Seth Goldstein
Headquarters:
605 3rd Avenue
New York, NY 10158
(212)-455-5200
Key Executives
Haim Saban – Chairman
Randel A. (Randy) Falco – President/CEO and Chairman
- Served as President and CEO of AOL Inc. from 2006-2009
- Before that, had spent over 30 years at NBCUniversal Television Group; most recently as President and Chief Operating Officer
- Responsible for both groups commercial and operational functions including affiliate relations, cable distribution, business development, information technology, and network and studio operations.
Andrew W (Andy) Hobson – Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
- Shared several positions at Univision (Chief Strategic Officer, Executive Vice President)
- Before Univision, Hobson was a principal at Chartwell Partners from ’90-’93; where he was instrumental in the 1992 leveraged buyout of Univision
Roberto Llamas – Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer
- Llamas comes from a background where he was head of Human Resources at Nielsen; a company with over 35,000 employees in over 100 countries
- Has held previous human Resources positions as Lehman Brothers, TRW, and General Electric
Beau Ferrari – EVP of Operations (Univision Networks)
- Responsible for the growth and profitability of Univision’s content
- Serves as interim co-head of Univision Sports; he is responsible for the content on the 24-hour channel Univision owns titled, Univision Deportes
History
Univision was started in 1960 as an International Spanish Network by Emilio Azćarraga; a media-mogul responsible for forming and operating Grupo Televisa (Leading Spanish Network at the time). Through a partnership with Jerrold Perenchio of Venevisíon, the two business bought out two major network stations ins Houston, TX and Chicago, IL respectively. This led to to the 1996 formation and announcement of the company now known as Univision Communications. THe company has been focused on pertaining to the hispanic demographic across the United States through various media channels featuring, television and radio. They have had a lot of success standing at the top of their class and ratings for a hispanic-television station.
Profile
Univision Communications Inc. is the leading media company serving Hispanic Americans. With a number of current channels owned and operated by Univision Communications Inc., Univision Communications Inc. stands alone at the top of the Spanish-American Television totem-pole. The recent news coming out that as of last year,was that Univision Communications Inc. had surpassed ABC for the most watched network at night reaching over 10.8 million homes on the average evening. The numbers do not lie, and the numbers are what has led ABC and Univision to fuse together for a somewhat of a merger, creating a new English-based news channel covering Sports, Entertainment, and original Media Content.
Ben Sherwood of ABC News has been quoted saying “Fusion will be the ultimate meeting place for English-speaking Latinos. Our goal for this young, vibrant, and media-hungry audience to come to Fusion to be informed, entertained, and empowered. It will be fresh, fun, and optimistic and great interest to latinos and non-latinos alike” (WSJ, 1). Fusion will be interesting to see, as watching ESPN has become very natural for the majority of Americans. Seeing the potential cross-branding initiatives of both companies come into full effect will be very interesting.
The medium has been necessary overdue to the high volume of hispanic viewers and the somewhat smaller numbers of American viewers. The medium that “Fusion” will be provide will be one unlike any other, as no major company such as ABC has ever made such a strong push into the Latino marketplace for telecommunications. Other current competitors to Univision include; Belo Corporation, Citadel Corporation, and TV Azteca; which is Univision’s top competitor.
Univision currently has been seeing a large share of their viewers tune in for their shows
- Arranque de Pasion
- Pq El Amor Manda
In addition to their 24-hour running show on sports titled, Univsion Deportes. Univsion offers multiple telenovelas which are spanish-based romantic dramas which seem to be the most popular based off of ratings in the hispanic marketplace. In addition to the telenovelas, the Univision Communications Inc. have worked very hard on various media platform operations. A mobile application for your smartphone will now allow the user to access exclusive Univision content and be regularly updated with new news developments, television episodes, in addition to exclusive webisodes featuring interviews with the cast members of some of the most highly-watched programs.
Univsion Deportes serves similar to ESPN’s “SportsCenter”, providing around the clock sports information and news headlines with a large team of anchors and reports. Univsion Deportes does not only entertain the hispanic or latino viewer, but anyone who can understand the spanish language will be able to see that the content is universal. Strongly pertaining to sports that are well-liked in the Spanish community, however, are still relevant in non-hospanic parts of the world.
Arranque de Pasion is a Webnovela series by Univision known for the drama between characters Checo and Ela. The stories and episodes vary on the never-ending lust and personal conflict that take place in this show. It is the 2nd highest rated show on the Univision network, and is becoming more popular in The United States.
ABC and Univision announced their finalized merger on February 11. This let the world know that two of the most powerful media players will be joining forces to bring together the American and Hispanic television communities together through cross-media branding and promotions. This will not only allow the American-based ABC to start branding themselves more in the hispanic markets, while Univision creates their name as a go-to news site in the United States and other english-speaking territories. The merger could not have taken place on a scale of much bigger proportion due to the conglomerate size of both of these companies individually.
The merger with ABC was a substantial power move for the American-based company, that saw the hand-writing on the wall of how successful the potential of a major media merger over different languages could possibly be. Teaming up with the strongest player in the spanish telecommunication game, ABC was able to do just that. Offering their content over cross-media platforms and opening doors for quality product enhancement from both the hispanic and non-hispanic communities alike.
Bibliography
1. Wall Street Journal
- http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130211-909202.html?mod=crnews