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Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States by Craig Allen

2021; American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; Volume: 104; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hpn.2021.0115

2153-6414

María Luisa Gómez Ruiz,

Intelligence, Security, War Strategy

Reviewed by: Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States by Craig Allen María Luisa Ruiz Allen, Craig. Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States. U of Florida P, 2020. Pp. 352. ISBN 978-1-683-40164-3. Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States is a substantial history of Univision, the oldest Spanish-language network in the United States, and its younger rival, Telemundo. The book illustrates the ways that technology, business interests, personal rivalries, politics, government regulations, and changing demographics shaped the development of the Spanish International Network (SIN), the enterprise that later became Univision, and the US media landscape. Using archival materials, interviews, trade publications and legal documents, this first comprehensive scholarly history of Spanish-language television reimagines the birth of US television as not solely English speaking, geographically centered in New York, nor dominated by the big three English-language networks. The book is organized chronologically, with each of the nine chapters focusing on the key moments and the protagonists who shaped SIN. Its first chapters detail SIN's incorporation in 1961 while the next two chapters chronicle the struggles by key players to build it into a viable network. These chapters detail how important figures secured financing, acquired television stations, and capitalized on technologies like UHF channels, dismissed by English-language media because they were low-frequency and, thus, not desirable. The following two chapters, one of which is cleverly titled "The Wages of SIN," focus on the growth of the network and the long-simmering tensions between figures like Frank Fouce, Reynold Anselmo and the Mexican media mogul Don Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, who initially fronted the capital to purchase the first television station. Indeed, it is hard to ignore the long shadow of Azcárraga Vidaurreta in terms of the development of Spanish language networks in the United States. In fact, the book begins with an extensive section on the rise of Azcárraga Vidaurreta's business and political fortunes in Mexico, and his keen interest in expanding his media empire into the United States. In order to circumvent the 1934 Federal Communications Act, which specified that only US citizens could own US radio and television stations, Azcárraga Vidaurreta fronted Anselmo's capital to purchase what would be SIN's first station. Lawsuits between the two owners uncovered SIN's foreign ownership and ultimately led to the sale of the company. The next chapters focus on the successes and innovations at the network, including pioneering satellite technologies. The following sections chart the fall of SIN and its transformation into Univision, its continued legal challenges, Federal Communications Commission interventions, as well as internal battles over finances, programming, and control over the network. These shakeups created space for the creation of Telemundo. The final part of the book describes the intense personal and business rivalries between the two networks as they competed for the ever-growing market share of Latinos via programming, like prestigious news shows and telenovelas. The final chapter provides a more nuanced overview of the networks in the development of a Latino imagined community and their future in a changing media landscape. Perhaps determined by the available archival material, certain chapters focus heavily on legal battles, business relationships, and personal animosities among key players. These chapters include an overwhelming amount of information that could be challenging to keep track of. Chapter 6 for instance, titled "Armageddon," details the complex and drawn out FCC investigation into the ownership of SIN that was precipitated by a lawsuit between two of the original founders of the network. The author does an admirable job of streamlining what was a multi-year investigation by the FCC into an intelligible narrative while still sharing how SIN marched forward. The individual timelines for both Univision and Telemundo provided as appendices assist a reader as they follow the complex histories narrated in the individual chapters. Interesting details about Spanish language programming produced in the United States and the use of technology are scattered throughout the chapters. For example, it is briefly mentioned that Guillermo González Camarena, a forerunner in television...