| By Frank McCoy
Jorge Ramos is the face of Spanish-language
television in the United States. And even if you don't know him, millions do. The
42-year-old native of Mexico is the lead news anchor for Univision Communications Inc.,
the fifth-largest full-time U.S. television network. In Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston,
more people watch Ramos than watch Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings.
He is about to become even more popular. Univision plans
to buy the TV arm of Barry Diller's USA Networks for $1.1 billion, making it a bona fide
media powerhouse and leaving its closest competitor, Telemundo Networks, in the dust.
There are 21 million Latinos who speak Spanish at home. Univision now has an 80 percent
share of that audience, which is a big draw for advertisers. The economic forecasting firm
DRI/McGraw-Hill estimates that the Latino community is a $458 billion market, which
analysts say has long been undertapped.
Full power. The new Univision will more than
double its stable of 12 full-power stations allowing it to reach new viewers in Boston,
Atlanta, and Philadelphia. More important, the network will obtain second stations in
seven of the top eight Hispanic markets, including Los Angeles and Miami. That might not
have been possible a few years ago but the Federal Communications Commission has eased
rules that had barred a company from owning more than one TV station in a city. That could
allow Univision to revamp its lineup of predictable telenovelas, or soaps. For
example, Univision might tailor a programming lineup to the demographic group advertisers
crave. "Maybe [it] would be geared toward a younger audience, and that could be a
catalyst for drawing additional advertising revenue to the network," says David C.
Joyce, an analyst at Guzman & Co., a Miami investment bank.
As for Diller, the mogul-in-waiting gets a cool billion
to put to better use empire building. But he is also living proof that it is very hard to
build a media giant from the ground up. |
