by Daniel Grove

{1}

Liberman Broadcasting Incorporated

Contact
Address: 1845 Empire Avenue,
Burbank, CA 91504
Phone: (818) 729-5300
Website: www.lbimedia.com
Email: LBIinfo@lbimedia.com {2}

Overview

Founded by father-son duo Jose and Lenard Liberman, Liberman Broadcasting, Inc. (also referred to as LBI) is the largest privately held, minority-owned Spanish-Language television and radio broadcaster in the United States. With a primary concentration on the hispanic demographic, the company provides advertising opportunities to local markets and communities through product integration, talent sponsorships and appearances, and longform advertising. {3}

The company owns and operates Empire Burbank Studios and develops roughly fifty-six hours of programming a week, consisting of comedy, music, game, talk, and news shows, on their Spanish-language network: EstrellaTV. LBI also hosts the annual Premios De La Radio awards show featuring several hispanic artists. {4}  These are broadcast via the following stations:

Important Figures {5}

-Jose Liberman: Co-founder and President
-Lenard Liberman: Co-founder, Executive Vice-President and Secretary
–Eduardo Leon: Vice President of Programming
–Winter Horton: Vice President of Programming for KRCA ch62 Television
–Blima Tuller: Chief Financial Officer

Major Competitors

–Univision Communications Inc.
–Telemundo: Owned by NBC
–Entravision Communications Corporation {7}

Company History

Founded in 1987, LBI began as small cluster of independent Radio and Television stations scattered throughout the Los Angeles and Houston city limits. Within the 1990’s the company then began to expand into San Diego and Dallas as they began to draw in more Revenue.

The company truly began to take off in the mid 2000’s with the catalyst being the $95 million purchase of five Dallas radio stations from Entravision. This gained LBI the ability to provide a variety of different programs towards Hispanic audiences throughout Texas, ultimately gaining them a strong grasp over the aforementioned demographic. {8} In the year 2007, Liberman Broadcasting purchased a UPN (now the CW) station KPNZ for $10 million in Salt Lake City Utah allowing them to expand eastward. LBI then began to expand down into Phoenix, Arizona in 2008 after a deal with Latin America Broadcasting for $1.25 million over a local Station, KVPA-LP. {9}

{10}

On July 1st, 2009, Liberman announced the launch of their brand new, exclusively Spanish-speaking network, Estrella TV, which then made its worldwide debut on September 14th that same year. The programming of this new network currently focuses on the 18-49 demographic, airing a variety of different shows in highly populated Hispanic markets. The introduction of this company showed (and still currently shows) a significant threat to both Univision and Telemundo, as it had both a station in every top 20 market and made itself a potential option for ad buyers as the current revenue in Spanish-language TV was rather dull growth in comparison to prior years. {11}

In recent years, Estrella TV has managed to become the 2nd highest rated network within Los Angeles after Univision, and with it has produced two of the highest rated shows within Spanish-language Televison {12}: “El Show De Don Cheto” and “Estudio 2“.

“El Show De Don Cheto” is a talk show starring “el hombre del vozarrón” (the loud-voiced man) Don Cheto where he interviews with Latino celebrities, parodies of famous viral music videos, and features popular Hispanic artists on to perform, much like that of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno“.

Acting as LBI’s biggest show on EstrellaTV, “Estudio 2” is a variety show featuring live musicians, comedians, and other forms of entertainment from the Los Angeles region. The show has received high amount of praise from critics due to its original programming in comparison to other programs produced by rival companies. The show currently attracts men between the ages of 18 to 34 and allowed the network to reach out to 76 percent of Hispanic households. {12}

About 5 months after the purchase of a WWTO-TV (now WESV-LP) in Chicago, LBI faced its largest PR crisis in the history of the company.

In the beginning of April, 2011, several organizations across the country sent letters to the FCC due to the outrage sparked by popular LBI show, “Jose Luis Sin Censura“, due to its crude nature and tendency to insult the homosexual community. {13} This led to both Time Warner and AT&T to pull its advertising away from the program {14}, and which ultimately caused the show’s cancellation on August 9th, 2012. {15}

Recent News

September:

-09/12:

One LBI’s newest and most popular shows on EstrellaTV, “Mi Sueno Es Bailar” (or my dream is to dance), premiers for its third season. {16} The show stars several celebrities within the Latino community, such as Nora Salinas and Jose Luis Gonzales, and pairs them with highly trained dancers in a multi-round, elimination contest to see which celebrity shows the highest skill on the floor (much like ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars“). Outside of the competitive aspects, each episode involves the winning couple granting a wish made by one lucky Hispanic family. {17} The series aired its finale on November 16th.

October:

-10/04:

Liberman Broadcasting announces that they will bring the “El Shaka“, a drama that portrays the constant drug war within Mexico under the control of the drug lord”El Shaka”, and it 36 episodes to MIPCOM, the global market for all entertainment content. {18}

-10/08:

Estrella TV launches a brand new comedy series, “A2D3” (an abbreviation for “A Dos de Tres”), based around the sport of Mexican wrestling, or Lucha Libre. The program focuses around the character of Elverio Gudino, a man who wishes to become a professional wrestling under the pseudonym “El Veri Gud” (which ironically is the complete opposite of his status in the sport) and his strive to protect his identity from criminals who are trying to collect money from him. The series only ran for eight episodes, each one hour long, {19} and ended November 17th, 2012.

-10/11:

Investigative news magazine show “En La Mira con Enrique Gratas” (On target with Enrique Gratas) premiers on EstrellaTV. The show features famous Latino news Anchor Enrique Gratas and journalist Myrka Dellanos discussing popular stories that occur throughout both the United States and the world. {20}

November:

-11/04:

Estrella TV launches an advertising campaign with Toyota of Southern California by awarding a Toyota Tundra to a fan of the Network, specially designed and customized by Mexican-musical sensation, Gerardo Ortiz. The campaign involved both the network and its website using Ortiz within interactive content developed by the advertising and marketing team at Estrella TV and Toyota, as well as Castells Hispanic ad agency. {21}

-11/07:

In response to the large popularity of Psy‘s, music video, Gangham Style, Don Cheto launched a parody of it entitled: “Ganga Style”. The video contains several elements that are reminiscent of the South Korean rapper, but with Spanish lyrics and cultural elements and stereotypes of Mexican society. The video became viral instantly and led Cheto to move away from radio broadcasting, due to the low ratings he has received in the past few months, and into the internet medium via Youtube and Facebook. {22}

-11/12:

{23}

Broadcast live from the Empire Burbank Studios, Estrella TV hosted the 13th Annual Premios De La Radio award show. After receiving a total of 562,000 viewers between the hours of 7 to 11 pm, it became the most watched program in Estrella TV’s history as a network. The show also ranked second in its highest total for the viewers within the 18 to 49 demographic, as it managed to bring in approximately 303,000 within the group. {24}

-11/19:

{25}

Televisa Star, Kristoff (Krzysztof Racqynski Tatomir), leaves the company for EstrellaTV. Kristoff, who was one of the largest personalities for the Televisa, moved networks as Liberman Broadcasting provided him a deal to work as the host of their “bloopers” show. This led to massive lawsuit between the two companies, as members of Televisa found Kristoff accepting money from LBI to work for their company, which caused a massive breach in the exclusivity provision his contract (by which Kristoff is only allowed to host shows that are run by Televisa). {26} As of now, no news has risen regarding the case.

December:

-12/04:

Liberman Broadcasting announces that they have extended the expiration of private exchange offers and solicitation of consents to December 7th, 2012, at 5 p.m. A total of $207 million Old Notes and consents in the Discounts Notes Consent Solicitation will no longer be allowed to be withdrawn. {27}

Upcoming Projects

Currently, Liberman Broadcasting has three new shows that are still currently in the works. The first one being “La Supermodelo Latina”, a reality show produced by Michael Ohoven, in which sixteen beautiful Latina women are forced to live in a mansion with one another for several weeks while partaking in competitions for a chance to become a supermodel. The second show in production is “Chalino”, a drama miniseries that illustrates the life of the man who founded the Banda movement of the 1980’s, Chalino Snachez. Finally, there is “El Sueno Americano” (or “the American Dream”) starring and be produced by actor Hector Suarez and his son. The show would be a sitcom about a family just moving to LA and facing all the challenges that come from living in a foreign country. {28, 29} No set air date has been announced for any of these shows.

Works Cited:

{1} http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=2713436 
{2} http://www.lbimedia.com/contact.html
{3} http://www.lbimedia.com/about.html
{4} http://www.yellowpages.com/burbank-ca/mip/empire-studio-30609825
{5} http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=643286
{6} http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cbs-dominates-broadcast-cable-shows-showing-strength-in-ratings/2012/12/04/99354e0c-3e55-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html
{7} http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.Liberman_Broadcasting_Inc.de35e9d98bfffd35.html  
{8} http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/07/31/daily42.html
{9} http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/115113-Deals.php
{10} http://www.estrellatvreno.com
{11} http://www.medialifemagazine.com/coming-a-new-force-in-hispanic-tv/
{12} http://www.lbimedia.com/Media/PressReleases/09.17.10%20–%20Estudio%20Beats%20Telefutura%20media%20alert%20-%20FINAL.pdf
{13} http://www.glaad.org/releases/040611jlsc
{14} http://www.glaad.org/2011/06/02/at-two-broadcasters-drop-programat-dos-estaciones-transmiso/
{15} http://www.towleroad.com/2012/08/spanish-language-talk-show-jos%C3%A9-luis-sin-censura-dropped-after-glaad-and-nhmc-protest.html
{16} http://www.cynopsis.com/editions/cynopsis/091212/
{17} http://www.c21media.net/archives/93527
{18} http://www.cynopsis.com/editions/cynopsis/1042012/
{19} http://www.cynopsis.com/editions/cynopsis/100112/
{20} http://www.cynopsis.com/editions/cynopsis/100512/
{21} http://www.portada-online.com/2012/11/12/sales-leads-nissan-dominos-heineken-wendys/
{22} http://hoylosangeles.com/news/2012/dec/06/el-empujon-que-necesitaba/
{23} http://www.ticketmaster.com/Premios-De-La-Radio-tickets/artist/1505367
{24} http://www.cynopsis.com/editions/cynopsis/111212/
{25} http://www.quien.com/photos/2012/05/02/sserur-175024-009.jpg
{26} http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/kristoff-sparks-legal-battle-between-392008
{27} http://www.marketwatch.com/story/liberman-broadcasting-inc-lbi-media-holdings-inc-and-lbi-media-inc-announce-extension-of-the-expiration-date-of-private-exchange-offers-and-solicitation-of-consents-2012-12-04
{28} http://www.cynopsis.com/upfront-2010-2/estrella-tv/
{29} http://telemundomediakit.com/2012/05/21/2012-upfronts-a-closer-look/