopolies in several markets, and could not acquire the existing Univision stations in any event as FCC rules prohibit common ownership of three television stations in a single market except in cases where a market has 20 full-power stations, and sell some of its stations to get below the FCC's 39% market reach cap for any individual station owner).[48] Other expected bidders included Grupo Televisa (which would have had to acquire the network under a partnership, due to FCC laws that restrict ownership of a television station or network by a foreign company to a percentage of no more than 25%), Time Warner, CBS Corporation, Viacom, The Walt Disney Company, Bill Gates, and several private equity firms. The Tribune Company was rumored to be interested in buying Univision's sister network TeleFutura.[49]
On June 27, 2006, Univision Communications was acquired by Broadcasting Media Partners Inc. – a consortium of investment firms led by the Haim Saban-owned Saban Capital Group (which had previously owned Saban Entertainment until its sale to The Walt Disney Company in June 2001, as part of News Corporation's sale of Fox Family Worldwide), TPG Capital, L.P., Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners – for $12.3 billion (increasing to $13.7 billion or $36.25 per share by the sale's closure), plus the assumption of $1.4 billion in debt.[50][51] The sale received federal approval and was formally consummated on March 27, 2007.[52][53]
The buyout left the company with a debt level of twelve times its annual cash flow, which was twice the debt incurred in buyouts that occurred over the previous two years.[54] However, Univision's shareholders filed two class action lawsuits against Univision Communications and its board members to stop the buyout – one of which claimed that the board members structured the deal to only benefit the company's insiders and not average stockholders, while the other was filed on behalf of a shareholder identified as L A Murphy, who claimed 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. Additional lawsuits were filed in the meantime, including one against the Univision Records division for heavy-handed tactics, and a suit filed by a winner of a $30,000 makeover prize in a contest held by the network's morning program ¡Despierta América! who alleged that Univision broke its own contest rules.[55][56]
On June 25, 2007, with the finale of La Fea Más Bella ("The Prettiest Ugly Girl", a telenovela based on the Colombian series Yo Soy Betty, la Fea), Univision led all U.S. broadcast networks – English and Spanish – with a 3.0 rating out of 9 share, placing as the second most-watched network television program that week.[57] Later that year, Univision hosted the first Spanish-language presidential debate in the United States at the University of Miami, featuring candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.[58] In May 2008, Univision Music Group was sold to Universal Music Group and combined with the latter's Latin music label to become Universal Music Latin Entertainment.
In 2009, the network sponsored a countdown in Times Square, similar to the New Year's Eve event. On the evening of June 12, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time, a 60-second countdown appeared on the Jumbotron-size screen in the Manhattan district to mark the shutdown of full-power analog television signals in the Eastern Time Zone, culminating in the message "BIENVENIDOS A LA ERA DIGITAL" ("welcome to the digital era"). The countdown was aired live by the network during Ultima Hora: Una Nueva Era, a special edition of its late-evening newscast Noticiero Univision: Ultima Hora. The ball was lighted in white but was not dropped, remaining positioned at the bottom where the lighted "2009" sign also remained, despite the four-month delay of the digital television transition from February 17.[59] On December 7 of that year, Univision announced it would launch an in-house production division, Univision Studios, a Doral, Florida-based company that would produce original programming content for Univision and TeleFutura; former RTVE president Luis Fernandez was appointed to lead the new division.[60]
