Donahue

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Univision Communications Inc.

Broadcasting

1961

You know the story: In order to run off with her lover, wealthy-but-bored housewife Paola blackmails lonely girl Paulina into exchanging identities. Paulina just starts getting used to life as the wife of entrepreneur Carlos Daniel Bracho when Paola returns. Then the fun really begins.

This is the plot of Univision’s “La Usurpadora” The Imposter one of the network’s most popular telenovelas, or Spanish soap operas.

After struggling through the early ’90s, Century City-based Univision has become the nation’s leading Spanish-language television network, thanks to those telenovelas, along with news and sports coverage directed at the huge Latino market.

Univision’s audience increased 25 percent during weeknight prime-time viewing during 1998 over the previous year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Overall, Univision draws a 92 percent share of the national Spanish-language television audience. The only other competitor is Telemundo, which gets the other 8 percent.

Univision also owns and operates television stations in 12 of the nation’s top 15 Latino markets, including KMEX-TV Channel 34 in Los Angeles.

The company was started as the Spanish International Network in San Antonio, Texas. From the beginning, it looked to build allegiance in the Latino marketplace every World Cup soccer tournament has been broadcast on the network since 1978.

In 1990, the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. At the time, it was owned by Hallmark Cards Inc. and First Chicago Corp. and had set on a course of rapidly buying Spanish-language television stations around the country. Soon the network’s debt load reached more than $550 million.

In 1992, Hallmark and First Chicago sold Univision to A. Jerrold Perenchio and the two dominant television networks in Mexico and Venezuela for $500 million. The company went public in September 1996 and the stock has consistently moved upward. Last week it closed at $67.75 per share, up from a low of $35.25 in January.

Ann Donahue

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