ABSTRACT
This chapter begins in Mexico, providing background essential to understanding U.S. Spanish-language television’s origins. Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta (1895-1972), a pioneer in Mexican radio, film and television, began exporting programs to other Spanish-speaking countries in the 1950s. He proposed a TV network that would serve the information and entertainment needs of Hispanics across the United States, dispatching an employee, Reynold (“Rene”) V. Anselmo (1926-1995), to investigate prospects. The middle portion of this chapter describes Azcárraga’s expansion into the U.S. with a binational investor group that purchased/built its first two stations in San Antonio, Texas (KWEX), and Los Angeles, California (KMEX), and launched the Spanish International companies, a network and a station group. On the strategic and technology fronts, the group initiated relationships with advertisers and audience research companies, promoted set-top UHF converters that TVs required to receive signals, and began laying the groundwork for a satellite distribution system.
