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A community on the air: Latino Los Angeles and the rise of Spanish-language TV in the United States, 1960-1990

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A community on the air: Latino Los Angeles and the rise of Spanish-language TV in the United States, 1960-1990

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Content A Community on the Air:
Latino Los Angeles and the Rise of Spanish-Language TV in the United States,
1960-1990
by
Carlos Francisco Parra
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY
August 2021
Copyright 2021 Carlos Francisco Parra

ii

Acknowledgements

Completing this dissertation was quite an academic as well as a life journey all along the
way. I am grateful for the mentorship provided me by the amazing scholars I have met
throughout my graduate work. The support, patience, and flexibility shown me by my advisors
George J. Sánchez, Bill Deverell, Steven Ross, Roberto Suro and Linda Hall have allowed this
project on the cultural history of Spanish-language television in Los Angeles to become a reality.
Linda Hall has been one of my most prolific advocates in my career since I was one of her
masters’ students at the University of New Mexico; I am very grateful to have her continued
support after all this time. Roberto Suro as my outside-discipline advisor took me on when I
needed a journalistic perspective for me to develop my attempts to historicize L.A.’s Spanish-
language TV stations. I have wrestled with the different ideas, critiques, and analytical
approaches Roberto has provided me in order to look beyond the stations’ marketing to better
understand how and why they operated as they did in appealing to the Southern California Latino
population for viewership. Steve Ross has provided me with critical feedback from his own
media-related scholarship focusing on the Hollywood film industry. Over and over, Steve has
reminded me to focus on the people who truly matter in this story – the Latino viewing audience
– in order to better center the cultural impact of Spanish-language TV. Thank you for your
constant support Steve. Bill Deverell is the primary originator of this project after having steered
me in the direction of the Huntington Library’s growing collection of Latino American archival
materials all the way back in my first semester as a doctoral student at USC. My first foray into
the multifaceted history of Spanish-language media in this multiethnic metropolis through Bill’s
wonderful seminar on California and the West set the foundations for this project my piquing my
interest in this topic for much of the past decade. Finally, George Sánchez has helped me enjoy
an incredible array of opportunities as a student in the Department of History. Besides the
insightful seminars he taught, Professor Sánchez took me on as a graduate research assistant for
two years during which time I had the privilege to coordinate educational opportunities for his
undergraduate students which took me to places as varied as Atlanta and Tokyo as well as
Washington. During a trip to the District of Columbia George introduced me to the wealth of
resources which would profoundly shape this project – the Smithsonian Latino Center and the

iii

National Museum of American History. I deeply treasure these formative experiences for making
me grow as a scholar and as a person. Thank you, George.
In addition to my advisors, many individuals at USC gave me much encouragement along
my meandering academic journeys. Firstly, I thank the dedicated staff of the USC Department of
History, Jennifer Hernández, Sandra Hopwood, Simone Bessant, and Lori Rogers. I have lost
track of the number of instances you have saved the day when I needed a last-minute change for
one of my classrooms, department letterhead, registration clearance, or technical help setting up
online meetings. Thank you for all of the work you do for us all. Among our program’s faculty I
extend a warm show of gratitude to Richard Fox, Lisa Bitel, Peter Mancall, Phil Ethington, Josh
Goldstein, Lon Kurashige, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, and Marjorie Becker for the excellent
exchanges we had in our different classes. I was not able to get to know all of the program’s
faculty as well as I would have liked, but I am appreciative of the encouraging feedback I
received from Alice Echols, Jason Glenn, Wolf Gruner, Maya Maskarinec, and Brett Sheehan
during a department writing workshop as well as Alaina Morgan and Aro Velmet for organizing
that event in fall 2019. The contributions made by everyone that afternoon and in subsequent
conversations have greatly strengthened the third chapter of my project. My acknowledgement of
the History Department faculty’s contributions to my growth as an academic and as a person
would not be complete without recognizing Paul Lerner’s work as Director of Graduate Study.
Thank you for your encouragement, gentleness, and overall support these past few years.
Among my fellow USC History graduate students I am deeply appreciative of the
friendship, feedback, and support I have received, particularly from Jillian Barndt, Juliana
Bernstein, Will Cowan, Jeremy Chua, Harrison Diskin, Laura Dominguez, Stan Fonseca, David-
James González, Yesenia Hunter-Navarro, Skyler Reidy, and Lydia Sigismondi. Christian Paiz
has given me constructive advice all throughout my USC studies – I am appreciative for the
perspective and insight he has given me. I am thankful for the many conversations I have had
with Yu Tokunaga, one of the first friends I made at USC, throughout the years, with topics
ranging from Imperial Japan, to the legacy of Mexican Nikkei in a Transpacific world, to direct
suggestions on how to approach my evaluation of Latino American identity. Outside of history,
Jesse Drian of East Asian Languages and Cultures provided me with incisive feedback to
strengthen my cultural evaluation of U.S. Spanish-language TV through our monthly writing
group. In American Studies and Ethnicity Shannon Mu Zhao and Jennifer Tran have constantly

iv

kept me on my intellectual toes amid many laughs and adventures around Los Angeles’s
Koreatown. Shannon and Jenn, thank you for our many outings and for your friendship. And
Jenn, thank you for your tireless support of me during my foray into the academic job market.
Finally, but by no means least, I am appreciative of the feedback, career advice, and friendship
provided by Jorge Leal, first as a fellow graduate student, then as a USC Postdoctoral Scholar to
now as an Assistant Professor at UC Riverside. I have benefitted much from our conversations
on the overlap of our research. ¡Dale duro Jorge!
The majority of my time at USC has been spent in the Department of History, but I am
grateful for Janet Hoskins of the Anthropology Department not only for co-teaching a fascinating
Transpacific history seminar with future Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Nguyen, but also for helping
me with during my Candidacy Qualifying exams as my outside member. I am indebted to the
USC Library Special Collections staff, including Southern California Studies Specialist Suzanne
Noruschat, but most especially to Barbara Robinson for the access she has given me to the
Rubén Salazar Papers – a treasure trove of archival wealth that enabled me to approach the
famous newsman with nuance and care. Félix Gutiérrez, Professor of Journalism Emeritus, also
gave me significant encouragement and ideas when this project began picking up steam during
my second year at USC. ¡Gracias Félix!
I would be remiss to not mention the profoundly important contribution Vicki Ruiz,
Professor Emerita of History and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine,
made in the development of this project. Over a wonderful lunch on a cloudy Orange County
winter afternoon Vicki helped me consider some of the contributions my dissertation research
could make in Chicano/Latino Studies. Vicki, I am very appreciative of the consideration you
showed me in taking time from your busy schedule to provide advice to someone not even
affiliated with your university. Muchísimas gracias doctora.
My success at USC and in the big city of Los Angeles has been made possible by the
initial graduate school experiences I underwent in the University of New Mexico History
Department. Foremost I am thankful for the mentorship I received at UNM from Samuel Truett
and Barbara Reyes as I began finding my analytical voice. Cathleen Cahill mentored me in
crafting a seminar project which grew into my M.A. thesis and in time my second peer-reviewed
article. Even three years after graduating from UNM, Cathleen helped me clear the mental
logjam I had finalizing my topic so I could organize my efforts in exploring the history of

v

Spanish TV in the U.S. West – I look forward to the day I can say her mentorship also led me to
producing an engaging history book. I appreciative of the advice I have received over the years
from the UNM History faculty, including Judy Bieber, Andrew Sandoval-Strauss, Jason Scott
Smith, Paul Hutton, Charlie Steen, and Durwood Ball. Outside of the department, Adriana
Ramírez de Arellano (Women’s Studies) and Gabriel Sánchez (Political Science) of the UNM
Latina/o Graduate and Professional Fellowship taught me important academia life skills as a
Latino while the UNM Graduate Resource Center provided me with crucial support in teaching
me organization and writing skills – thank you to Anne Burnett, Henry Gonzalez, Lawrence
Roybal, Frank Martínez, Daniel Shattuck, Talal Saint-Lot, and Karina Ortega. My fellow UNM
Lobos in graduate school also made my years in Albuquerque some of the most cherished in all
my life – a warm embrace of gratitude to Dr. Suzanne Dunai, Carlyn Pinkins, Alexandro Jesús
Jara, Paul Sherrick, Jairo Marshall, David Bliss, Marisa Silva, Luke Smith, Raffi and Nicki
Andonian, Moises Santos, and Rafael Martínez.
This project possesses the research base that it does due to the professionalism and
consideration of the many librarians, archivists, and other research specialists I have met in the
course of gathering information on Spanish-language television in Southern California and the
United States as a whole. The UCLA Film and Television Archive is a unique repository of
audiovisual material that has made a great portion of this work possible. My profound gratitude
goes to Mark Quigley for his interest in my work and his detailed research suggestions and to
Maya Montañez Smukler in helping me navigate the vast resources of the FTVA’s News and
Public Affairs Collection. Many thanks of appreciation for the staff at the Stanford University
Special Collections Library for facilitating my access to the Eduardo Quevedo Papers and to
Calli Force of the University of California, Santa Barbara for guiding me through the California
Ethnic Media Archives. At the University of Georgia, Margaret Compton, Ruta Abolins, and
Taylor Moore Chicoine helped me find pertinent information for my work in the Walter J.
Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection and made many of their VHS tapes
available over online streaming. At the University of Texas at Austin, Carla Alvarez showed me
great patience amid all my questions regarding finding (and re-finding) items and digitizing
pertinent video and audio files from Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Leslie
Stapleton and her undergraduate students greatly facilitated my examination of KWEX-41
materials in the Texas A&M University-San Antonio Archives and Special Collections. David

vi

Sigler at the California State University Northridge Special Collections helped me make the most
of the Frank del Olmo Papers. At the Archivo Histórico de Tijuana Luisa Trampa helped me
browse countless copies of El Heraldo de Baja California and provided me information on
XEWT-12, one of the first unofficial Spanish-language TV stations in the U.S. by way of its
cross-border TV broadcasts.
In the nation’s capital, the Smithsonian’s vast archival holdings also held much for me in
my specific project through the National Museum of American History’s Escúchame: History of
Spanish Language Broadcasting in the U.S. Collection. It was a privilege to expand this
collection under the supervision of Kathleen Franz and Mireya Loza through the Smithsonian
Latino Museum Studies Program (LMSP). Profound thanks to the Smithsonian Latino Center’s
Director Eduardo Díaz, LMSP Program Manager Diana Bossa and coordinator José Ralat for
providing me one of the most formative experiences I had as a doctoral candidate.
My graduate-level pursuits represent the fruit of the seeds planted by many individuals
early in my career, including my professors at the University of Arizona, Lydia Otero, Kevin
Gosner, Katherine Morrissey, and Judwiga Pieper-Mooney as well as Bruce Dinges and Jim
Turner of the Arizona Historical Society who saw promise in my early U.S.-Mexico borderlands
research interests. Socorro Carrizosa at the UA Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs also planted an
early seed for this work by teaching me who Rubén Salazar was as a commemorative postage
stamp was unveiled in his honor in 2008. At Nogales High School many teachers gave me
motivation to pursue my education, including Manfred Cripe, Neal Krug, Michael Tackett, and
especially Ricardo Ojeda for first helping me think of Mexican American and U.S.-Mexico
borderlands history as a serious field of study.
In addition to my friends from the academic world, my personal friendships in Los
Angeles, Albuquerque, Tucson, and Nogales have made a world of difference for me as I have
made this journey. My warmest thoughts of friendship, gratitude, and love to Juan Ramón
Menchaca, Karlos Deras and all your family, Darius Montana, Eric Gonzalez, Tony Bautista,
Gerald Joanino, Allan Sadac, Moises Cortes, Yohan Tin, Joseph Slaughter, Ernesto Convento,
Ulises Gonzalez, Jon Gentry, Sergio Maldonado, Mario Varela, Jan Sims, Trish Anderson,
Anthony Frazier, Adrian Pérez, Diego Aguilar, José Guadalupe Sánchez, Dwayne Ray, Scott
Manzano, Samuel and Israel de la Cruz and your parents, Lupita Flores, Joel and Adriana Garcia,
Gaby Ma, Krisma Sutapa, and Sagrario Estrella. Thank you John Peter “Juan Pedro” Gallagher,

vii

Luana Powell, Armida Valenzuela and family, Javier “Cota” Zavala, and Josefina Barreda for
your friendship with our family. I thank as well my older sister Jenny, my cuñado Henry, and my
nephews Chris, Samantha, and Nick as well as Tío Sergio and primas Clarice and Michelle, my
Tías Lica and Beba in Rio Rico, and my Montebello cousins, Tía Luly, Tía Betty, Tío Ernie,
Jamie, Alex, and Liz and our family historian, Tía Hilda Peralta.
I am thankful to God for the privilege I had to become wiser and more learned about the
world around me through the arduous journey the writing of this dissertation represents.
I would not have been able to succeed in this without the unwavering support of all my family.
Although no longer with me, my Nana Francisca Saldívar Bojórquez and my Tata Francisco
Saldívar Ruiz inspired my initial fascination with the past while also introducing me to U.S.
Spanish-language TV as we watched the cross-border signal of Univision KTVW-33 (Phoenix)
and Telemundo KHRR-40 (Tucson) every afternoon when I was a child through the rickety,
towering antenna of their home in Heroica Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Espero que sientan orgullo
y gozo por todo este labor – siempre estan en mi corazón. This project would have meant a lot
less without the joy given me by my niece and ahijada Madeleine and the support of my sister
Krystal and her husband Joseph. But more than anything else, this project would not have gone
on the air without the love, patience, and steadfastness of my parents Carlos Parra Jr., and Dr.
Maria Saldívar-Parra. I hope to continue on my path following the examples given me by you in
your hard work, sacrifices, forbearance, and love of learning. Los quiero con todo mi corazón.

viii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii

List of Figures ix

Abstract x

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Transnational Origins of Spanish-language 33
TV in the United States to 1962

Chapter 2: Television and Community-Building for 78
“A City Within a City” during KMEX-34’s
Early Years, 1962-1970

Chapter 3: “Communicating with the community directly and in 127
their language”: Spanish-Language TV News during
the 1960s and 1970s

Chapter 4: “The market is more than ripe for a second station”: 180
KVEA-52 and the Expansion of the Southern California
Latino Public Sphere

Conclusion 238

Bibliography 259

ix

List of Figures

Figure 0.1 – Growth of Latino Population in Southern California 16
(Los Angeles Media Market)

Figure 2.1 - Racial Composition of Five-County Los Angeles 80
Media Market, 1960

Figure 2.2 – Distribution of KMEX-34 Viewer Incomes in 1963 83

Figure 2.3 – KMEX premiere advertisement. 89

Figure 3.1 - Racial Composition of Los Angeles County, 1970 151

Figure 4.1 - Racial Composition of Los Angeles County, 1980 181

Figure 4.2 – Composition of Latino Population of Los Angeles County, 1990 186

Figure 4.3 – KVEA-52 launch week programming schedule 196

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Abstract
In recent years anthropology, sociology, and communications scholars have taken
increasing interest on the development of Spanish-language television in the United States,
particularly with respect to the medium’s economic growth and role in creating a U.S. Latino
cultural identity unifying the different Latin American nationalities through the Spanish language.
My dissertation, “A Community on the Air: Latino Los Angeles and the Rise of Spanish-Language
TV in the United States, 1960-1990,” builds upon G. Cristina Mora and Arlene Dávila’s scholarly
work on the mass media’s role in creating a U.S.-centered Latino ethnicity by historicizing the
cultural history of Spanish-language television in the U.S. from a local perspective situated in the
Los Angeles TV media market encompassing the five Southern Californian counties of Los
Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Ventura.
Besides holding significance for making Spanish-language television possible as a national
project in the U.S., TV stations SIN/Univision KMEX Chanel 34 and Telemundo KVEA Channel
52 created public spheres for Latino viewers to entertain themselves through imported Latin
American programming as well as to inform themselves about news concerning them as a
minoritized ethnic constituency in metropolitan Los Angeles. Though broadcasting in a region
where the majority of Latinos were of ethnic Mexican ancestry and usually delivering
programming based on prevailing Mexican popular cultural trends, KMEX-34 and KVEA-52
sought the greatest possible viewing audience of Spanish-speakers as they worked to convince
local businesses and national advertising firms that Spanish-language television offered them
access to a vast U.S. Latino consumer market. This study demonstrates how Spanish-language
television in Los Angeles promoted a U.S. Latino identity by serving as an expanded public sphere
for the articulation and negotiation of ethnic-specific social and cultural issues. Viewers reacted to

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the two stations in a variety of ways ranging from indifference, praise, and rejection, demonstrating
that Spanish-language TV’s success in Southern California was not simply assured by
broadcasting to a growing demographic group.
KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 are noteworthy for creating the Univision and Telemundo
Networks, respectively, but the stations’ roles as sites of U.S. Latino racial formation through their
programming, especially their locally-produced newscasts, make the two TV outlets windows into
the cultural history of Greater Latino Los Angeles. This study begins with an examination of how
Spanish TV in Los Angeles was created as a consequence of Mexican state capitalism developing
Spanish-language television as a privately-owned commercial industry. Benefiting from a
television monopoly in Mexico, transnational Mexican industrialists made KMEX-34 appealing
to Mexican American viewers and White American advertisers in a variety of ways tailored to
viewers’ lives in multiethnic Southern California. KMEX-34’s broadcasting license required it to
serve the public interest, leading to its development of U.S. Spanish-language TV journalism with
its coverage of local news and the Chicano activism of the 1960s and 1970s. White American
financiers based in New York launched KVEA-52 in the mid-1980s specifically to profit from the
growing U.S. Latino population in metropolitan L.A., but in so doing expanded Latinos’ public
sphere and increased the overall number of people watching Spanish-language television. This
study uses archival sources, reporting from trade journals, oral histories, and surviving broadcasts
to historicize the national implications of how Spanish TV in Los Angeles created U.S. Latino
ethnic identity and reinforced the role of Spanish as a public American language of consumption,
entertainment, education, and information.

xii

1

Introduction: Broadcasting Language and Identity – Spanish-Language
Television and Latino Southern California

The Latina and Latino community in the greater Los Angeles area of Southern California
is one of the most prolific in the United States due to its demographic size and cultural
landscape. Persistent and growing migrations of Mexicans, Central Americans, and other Latin
American immigrants in the second half of the twentieth century replenished the vitality of the
Spanish language in metropolitan Los Angeles as the Spanish-speaking population grew.
Transcending the typical assimilationist-orientation of most other immigrant groups to the U.S.
in which language-minority groups abandon their mother language and culture a generation after
immigrating, L.A. Latinos have maintained a community able to not only sustain long-running
Spanish-language newspaper, radio, and television mass media outlets but also often beat their
English-language counterparts in readers, listeners, and viewers. With a replenishing population
of Spanish speakers as a potential audience/consumer base, Los Angeles during the second half
of the twentieth century was fertile ground for the growth of daily Spanish-language television, a
medium which took on national cultural implications through the success Univision KMEX
Channel 34 and Telemundo Channel 52 had in courting Southern California Latino viewers.
Over the course of a generation from 1960-1990 transnational investors, station
managers, news reporters, national advertising firms, and viewers cultivated a distinct U.S.
Latino ethnic identity through the Spanish language in metropolitan Los Angeles via KMEX-34
and KVEA-52. Entertainment and informational programming on the stations reinforced the
place of Spanish as a language in the everyday lives of viewers by casting Spanish as a public
language of consumption, leisure, and participation in the U.S. political system. Although both
stations were oriented towards ethnic Mexican viewers – who then as today represented the
overwhelming majority of the L.A. area Latino population – KMEX and KVEA cast as wide a

2

net as possible in drawing as many Spanish-speaking viewers from across the different Latin
American nationalities in order to maximize their own profits as well as to convince advertisers
and investors that a large amorphous U.S. Latino market existed and could be reached via the
Spanish language. To use anthropologist Arlene Dávila’s framing, this U.S. Latino market
represented a “nation within a nation.”
1
As some of the most consumed forms of Spanish-
language media in greater Los Angeles, KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 presented themselves as the
gatekeepers to this “nation within a nation” in Southern California with millions of viewers
spread throughout the region. In promoting the role of Spanish as a public American language,
KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 created a public sphere where they articulated notions of a sizable U.S.
Latino economic and political constituency united by the Spanish language and defined by
Latinos’ experiences in the United States.
Broadcasting over a broad geographic area encompassing Los Angeles, Orange,
Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties – a region I will refer to interchangeably in this
study as metropolitan Los Angeles and Southern California – KMEX and KVEA had a wide
audience base with which to disseminate their identity-building discourses, particularly as the
region’s Latino population continuously expanded as the largest concentration of Latinos in the
country.
2
Furthermore, the stations’ key roles in starting Spanish-language TV networks,
KMEX’s Spanish International Network (SIN, later known as Univision) and KVEA’s
Telemundo, further underscore the national implications of their work in creating a public sphere
for the dissemination of U.S. Latino cultural identity in Southern California. Through their

1
Arlene Dávila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2012), 4, 83-85.
2
In this study “Southern California” is defined as the Los Angeles TV market area including all of L.A., Orange,
San Bernardino, Riverside, and Ventura counties. Successive editions of the TV and Cable Factbook after 1962
showed KMEX and KVEA’s signals as reaching those areas as well as portions of San Diego and Kern counties.
See “KMEX” and “KVEA,” Television and Cable Factbook-Stations Volume, no. 56 (Washington, D.C.: Television
Digest Inc., 1988), A-116 and A-121. Though the city of Los Angeles takes center stage in this history, KVEA and
KMEX’s reach affected the larger L.A. metropolitan area.

3

significant contributions in making Spanish-language television a national project, KMEX-34
and KVEA-52 helped form U.S. Latino identity during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Historicizing Spanish-Language TV and Latino Culture in Southern California
The founding and growth of local Southern California TV stations KMEX-34 and
KVEA-52 are important because of their contributions to U.S. Latino cultural life by shaping the
meaning of Latinidad (Latina/o identity) and by strengthening the role of Spanish as a public
language. Culture studies scholar Ian Connell has noted that in the latter twentieth century TV
has been seen as “the key ‘agenda-setting’ device in the sphere of public opinion,” playing the
role “of drawing attention to, and shaping the understanding of, the political situations it chooses
to cover” and give meaning to.
3
Furthermore, TV’s processes of signification through
entertainment as well as through news/public affairs programming takes on greater weight in
light of TV’s presence in “virtually all American households.”
4
Given TV’s meaning-making
power, KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 increasing claims to the top spots in primetime ratings (beating
their mainstream English-language network rivals) in the Los Angeles area TV market speak to
the relevancy of probing their cultural history and relationship with the Latino community.
5

3
Ian Connell, “Television News and the Social Contrast,” in Culture, Media Language: Working Papers in Cultural
Studies, 1972-79, eds. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis (New York: Routledge, 2006),
141.
4
James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since
1941 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992), xiv-xv.
5
Adam Jacobson, “Telemundo’s L.A. News Investment Pays Off,” MultiChannel News (Oct. 14, 2014),
(https://www.multichannel.com/news/telemundo-s-la-news-investment-pays-384737); Matthew Blake, “Telemundo
No. 1 in Los Angeles Market,” Los Angeles Business Journal (Sept. 20, 2018),
(http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2018/sep/20/telemundo-no-1-los-angeles-market/); Meg James, “KABC-TV
retains lead for 6 p.m., 11 p.m. newscasts in L.A. market,” Los Angeles Times (March 3, 2015),
(https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-la-tv-radio-station-ratings-20150303-story.html);
“Univision claims ratings clean sweep in major US cities,” Rapid TV News (May 29, 2019),
(https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2019052656161/univision-claims-ratings-clean-sweep-in-major-us-
cities.html#ixzz5wqLknb9e)

4

To historicize the role of Spanish-language television in the cultural formation of a U.S.
Latino identity, this study considers a series of interrelated guiding questions. How did Spanish-
language television in Los Angeles articulate and promote notions of a Latino ethnic and
political identity based on participation in U.S. civic institutions from 1960-1990? How did
KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 develop as ethnic-oriented stations in tandem with the demographic
growth of the Southern California Latino community? In what ways did Channels 34 and 52
programming enhance the role of Spanish as a public language of Latino life in the United
States? Finally, to what extent did these stations affect their viewers’ views of themselves as
Latinos and Americans?

Mass-Mediated U.S. Latino Identity
Besides their success as Spanish-language TV stations and their increasing beating of
English-language TV station ratings in a major U.S. metropolis, KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 are
notable for contributing to the creation of a U.S. Latino ethnic identity in Southern California
and, by way of their roles in founding SIN/Univision and Telemundo, across the nation. This
study’s examination of the how KMEX and KVEA articulated and broadcast identity-building
discourses is significantly shaped by Griselda Cristina Mora’s nationally-focused evaluation of
Spanish-language TV’s role in creating a Latino identity centered in a U.S. cultural and political
context.
Reflecting on the cultural and social differences between Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto
Ricans in the 1960s U.S., Mora noted the country’s three main Latin American-heritage groups
“lived in separate worlds in separate parts of the country.”
6
Moreover, intra-ethnic tensions and

6
G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed A New American
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 2.

5

rivalries often prevented greater cooperation between the different Latin American nationalities
in the U.S. However, in conjunction with U.S. government bureaucracies and activist
organizations like the National Council of La Raza, Spanish-language TV in the 1970s
“advanced the notion of Hispanic panethnicity.” Mora argues the turning point for KMEX parent
network SIN’s promotion of a panethnic Latinidad occurred when national advertisers convinced
the network that marketing to the different Latino nationalities as a single group was more cost-
effective and profitable.
7
In light of SIN’s Mexican origins and content, moving to a larger
panethnic Hispanic/Latino framing in its programming and advertising content was a major
turning point as it expanded into the New York (Puerto Rican) and Miami (Cuban) markets in
the 1970s.
This project elaborates on Mora’s analysis of how Spanish-language TV created a
panethnic Hispanic/Latino identity by considering her nationally-focused framework from a local
perspective focused on Spanish-language TV in the region with the highest concentration of
Latinos in the United States. Indeed, this study expands on Mora’s intervention by looking at
how as early as the 1960s KMEX producers already framed their programs as serving a broader
“Spanish-American community” through programming “related to its needs, interests, and
aspirations.”
8
The argument that Spanish-language TV was fully promoting a unifying Latino
panethnic identity by the 1980s holds true when examining how KVEA-52 established its
programming brand and channel identity. KVEA’s founders stressed the economic power of a
greater U.S. Latino audience that was inadequately served in having only one Spanish TV station
in the area. “Hispanics are the ultimate winners,” KVEA Vice President Frank Cruz said of

7
Mora, Making Hispanics, 3, 119-120.
8
Eduardo Quevedo, “The Voice and the Image of the Community,” in Folder 13, Box 2, Eduardo Quevedo Papers,
Stanford Special Collections.

6

Spanish TV’s expansion in the panethnic Latino Los Angeles region he and his associates saw.
9

This study elaborates on Mora’s intervention by demonstrating how Spanish-language TV in
Southern California helped make notions of a panethnic Latino American consumer and social
constituency a tenet of common wisdom by the 1980s.
Content-wise, KVEA’s coverage of earthquakes and political violence in El Salvador,
among other similar topics, underscored the station’s framing of viewers belonging to the
broader panethnic U.S. Latino constituency Cristina Mora points us to. VEA Noticias and
Noticiero 52 referenced Mexican, Central American, and other Latin American nationalities in
their newscasts, but their framing of stories as concerning all Latinos (such as 1989 report
decrying the lack of Latino elected officials in Latino-majority Huntington Park) validates
Mora’s claims about how ethnicity is made. Historian Benedict Anderson’s probing of how
community and identity are created by print-capitalism holds true for Latinos vis-à-vis Spanish-
language TV in the U.S.: imagined communities “are to be distinguished, not by their
falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.”
10
By focusing on KMEX-34
and KVEA-52, this study will explore how Mora’s model of Spanish media creating Latino
panethnicity applies in the context of the U.S. Latino experience in metropolitan Los Angeles.
As alluded to earlier, this study’s examination of Spanish-language TV’s identity-
creating influence is also informed by anthropologist Arlene Dávila’s analysis of the role of mass
media in creating ethnic identity for this supposed “nation within a nation.” Dávila asserts that
Hispanic mass media promotes a “commercial mass-mediated culture” which should be studied
to better understand “the ways in which notions of belonging and citizenship as well as the
hierarchies of culture, race, and nation in which they are based, are produced and negotiated in

9
Frank Cruz, quoted in Eliot Tiegel, “Hispanic culture thrives like mesquite in Western U.S.,” Television/Radio
Age, vol. 35, no. 26 (July 25, 1988), A26, American Radio History.
10
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London:
Verso, 2006), 35, 116.

7

the demanding new context of transnationalism and its displacement.”
11
In the case of Spanish-
language television – as a U.S.-based business venture funded by a mixture of transnational
Mexican and White American investors, operating under licenses granted by the U.S.
government’s Federal Communications Commission, and seeking to maximize profits – a variety
of factors influenced the identity discourses it mass-mediated before delivering them to viewers
in the form entertainment, informational, and educational programming as well as commercial
advertisements.
Furthermore, Dávila calls on scholars studying mass media to close the gap “between the
rational sphere of politics and the commercial sphere of entertainment” rather than keep the two
overlapping spheres separate. In tandem with TV stations’ scheduled programming, the
promotional culture of advertising and marketing on television “shapes people’s subjectivities
and the terms of the political debate” in U.S. society.
12
Seen from this perspective, the totality of
the audio and visual signals transmitted across Spanish-language television merit evaluation for
the manner in which identity discourses of race, gender, class, and citizenship are conveyed to
viewers. This study considers the broader horizon of U.S. Spanish-language television with the
critical role of its entertainment elements, such as telenovelas (soap operas), films, and sporting
events, to attract viewers but applies Dávila’s approach most carefully to programming produced
locally by KMEX and KVEA. Although the stations produced some entertainment programming
locally, the majority of their L.A. productions were their daily newscasts such as Noticiero 34
and VEA Noticias. Entertainment, most of it imported from Latin America, dominated both
stations, but the development and broadcasting of newscasts focusing on Latino issues and other
local news in metropolitan Los Angeles in Spanish offer a direct view into how Spanish-

11
Arlene Dávila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2012), 2, 11.
12
Dávila, Latinos, Inc., 9-10.

8

language television articulated information from an ethnic-oriented perspective. Indeed, it is in
their locally-produced noticieros (newscasts) – originally developed to meet minimum
broadcasting duration thresholds and to fulfill FCC requirements that TV stations operate in the
public interest – that KMEX and KVEA most directly created notions of U.S. Latino identity.
The noticieros take on added weight as a site of racial formation when considering cultural
studies scholar Ian Connell’s observation that “the practices of television journalism reproduce
accurately the way in which ‘public opinion’ has already been formed in the primary domains of
political and economic struggle.”
13

Dávila’s critique of “mass-mediated culture” which benefits powerful Latin American
investors and producers rather than U.S. Latinas and Latinos also complicates the transnational
character of KMEX and KVEA due to their dependence on imported Latin American
programming and in KMEX’s case ownership and financing by a Mexican mass media
industrialist. Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, a pioneer of the Mexican radio and TV industries,
founded KMEX-34 as a U.S. outlet for making the most of his Telesistema Mexicano
programming. However, rather than provide opportunities for U.S. Latino talent on and off-
camera, KMEX depended on Latin American personnel and kept capital costs low by importing
most of its programming from Mexico. As Dávila writes, “the Hispanic TV networks have been
largely closed to U.S.-based Latino producers and productions, having historically operated as
‘transnational’ rather than ethnic media by importing cheaper Latin American programming into
the U.S. market rather than producing new programs.”
14

Nevertheless, U.S. Spanish-language TV stations like KMEX and KVEA have
historically presented themselves as specifically serving U.S. Latinos and being the gatekeepers

13
Ian Connell, “Television News and the Social Contrast,” in Culture, Media Language: Working Papers in
Cultural Studies, 1972-79, eds. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis (New York:
Routledge, 2006 ), 140.
14
Dávila, Latinos, Inc 14.

9

to the Latino community writ large. KVEA-52’s initial slogan in the mid-1980s was the all-
encompassing “el canal de Los Angeles” (“Los Angeles’s channel”) which meant to say the
station was the home of Latino Angelinos.
15
KMEX, for its part, overtly appealed to the cultural
affinities of the L.A. area’s predominantly ethnic Mexican population in 1962 when Azcárraga
and his associates chose K-M-E-X (Mexico) as its FCC-designated call-sign. Furthermore, in a
letter printed in the Los Angeles Times, General Manager Daniel Villanueva asserted Spanish TV
station KMEX was “the communicator to the Latin community” and that “more than any other
one thing” the station “provided the catalyst necessary for the Latins’ self-improvement.”
16

Dávila’s analysis of how the mass media mediates notions of identity due to the influence of a
variety of social hierarchies helps to problematize and better historicize the place of Spanish-
language television in the cultural landscape of metropolitan and multiethnic Southern
California. As can be seen, both stations were aware of the fact that most of their viewers were
Mexican and celebrated it, but both recognized that to be successful in the U.S. they had to
appeal to the broader Spanish-speaking diaspora in metro L.A. from Central and South America
as well as the Caribbean basin. As important as ethnic Mexicans were for KMEX and KVEA
demographically and culturally, the two stations have always sought a broader viewership, hence
their articulation of viewers belonging to a broader U.S. Latino constituency.

Spanish as an American Public Language
Central to this dissertation’s examination on the identity is the nature of the Spanish
language as an ethnic identifier for the panethnic mass of Mexican, Central American,

15
“KVEA-52 El Canal de Los Angeles: Programación Inaugural el Domingo 24 de Noviembre” advertisement, La
Opinión (Nov. 24, 1985), Sect. 3 – Pg. 3.
16
Villanueva made these assertions after Ahora, a nightly program on public TV station KCET-28, sought to appeal
to viewers by pointing to its uniqueness as a show focused specifically on Chicano social issues in an English -
language format. Daniel Villanueva, “Spanish Language TV is Available,” L.A. Times (April 18, 1970), A-4; Dan
Knapp, “Ahora! KCET’s Show for Chicano Viewers,” L.A. Times (April 3, 1970), F-18.

10

Caribbean, and South American people in the U.S. – Latinos – united by a common ancestry in
Latin America and a Spanish-speaking heritage. As argued by Dávila, for many marketers and
mass media organizations (such as Univision and Telemundo), the challenge of reaching U.S.
Latinos as a nation within a nation – intra-ethnically divided along cultural and national
regionalisms as well as racial/class lines – has often been confronted by approaching them in
Spanish. Dávila’s comments about the Hispanic marketing industry – that “its premise and
rationale for existence are not only that there are basic differences between Latinos and other
consumers that need to be addressed through culture and language-specific marketing, but that
there is a continuous influx to the United States of Spanish-speaking populations that would not
be reached by advertising were it not for this type of marketing” – holds true for Spanish-
language television as a whole.
17
Although not all U.S. Latinos speak Spanish (or fluently
enough) to be truly engaged by different forms of Spanish-format mass media appeals, the notion
of Latinos sharing a common heritage in Spanish-language use has effectively made speaking
Spanish a “key marker of Hispanic/Latino identity.”
18

If we accept the Spanish language as an ethnic identifier for U.S. Latinos, top-down as it
might be, what then of the language’s role in U.S. daily life? As noted by different scholars, the
English-language dominant United States does not have an official language at the national level
– and the to the extent individual states have enshrined English as their official language, the
trend for doing so is largely of a more recent phenomenon with states like California (1986),
Colorado (1988), and Arizona (2006) only relatively recently officializing it as such.
19
However,
various cultural forces in U.S. society have long conspired to make English the nation’s
dominant language. As scholars such as Gilbert González and Rosina Lozano have noted,

17
Dávila, Latinos, Inc., 4.
18
Dávila, Latinos, Inc., 15-16.
19
Rosina Lozano, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2018), 259-260.

11

immigrant and U.S.-born ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos in Los Angeles and throughout the
U.S. West faced enormous pressures in school, work, and other public settings to stop speaking
Spanish. Indeed, the general decline of Spanish-language newspapers in the region earlier in the
twentieth century reflected the impact of those Americanization pressures.
20

For many social commentators, such as Mexican American cultural critic Richard
Rodríguez, only English can be a public language in the United States and Latinos had to accept
Spanish as a language of their (distant) cultural past, not their public present. In his
autobiography Hunger of Memory Rodríguez articulated a sense of Spanish often being for many
U.S. Latinos a comfortable “private language” in contrast to English, the language of public life.
The social disadvantages faced by Latinos, Rodríguez wrote, stemmed from them clinging to
their cultural roots by speaking Spanish at home and retaining it as bond within the family as
opposed to adopting English as their form communication inside and outside the home. Framing
Spanish as language that cannot be a public language for identity, belonging, or even
individuality for Latinos in the United States, Rodríguez concluded assimilating is a “value and
necessity.” Assimilating “makes possible the achievement of public individuality.”
21

Despite his views on language and culture in the U.S., Rodríguez nevertheless noted the
identity-building power of Spanish-language television when he examined the cultural influence
of KMEX-34’s Spanish International Network. “Millions of Hispanics in America are being
gathered by television, encouraged to think of themselves as a united and separate people, united
by Spanish, separated from the rest of America by their own news, music, the quality of their
tears.” In short, Rodríguez conceded, “a community is being created.”
22
English may be the

20
Gilbert G. González, Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press,
2013); Lozano, 137-190.
21
Richard Rodríguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An Autobiography (New York:
Bantam Books, 1983), 10, 14, 21. 26.
22
Richard Rodríguez, “S.I.N. is in,” California Magazine, vol. 11, no. 4 (April 1986), 79.

12

dominant language of U.S. life, but the cultural influence of U.S. Spanish-language TV through
its access to millions of televidentes (viewers) nationwide indicates that, however subordinated
Spanish in the U.S. might be, it is very much a public language with far-reaching cultural
implications.
Indeed, Rodríguez’s ambivalence about the place of Spanish in U.S. Latino cultural life
draws us to considerations of the changing role of Spanish as an American language. Historian
Rosina Lozano has traced the political and social role of Spanish in the U.S. as it relates to
Mexican American cultural and political identity. As a language which had already been spoken
in what is now the U.S. Southwest for over three centuries by the time of nineteenth century U.S.
military expansion, Spanish was for many decades “a language of governance required to build a
U.S. political system.” However, by the middle of the twentieth century the impacts of the
Southwest’s integration into the larger U.S. political system and the effects of cultural
Americanization had mostly marginalized the Spanish language into the periphery of public life.
Social changes brought about by public education and English-language mass media meant that
in the cultural “politics of language” Spanish was an increasingly immigrant (i.e., impermanent),
rather than an indigenous language of the U.S.
23

The point that “language has served and continues to serve as a marker of power” made
by Lozano informs this study on Los Angeles’s KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 because of the
implications of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinos having access to entertainment and, most
especially, news in Spanish. Given the numerous pressures imposed on Latinos to assimilate into
U.S. cultural life and to adhere to the boundaries of its political debates (at least so far as the
English-language mass media is concerned), Spanish-language TV gave Latinos an alternative
way to articulate belonging and identity in a U.S. context. KMEX and KVEA’s promotion of

23
Lozano, An American Language, 3.

13

Latino viewers’ participation in U.S. political life – by covering political news relevant for
Latinos, by highlighting Latino civic leaders, by encouraging viewers to naturalize and vote – all
speak to a quest for power through ethnic-oriented Spanish-language programming.
Remarking on the later efforts of Chicano activists to promote bilingual education in the
1960s (just after Spanish-language TV in L.A. first went on the air), Lozano notes Spanish-
language proficiency was “an act of cultural validation and confirmation.”
24
Furthermore,
KMEX and KVEA demonstrate as aspect of Lozano’s “politics of language” at work in
promoting Latinos’ integration into U.S. life under the cultural autonomy provided by the
Spanish language. KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 fought against the supposed impermanence of
Spanish by presenting it to televidentes as a language of current, everyday Latino life in the U.S.
Using Lozano’s framework to problematize Richard Rodríguez’s cultural commentary, the
politics of language negotiated by U.S. Spanish-language TV worked to create a community
distinct from the White American cultural norm and went in hand with the cultural identity-
building discourses promoted by Channels 34 and 52.
25

Related to the politics of language KMEX and KVEA negotiated by strengthening the
role of Spanish as a public language of U.S. cultural life is the “public sphere” they created for
Latino social concerns to be conveyed. German philosopher Jürgen Harbermas describes the
public sphere as “a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be
formed” among “private persons.” Furthermore, “when the public is large, this kind of
communication requires certain means of dissemination and influence; today, newspapers and
periodicals, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.”
26

24
Lozano, An American Language, 256.
25
Richard Rodríguez, “S.I.N. is in,” California Magazine, vol. 11, no. 4 (April 1986), 79.
26
Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere,” in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural
Studies, eds. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 398 -404.

14

By advancing Spanish as a public U.S. language KVEA and KMEX created a TV-format
public sphere through their locally-produced programs which allowed Latinos to articulate their
thoughts and ideas given their lack of representation in English-language TV and mass media in
general. KMEX news director Rubén Salazar saw the station could carve out a Habermasian
public sphere when he described Channel 34 as a “force of relevant information” for Spanish-
speaking Latinos who could “become not only an important power in itself but also a more
meaningful contributor to American society as a whole” if they were better unified as a single
ethnic constituency.
27
Rita Herscovici, a producer at KVEA, saw the mission of public affairs
programs on Canal (channel) 52 in similar terms, namely a “way of opening up (a community)
in a very dynamic way.” The success of programs like the locally-produced Cara a Cara talk
show gave Latinas and Latinos “a place to express their views and hear their problems spelled
out, which will in turn make it easier to express their views in the political arena.”
28
Through
their Spanish-language format and their advancing of Spanish as a public “American language”
(in Lozano’s terms), the stations expanded Latinas and Latinos’ public sphere, giving them a
larger stage for negotiating the meaning of their experiences in the United States.

The Wider Historical Context of Spanish-Language Television in Los Angeles
Historicizing the cultural history of Spanish-language television in metropolitan Los
Angeles is in essence an exploration of identity-formation, citizenship, and placemaking by the
rapidly growing Latino community in Southern California and the across the United States.
KMEX and KVEA’s growth, and that of the Spanish-language TV industry they ushered in,
greatly mirrors the prolific demographic expansion of the Latina and Latino population in the

27
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Rubén Salazar Papers, Special
Collections, Doheny Library, University of Southern California (hereafter Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections).
28
Rita Herscovici quoted in Victor Valle, “Latino TV Re-Creates U.S. Images,” L.A. Times (August 18, 1988), G-1,
G-9. Parentheses in original quote.

15

Los Angeles area from 1960-1990. The demographic and cultural growth of the Southern
California Latino community which Spanish-language TV accompanied is itself a microcosm of
larger U.S. trends with respect to the growth of the U.S. Latino population.
The potential influence of Spanish-language TV in Greater Los Angeles comes into focus
relative to the growth of an imagined community variously identified by the U.S. Census Bureau
as “Spanish-American,” “Spanish-surnamed,” “Hispanic,” and “Latino” over a thirty-year period
beginning in 1960. When Spanish-language television in Southern California premiered in 1962
it went onto the airwaves at a time when “Spanish surnamed” people in the five-county Los
Angeles TV market numbered nearly 725,693 people or 9.6 percent of the region’s total
population, with Los Angeles County’s nearly 577,000 mostly ethnic Mexicans representing the
majority of the metropolis’s heavily-minoritized Latinas and Latinos. As was the case nationally,
Latinos (almost entirely of Mexican heritage) were the second-largest minority group in Los
Angeles behind African Americans.
29
However, by 1970 the “Spanish surname population” in
Los Angeles County alone rose to 935,564 or roughly 13 percent of the total population.
30
In
1980 the “Hispanic” population of Los Angeles County more than doubled to 27.6 percent at
2,066,098 residents, and by 1990 further rose to 3,351,242 people, representing 37.8 percent of
the county population with similar growth patterns evident in the L.A. TV market’s other
counties. Indeed, 5 million Latinas and Latinos lived in L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside,
and Ventura counties by 1990, representing almost 49 percent of the total five county population

29
“Table P-1, General Characteristics of the Population, by Census Tracts: 1960,” on pages 25 and 29, in Census
Tracts – Los Angeles-Long Beach, Calif., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, U.S. Census Bureau and ““Table
P-1, General Characteristics of the Population, by Census Tracts: 1960,” on page 13, Census Tracts – San
Bernardino-Riverside-Ontario, Calif., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, both (Washington, D.C: U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, 1961).
30
“Table 1 – General and Social Characteristics of Persons of Spanish Surname: 1970,” in Characteristics of the
Spanish Surname Population by Census Tract, for SMSA’s in California: 1970 , U.S. Bureau of the Census
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1974): 121 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1974/dec/pc -
s1-57-61.html); “California: Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990,” compiled and edited by
Richard Forstall, Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census (1995),
(https://www.census.gov/population/cencounts/ca190090.txt).

16

– a significant departure from Latinos’ heavily minoritized standing a generation earlier.
Nationally the Latino population also expanded between 1960 and 1990, rising from 3.5 million
to 22.4 million, or 3.5 percent and 8.8 percent of the population, respectively (Figure 0.1).
31

Additionally, the 1990 Census revealed 78 percent of the overall Latino community spoke
Spanish at home, illustrating the potential reach of Spanish-language TV across the country.
32

31
“Table 3 - Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population: 1960 to 1990,” U.S. Census
Bureau (March 9, 1999), (https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab03.html); “Figure 1
Hispanic Population: 1930 to 2050,” in We, the American Hispanics, Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics Branch, U.S.
Census Bureau (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1993), 2; Chart “Hispanics are a rising share of
the U.S. population,“ in Antonio Flores, “2015, Hispanic Population in the United States Statistical Portrait,” Pew
Research Center (Sept. 18, 2017), (https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2017/09/18/2015-statistical-information-
on-hispanics-in-united-states/); “Hispanic Population Growth and Dispersion Across U.S. Counties, 1980-2014,”
Pew Research Center (Sept. 6, 2016), (https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/hispanic-population-by-
county/).
32
“Table 3 - Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population: 1960 to 1990,” U.S. Census
Bureau (March 9, 1999), (https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab03.html), “Figure 1
Hispanic Population: 1930 to 2050,” and “Figure 12 Language Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for
Selected Hispanic Groups: 1990,” in We, the American Hispanics, Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics Branch, U.S.
Census Bureau (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1993), 2 and 7.

17

The revitalization of the Spanish language in the U.S. by persistent waves of immigration
from Mexico and Central America stands in stark contrast to the trends observed by historians
for most other languages spoken by immigrants to the United States. Looked at from the larger
perspective of U.S. immigration history the capability of Spanish having enough speakers to
sustain and expand its mass media outlets contradicts trends experienced by almost every other
immigrant group to the U.S. Writing about European immigrants’ experiences in his seminal
book The Uprooted, Oscar Handlin noted that immigrants did not simply transplant their lives
into a U.S. context. They underwent significant cultural change in the process, culminating with
assimilation into middle-class White Anglo American Protestant cultural identity.
33
As
corroborated by other immigration scholars, first-generation immigrants could generally
maintain heritage-language newspapers in circulation for a time, but the lack of language fluency
among the immigrants’ offspring eventually led to the end of such media outlets.
34
Given these
circumstances it would seem Spanish-language media (and especially a capital-intensive medium
like television) would eventually decline as the role of Spanish in the lives of assimilating
Latinos diminished, but the persistent high levels of immigration from Latin America – which
for the Mexican majority of Latinos was more of a cross-border migratory circuit between
neighboring economies – subverted this trajectory in many ways.
The continuing trends of Mexican and other Latin American migration in strengthening
the vitality and reach of Spanish-language TV in Southern California illustrate how KMEX,
KVEA, and their audience occupied a space in a larger transnational context. Imported
programming from Azcárraga’s Telesistema Mexicano and its successor, Televisa, made KMEX
and its sister SIN stations profitable by reducing the high costs of creating their own

33
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, Second Edition (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 1973).
34
Anna D. Jaroszyń ska-Kirchmann examined a specific example of this assimilationist trend in her study of Polish
Toledo, Ohio, The Polish Hearst Ameryka-Echo and the Public Role of the Immigrant Press (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2015), 195-205.

18

programming (with notable exceptions being the local newscasts, public affairs, and occasional
entertainment shows KMEX produced in Los Angeles). As journalism scholar Félix Gutiérrez
has noted, SIN was in reality “Mexico’s television network in the United States.”
35
Dávila is
correct in her criticism of U.S. Spanish-language TV being more of a transnational phenomenon
which often limited opportunities for U.S. Latino talent and experiences, but without Mexican
capital, programming content, and workers, KMEX and Spanish-language TV in the U.S. as
whole might not have been financially viable given the high costs of TV productions. The
example of other ethnic- oriented TV stations in the U.S. – such as the African American-
oriented KIIX-22 which was only on the air in Los Angeles from 1963-1964 due to the massive
costs of producing its own programming – demonstrates the formidable barriers people of color
in the U.S. face in creating their own television outlets.
36

Telesistema Mexicano and its successor Televisa have played important roles on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexican border, but that transnational TV project has not yet been fully
historicized in either Mexican or U.S. historiographies. Few English or Spanish-language works
exist on Telesistema/Televisa and for the most part tend to not evaluate them from a cross-border
U.S.-Mexican perspective. However, Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman’s Spanish-
language biography on Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s son, Emilio “El Tigre” Azcárraga Milmo
(himself a key figure in SIN in the 1970s and 1980s), represents one of the most significant
history-centered contributions to this field for emphasizing the transnational character of
Mexican television. Though Fernández and Paxman’s focus on Azcárraga Jr.’s life, they examine

35
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, Herbert Dordick, ed.
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979): 135-159.
36
Cecil Smith, “The TV Scene: Things Get Wild on New KIIX-TV,” L.A. Times (April 5, 1963), D-20; K.M.
Richards, “KBIC-TV/22, Los Angeles CA,” The History of UHF Television
http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/kbic.html; “KIIX Cancels Shows, Fires 35 Employees,” L.A. Times (Aug. 3,
1970), B-3.

19

how Telesistema/Televisa’s expansion came about through the Azcárraga family’s success in
developing business relationships on both sides of the border through father Azcárraga
Vidaurreta’s work experiences in Texas and connections to New York radio businesses.
Azcárraga Vidaurreta was not the first pioneer of Mexican radio or television, but his
borderlands experiences and transnational connections gave him an advantage when building
Telesistema/Televisa and again when entering the U.S. television marker through Tijuana-San
Diego (XETV-6), San Antonio (KCOR/KWEX-41), and Los Angeles (KMEX-34).
37

Scholars have mostly not yet followed Fernández and Paxman’s work on the Azcárragas’
transnational Telesistema/Televisa project by examining how the Mexican TV business operated
in broadcasting ideas of identity and on the politics of language within the U.S.-Mexico border
region. Little research has been done on the Mexican border city-based SIN stations which
broadcast into Southwestern U.S. households from Tijuana (XEWT-12), Ciudad Juárez (XEJ-5),
Mexicali (XHBC-3), or Heroica Nogales (XHFA-2) among others. These Mexico-based stations
actively recruited U.S. local and national advertisers to serve Mexican American audiences north
of border.
38
Overlooked as well by Mexican and U.S. scholars is the odyssey of northwestern
Mexico’s first TV station – Tijuana-licensed XETV-6 – which broadcast programming as an
English-format station aimed at a White American audience across the border in San Diego.
XETV’s success was instrumental in encouraging Azcárraga and his U.S. business associates to
invest in the development of a U.S.-based Spanish-format TV network.
39
The borderlands roots
of the transnational U.S. Spanish-language TV industry transgress national boundaries.

37
Alejandro Burillo Azcárraga, Emilio Azcá rraga Vidaurreta: tamaulipeco distinguido (Ciudad Victoria, TMPS:
Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2002). Ma. del Carmen Olivares
Arriaga, Emilio Azcá rraga Vidaurreta: bosquejo biográ fico. (Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autónoma de
Tamaulipas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2002); Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El Tigre:
Emilio Azcá rraga y su imperio Televisa (México, D.F.: Grijalbo, 2013).
38
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in
Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
39
Robert P. Laurence, “From Hal to Homer, Kaufman’s TV Path had Satisfying Turns,” San Diego Union-Tribune
(April 1, 1996), E-1

20

The transnational Mexican origins of U.S. Spanish-language TV is likely one of several
factors which have obscured the industry’s place in U.S. historiography. By the 1990s Univision
and Telemundo in Los Angeles reached audiences similar in size to those of the big three
networks ABC, CBS, and NBC, but often are not included in literature on U.S. TV history. As
former Univision co-anchor and KMEX alumnus María Elena Salinas remarked when
remembering how fellow L.A. TV stations ignored Channel 34, “we barely registered on the
mainstream media radar.”
40
Regrettably this is still the case historiographically too. At both the
national and local level, Univision, Telemundo, and other Spanish-language networks like
Azteca America and Estrella TV have mostly not yet been examined by historians of U.S.
television.
41
Locally-focused studies on the history of television in Los Angeles similarly omit
the history of Spanish-language TV stations and their local impact.
42

In addition to rejecting U.S. television historiography’s tendency of replicating wider
U.S. society’s hegemonic erasure of Latina and Latinos’ place in American life, this study also
counters the trend of focusing almost entirely on the national impact of TV networks by instead
emphasizing the overall implications of KMEX-34 and KVEA-52’s regional and national impact
as local stations. Media scholar Douglas Gomery has written that “the early history of the
coming of television begins (and ends) with the studies of ascendancy of the U.S. national
networks.”
43
This study engages with Gomery’s critique by acknowledging how KMEX and
KVEA were the building blocks of their respective networks (and the identity discourses and

40
María Elena Salinas, I Am My Father’s Daughter: Living a Life Without Secrets (New York: HarperCollins,
2007), 43-44.
41
Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
Gary Edgerton, The Columbia History of American Television (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 349;
David Marc and Robert J. Thompson, Television in the Antenna Age: A Concise History (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2005).
42
Don Barrett, Gerald Downey, and Nancy Plum, Los Angeles Radio People: A Bookstory of Los Angeles Disc
Jockeys, 1957-1994 (Valencia, CA: Db Marketing, 1995); Joel Tator and Tom Brokaw, Los Angeles Television.
(Charleston: SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014).
43
Douglas Gomery, “Rethinking Television Historiography,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film
and Television Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, (2000), 19

21

Latino public spheres they advanced at a national scale) while focusing specifically on how these
local stations interacted with Latinos and the wider social landscape of metropolitan Los Angeles
as they promoted Latinidad and Spanish as a public U.S. Latino language.
Following Gomery’s advice to focus on local stations also allows us to put Dávila and
Mora’s critiques of Spanish-language mass media into practice in this study’s examination of
how KMEX and KVEA’s local productions articulated meanings of U.S. Latino identity
specifically from a Southern California context. All of the stations’ programming can be
examined for their discourses, but their locally produced news and public affairs programs are
most salient for our analysis. Locally produced programs reveal much about these stations’
character as U.S. Spanish-language TV stations serving a Latino audience in the United States.
As transnational as KMEX and KVEA both were, they still had to frame their content for an
American viewing constituency – the U.S. Latino community their programming helped create.
Indeed, understanding the type of content KVEA and KMEX broadcast gives some
context not only to what attracted so many viewers to those stations (given the newscasts’
ratings) but also helps us recognize some of the Spanish-speaking Latino community’s collective
interests. Keeping in mind that KMEX and KVEA’s programming was fundamentally a
commodity offered to viewer-consumers, analysis of extant programming on channels 34 and 52
provides insights into the types of meanings and discourses that circulated within the L.A. Latino
community by way of the public sphere Spanish-language TV offered Latinos. In examining
KMEX and KVEA’s locally produced content it is important to remember media scholar John
Fiske’s observation that “Television does not ‘cause’ identifiable effects in individuals; it d oes,
however work ideologically to promote and prefer certain meanings of the world, to circulate

22

some meanings rather than others, and to serve some social interests better than others.”
44
By
focusing on KMEX and KVEA’s local productions, this dissertation follows exhortations by
Dávila and others who have urged researchers to consider the social context in which media texts
exist by analyzing “questions of production, distribution, and consumption” in their shaping of
“meaning, power, community, and democracy.”
45
Consideration of whether programs like
Noticiero 34 or the Cara a Cara talk show had low budgets, were scheduled off prime-time or
were aired solely to meet the FCC’s news broadcasting requirements is important. But what is
more significant is the context of these programs as local productions resulting from the
combined efforts of foreign- and U.S.-born Latinos and White Americans to produce and air
local content for Southern Californian Latino viewers.
Analyzing KVEA and KMEX’s locally-produced programming as cultural texts is an
imperfect methodology for better understanding the metropolitan Los Angeles Latino community
of the latter twentieth century, but it is predicated on the belief that media consumers make
culturally meaningful decisions in their viewing choices.
46
To be sure, high viewer ratings for
Noticiero 34, the Jose Feliciano Show, or Cara a Cara cannot be automatically read as the
Spanish-speaking Latino audience’s affirmation of those shows’ content. However televidentes’
preferences for such programs are meaningful for reflecting general group interests – at least as
measured in terms of ratings and primetime scheduling. As cultural studies scholars Stuart Hall
and John Fiske assert, TV viewers are not simply powerless and inactive when consuming
television – a variety of social categories including class, gender, religion, ideology, and

44
John Fiske quoted in Henry Jenkins, “Why Fiske Still Matters,” in Television Culture, ed. John Fiske (New York:
Routledge, 2011), xviii.
45
Joli Jensen and John J. Pauly, “Imagining the Audience: Losses and Gains in Cultural Studies,” in Cultural
Studies in Question, ed. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, 19 97), 156-
157.
46
Jensen and Pauly, “Imagining the Audience”, 155-156.

23

educational attainment among others influence the extent to which viewers actively accept,
reject, or negotiate the messages they consume.
47

The local productions most closely analyzed in this project are KMEX and KVEA’s news
and public affairs programs which made up the overwhelming majority of the stations’ locally
developed content. The evening news holds a unique place in television history owing to its
profitability and perceived social impact. The relatively economical production costs of TV news
at the local and network levels (when compared to the sizable investment entertainment
programs required) worked to make televised news an industry staple. Indeed, TV news, whether
network-based or locally based is a commodity to be distributed to viewers for their
consumption. Of relevance for our analysis of KVEA and KMEX as local stations is
communications scholar James Hamilton’s observation that there is a tendency in the U.S. for
local TV news to get a higher share of viewers than network TV news.
48
The extent to which
local and network TV news shape specific social values and ideologies is hotly debated, with
some scholars noting some segments of society believe “Americans do nothing but watch
television and derive every opinion from a TV advertisement or news program,” while others
assert most viewer-consumers of TV news are too distracted to be much affected by its electronic
visuals and sounds. Other threads of the debate decry the TV journalism’s subjugation to
advertising and sales interests.
49
For KMEX and KVEA the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The station’s full impact perhaps cannot be satisfactorily quantified, but the discourses,

47
Fiske, Television Culture, (New York: Routledge, 2011), 62-64; Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Culture,
Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, eds. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe,
and Paul E. Willis (New York: Routledge, 2006), 128-138.
48
James T. Hamilton, All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2006), ProQuest Ebook Central, 146.
49
James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since
1941 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992), xiv-xv; Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, “Mass
Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action,” in Media Studies: A Reader, Second Edition, eds.
Paul Marris and Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 22-23; Steve M. Barkin, American
Television News: the Media Marketplace and the Public Interest (New York: Routledge, 2002), ProQuest Ebook
Central, 60-61, 63.

24

meanings, and signs promoted by these stations through their function as public spheres helped
shape a U.S.-centric Latino ethnic identity existing at the boundaries of American and Latin
American cultural identities. The meanings produced and broadcast by the stations are key in
understanding Spanish-language TV’s contributions to creating U.S. Latino identity.

U.S. Spanish-Language TV and Latino Studies
In the Latino studies field, scholars for the most part have not yet probed U.S. Spanish-
language TV from a cultural historical perspective the same way in which they have approached
Spanish newspapers and radio and even English-format TV. From topics as varied as the mass
deportations of Mexican people in the 1930s to the gendered implications of the rise of flapper
fashion among Chicanas, analysis of Spanish-language newspapers have afforded historians one
way of recovering the historical Chicano/Latino voice.
50
Spanish-language radio has seen an
increasing level of scholarly attention in recent years, but despite its important role in Latino
households (particularly among working-class immigrants) it has not been sufficiently examined
in a historical light.
51
In contrast, Latino studies scholars and historians have given relatively

50
Periodicals like Los Angeles’s La Opinión were a component of George Sánchez’s evaluation of how younger
U.S.-born ethnic Mexicans became Mexican Americans. Similarly in Rosina Lozano’s study on the history of the
Spanish-language in the U.S., Spanish-language newspapers were a major aspect narrative tool in asserting her main
argument about the language’s contested vitality. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 85, 116; Rosina Lozano,
An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2018). For other examples of this trend see Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal:
Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006); Maria Montserrat Feu
López, “The U.S. Hispanic Flapper: Pelonas and Flapperismo in U.S. Spanish-Language Newspapers, 1920–1929,”
in Studies in American Humor 1, no. 2 (2015): 192-217; John M. Nieto-Phillips, Language of Blood: The Making of
Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s-1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008).
51
To date, Dolores Inés Casillas’s Sounds of Belonging U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy (New
York; London: NYU Press, 2014) cultural history of U.S. Spanish-language radio is one of the most significant
scholarly contributions to the field owing to extensive temporal scope of her study. Prior to Casillas’s work, the
most significant study of U.S. Spanish-language radio was Félix F. Gutiérrez, and Jorge Reina Schement, Spanish-
Language Radio in the Southwestern United States (Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican American
Studies, 1979). The long gap between the two monographs points to the dearth of scholarly attention given to this
crucial aspect of twentieth century Latina and Latino history. Focusing on Spanish radio’s political implications,
Ricardo Ramírez has similarly examined the role of Spanish-language radio in promoting the mobilization of Latino
immigrants during the spring 2006 immigration rights mobilizations across the country. Ricardo Ramírez,“Political
Mobilization en Español: Spanish Language Radio and the Activation of Political Identities” in Irene Bloemraad and
Kim Voss (ed.) Rallying for Immigrant Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 63-81.

25

little attention to U.S. Spanish-language television despite the millions of viewers the medium
has historically commanded across the country. Even notable interventions on the relationship
between television and Latinos, such as Chon Noriega’s Shot in America and Otto Santa Ana’s
Juan in Hundred, focus primarily on mainstream English-language TV’s depiction and coverage
of Latinas and Latinos rather than also considering the discourses and ideologies articulated in
Spanish-format TV stations.
52
Although a communications rather than a Latino studies
intervention, Kenton Wilkinson’s Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years
of Development is one of the few monograph-length works dedicated specifically to U.S. Spanish
TV. Through his evaluation of the financial and legal context surrounding national Spanish TV’s
corporate history (as well as through his brief histories of KVEA and KMEX’s financial growth),
Wilkinson has established an important historical timeline and point of analysis for more locally
and culturally-focused investigations on this topic.
53

This study intends to help fill a void in U.S., Mexican, and Latino historiographies that
has so far not fully engaged the Spanish-language TV as a means of promoting Spanish as a
public language and creating U.S. Latino identity. Spanish-language TV in the United States may
be low-brow, high-brow, or somewhere in between and may also be seen as simply another
capitalistic venture seeking to make a profit from Spanish-speaking consumers, but the fact the
medium commands millions of viewers in metropolitan Los Angeles and across the U.S. means
that it deserves more scholarly attention. Understanding how Spanish-language media sources –
particularly those which are the most read, listened, or watched – ultimately helps us to better

52
Chon A. Noriega, Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Otto Santa Ana, Juan in a Hundred : the Representation of Latinos on
Network News (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013).
53
Kenton T. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development (New York:
Routledge, 2016).

26

understand some of the ways in which Latinas and Latinos made meaning of their life in the
United States.
54

A Note on Sources
Analyzing Channel 34 and 52’s historical broadcasts as cultural texts raises the logistical
challenge of accessing TV broadcast recordings from 30-60 years ago. According to television
historian Jonathan Bignell, one of the biggest challenges researchers of television history face
relates to TV stations’ video formatting. In the early days of TV, programming was recorded on
film, thus creating a situation where small TV stations had to constantly destroy older film reels
in order to have enough room for new reels of programming. However, TV stations’ adoption of
Betamax and VHS videocassette formats in the 1980s facilitates examination of more relatively
recent broadcasts.
55

To this end, much of this present study has been made possible by the public availability
of KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 newscast recordings contained in the University of California, Los
Angeles, Film and Television Archive (FTVA) “News and Public Affairs” (NAPA) collection.
The FTVA’s NAPA collection includes recordings of local news and other public affairs/talk
shows recordings of nearly every TV station on the air in metropolitan Los Angeles from 1979 to
2003. This unique collection – whose recordings include full programs along with their
accompanying commercials – allows researchers to evaluate TV broadcasts for their full

54
Some of the recent Latino studies-oriented analyses of Latino mass media this project joins include: Jose
Anguiano, "Latino Listening Cultures: Identity, Affect, and Resilient Music Practices." (Ph.D. Diss, University of
California, Santa Barbara, 2012); Francisco Javier Crespo, “Spanish-language radio shock: Spanish-language radio
music programming in the soundscape of Los Angeles, a dynamic sign of the city's life and times” (Ph.D. Diss,
UCLA, 2011); Jorge Alberto Calles-Santillana, “El Show De Cristina: Representing Hispanics in Spanish Language
Television” (Ph.D. Diss, University of Iowa, 2005); Veronica Zavala, "Venimos a Triunfar! A Discourse Analysis of
Spanish Language Radio Piolín Por La Mañana." (M.A. Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013).
55
Jonathan Bignell, An Introduction to Television Studies (London: Routledge, 2013), 37. Regardless of whether
one considers the film or VHS recordings of these historical broadcasts, the primary purpose of producing these
recordings was not to create archives so much as they were used to train staff on how to produce television
programming, how to make recorded repeats possible, and to make programming available for export.

27

historical context and cultural discourses. In many cases the FTVA’s collection of KMEX and
KVEA recordings serve as the only surviving copies of many of these broadcasts.
As an illustration of Bignell’s recognition that many stations discarded their archived
broadcast footage to make space for new films and tapes, both Channels 34 and 52 have either
given away or destroyed many of their film and videotape library collections. In the case of
KMEX-34, the station accumulated a significant collection of news film covering Mexican
Americans during its first years on the air, including coverage of the United Farm Workers’
grape boycott as well as film of the tumultuous period that followed Rubén Salazar’s death
during the Chicano Moratorium. However, in 1978 KMEX General Manager Daniel Villanueva
donated the sixteen years’ worth of raw and edited Noticiero 34 news footage to the University
of California, Los Angeles and a journalism professor at the University of Southern California.
56

At the time, most university libraries did not have logistical resources to ensure the films’
preservation or public access to them via projectors and TV/VCR sets.
57
Well into the 1990s
KMEX continued discarding its collection of historical recordings, with news producer Sergio
Olmos, a proponent of properly archiving news materials, decrying the station’s regular Saturday
clean-up sessions in which “literally hundreds of tapes that contained important news material
was thrown into large garbage bins.”
58
In KVEA’s case the changing ownership and corporate

56
Sergio Olmos to Guillermo Ahumada Memo, “RE: Status of News Related Files from 1961 to Present” (June 1 ,
1993), in Folder 11, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
57
In the case of the footage donated to USC, the university kept KMEX’s films and tapes until the journalism
professor who acquired them retired and gave them to a private organization which has declined appeals from the
university asking for their return. Suzanne Noruschat (Southern California Studies Specialist, USC Libraries Special
Collections), email message to the author, Feb. 27, 2019.
58
Sergio Olmos to Guillermo Ahumada Memo, “RE: Status of News Related Files from 1961 to Present” (June 1,
1993), in Folder 11, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian. When KMEX moved from its historic Hollywood location to its
current site at Howard Hughes Center in Westchester, the station gave a significant donation to tapes t o the Chicano
News Media Association while a great deal of other tapes were simply abandoned during the move. Amid all these
purges, news producer Sergio Olmos managed to save some footage of the Chicano Moratorium and the UFW grape
boycott, but much of the lost footage included local productions like Los Angeles Al Día and Mundo Latino, the first
nationwide talk show on U.S. Spanish-language TV. The news directors Olmos singled out in the loss of this
historical footage were Fernando Lopez and Sandra Thoma s Esquivel.

28

structure of its parent network has limited public access to its historical recordings. The value of
archives like the UCLA FTVA in helping overcome the barriers of footage destruction or public
inaccessibility cannot be overstated.
In addition to the UCLA FTVA, this study also utilizes internal station documents like
office memos, program scripts, market surveys, and promotional material as well as memoirs and
oral histories by station staff. The Eduardo Quevedo collection at Stanford University sheds
invaluable light on the early formation of KMEX and SIN through viewer and advertiser letters,
TV scripts, and internal memos contained in that collection. The Rubén Salazar Papers at the
University of Southern California enables one of the most notable figures of the Chicano
movement to be examined as a historical figure in the context of his times, including
demonstrating what specific interventions he was making at KMEX-34 during his time as its
news director. In addition, the Smithsonian Institution’s “Escúchame: The History of Spanish
Language Broadcasting in the U.S.” collection’s wealth of historical internal documents from the
national Spanish-language TV industry greatly inform this study. Memoirs and oral histories by
station founders and employees provide further context and first-person perspective on KMEX
and KVEA’s relationship with the Los Angeles area Latino community.
59

59
Former journalist and KVEA vice president/co-founder Frank Cruz’s recent autobiography sheds considerable
light on how Canal 52 operated in its first years. Frank Cruz and Rita Joiner Soza, Straight Out of Barrio
Hollywood: The Adventures of Telemundo Co-Founder Frank H. Cruz, Chicano History Professor, TV Anchorman,
Network Executive, and Public Broadcasting Leader (Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2019). Memoirs by another
KVEA co-founder, Paul Niedermeyer, further contextualize the station’s early challenges in becoming profitable -
see Paul Niedermeyer, “Auto-Biography: 1986 Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo – Dreams Fulfilled,
Dreams Dashed,” Curbside Classic (June 5, 2013), (http://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/auto-
biography-1986-mercedes-300e-and-the-birth-of-telemundo-dreams-fulfilled-dreams-dashed/). An interview with
Joseph Rank, one of KMEX’s first general managers, similarly gives insight into how management appealed to
Latino viewers while working with the station’s transnational Mexican financier and founder Emilio Azcárraga
Vidaurreta to make the project profitable. Joseph Rank oral history interview by Kathleen Franz, KMEX Studios
Los Angeles, July 13, 2017, Escúchame: the History of Spanish Language Broadcasting in the U.S. Collection,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

29

A Note on Nomenclature
As a final note, this dissertation utilizes specific nomenclature to explore the different
historical processes which mark the history of Spanish-language TV in Los Angeles and its
relationship with the larger Latino community. Foremost among these considerations is this
study’s usage of the term “U.S. Latino” to refer to people of Latin American ancestry living in
Southern California and elsewhere in the United States who were born in the U.S. or in Latin
America. This study is inclusive and will use both “Latina” and “Latino” identifiers to
acknowledge the roles of women and men in the development of Los Angeles and its Spanish-
language TV industry but in most instances will use “Latino” (in its gender-neutral context
within the conventions of modern-day Spanish) to connote both women and men. The
“Hispanic” identifier will be used in context whenever scholars such as Mora, Dávila and others
utilize it as well as whenever personnel, programs, and promotional literature from KVEA and
KMEX used it. In referencing the identifiers employed by the stations as well as by their viewers
themselves this study will trace the cultural development of the greater Los Angeles area Latino
community.
60

Conclusion
Much more than a history of two local television stations, the historical development of
Spanish International Network/Univision KMEX-34 and Telemundo KVEA-52 in greater Los

60
This project follows the conventions of the Spanish-language in which identifiers ending in “o” do not exclusively
serve to identify male persons or concepts but which often represent gender-neutral concepts or groups of
individuals. There is value to the more recent term “Latinx” for its rejection of gender binaries as well as for the
greater flexibility and inclusivity it possesses as a gender neutral identifier. However, this term will not be utilized in
the context of this study because of its anachronistic nature in relation to the events analyzed here. Neither the
Spanish-language mass media in Los Angeles nor the Latina/Latino public at large used the term during the period
this dissertation examines between 1960-1990. Another convention this project follows is not capitalizing the
Spanish-language demonyms of different nationalities or social groups such as “hispanos,” “centroamericanos” or
“mexicanos” (“Latinos” is now essentially an English-language word with Spanish roots, hence the capitalization for
this term but not other Spanish-language demonyms used in this study)

30

Angeles is a story of wider cultural implications for Latinos on a national scale. Accompanying
the demographic growth of the Latino population in Southern California, the development of
KMEX and KVEA from 1960-1990 advanced the role of Spanish as a public language in the
cultural life of the United States. Responding to marketing pressures, the stations’ programming
and advertising content formed an expansive Latino identity rooted in the Spanish language and
in the context of viewers’ lives in the U.S. Though always dependent on their transnational
Mexican/Latin American financing, content, and personnel, KVEA and KMEX created a
televised public sphere which allowed representation of U.S. Latino cultural life at a time in
which Latinos mostly lacked such access in mainstream English-language TV media.
This examination of KVEA and KMEX’s cultural history considers the transnational
character of Spanish-language TV, the interplay between the stations and their viewers, and the
different ways in which they created U.S. Latino cultural identity. Chapter One examines the
transnational roots of Spanish-language television with the medium’s initial development as a
project of Mexican state capitalism which made its first inroads into U.S. markets via English
and Spanish-language TV stations based in northern Mexican border towns. In tracing KMEX’s
1962 debut and first years on the air, Chapter Two emphasizes how Canal 34 worked to attract
viewers through a wide variety of programming. Despite financial losses, KMEX’s programming
which of news, telenovelas, and sports (especially bullfighting), attracted many Latino (and
White American) televidentes as well as several local advertisers who noted the value of
Spanish-language TV in promoting their businesses to the Latino market.
Chapter Three focuses on KMEX’s Noticiero 34 and related news/public affairs
programs during the 1960s and 1970s to examine how the station crafted a Latino American
identity and public sphere by promoting viewers’ awareness and participation in the U.S.
political system. From covering the 1964 U.S. presidential election to the anti-Vietnam War

31

Chicano Moratorium and the United Farm Workers Union in the 1970s, KMEX reinforced the
notion of Spanish as a relevant language of information and everyday life for Latinos in the U.S.
while also developing the genre of Spanish-language TV broadcast journalism. This study’s
fourth and final chapter emphasizes the expansion of Spanish-language TV and the broadening
of Latino’s public sphere with the debut of KVEA-52 in the 1980s making the Los Angeles area
the first U.S. region with two fulltime Spanish TV stations. The station articulated an inclusive
U.S. Latino by appealing to a growing Latino population and its increasing Central American
constituency in a number of ways, including newscasts more carefully attuned to the needs of the
transnational Latino community in Los Angeles and a locally-produced talk show, Cara a Cara,
which explored a variety of Latino issues. The interplay between TV station managers/owners
and viewers comes into play again when one considers Latinos’ initial embrace of KVEA
followed by their rejection of it as programming and staff changes led to a loss of nearly half of
its viewership as well as protests against station management.
In entertaining, informing, and advertising to as broad a Spanish-speaking viewing
audience as possible in the rapidly expanding Southern California Latino community, KMEX-34
and KVEA-52 asserted the role of Spanish as a language of everyday U.S. life, enabled Spanish-
language TV to become a national public sphere with far-reaching consequences, and mass-
mediated the cultural formation of an imagined but very real U.S. Latino constituency as a nation
within a nation with great political, economic, and cultural weight.

32

33

Chapter 1: The Transnational Origins of Spanish-language TV in the United
States to 1962

“Since U.S. companies invade our TV channels with cops and robbers or outlaw bandits, it’s right
for us to take advantage of the opportunity to send our Mexican compatriots programming which
can bring them closer to the country that saw their birth.”
1

– Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, 1962

The September 30, 1962 debut of KMEX Channel 34 as the first Spanish-language
format television station in metropolitan Los Angeles opened a new chapter in the cultural
history of Latino Southern California. The images and sounds of Spanish in Southland TV
airwaves articulated the notion that the heritage language of the ethnic Mexican and Latin
American population in Southern California was a part of their cultural life in the United States.
Moreover, by the 1970s and 1980s KMEX and the larger Spanish-language TV industry it
created were shaping a U.S.-based Latino cultural identity on a national scale by promoting a
cultural identity united by the Spanish language.
However, to fully contextualize the historical contributions of the public sphere KMEX
created in the Los Angeles area as a Spanish-language mass media outlet, we must look at the
transnational origins of the U.S. Spanish TV industry. The antecedents of KMEX’s premiere
reveal how much the medium of Spanish-language TV in the U.S. was shaped by the complex
transnational relationship between the U.S. and Mexico – as well as to a lesser extent its colony
of Puerto Rico. The revenue KMEX-34 in Los Angeles generated from its viewers and
advertisers made Spanish-language TV in the United States a national industry, but Canal 34

1
“Puesto que empresas estadounidenses invaden nuestros canales con policías y ladrones, o vaqueros bandidos, es
justo que aprovechemos la oportunidad para enviar a nuestros compatriotas mexicanos programas que los pueden
acercar a la tierra que los vio nacer.” Emilio Azcárraga Vida urreta quoted in Claudia Fernández and Andrew
Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su Imperio Televisa (México, D.F.: Grijalbo, 2000), 94. Henceforth all
translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

34

was preceded by WKAQ-2 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1954 and KCOR/KWEX-41 in San
Antonio, Texas, in 1955.
KCOR/KWEX, initially founded by Mexican American entrepreneur Raoul Cortez,
played a significant role in making KMEX in Los Angeles possible by demonstrating the
viability of full-time Spanish-language TV channels for Spanish-speaking Latinos in the U.S.
Unlike WKAQ in Puerto Rico and of course television in Mexico, KCOR’s character as a
Spanish-language TV station operating in an English-dominant context in the South Texas region
is noteworthy for supporting the role of Spanish as a language of U.S. life and cultural identity
for ethnic Mexicans around San Antonio. Most U.S. Spanish-language TV stations subsequently
founded in the continental U.S. were to follow KCOR/KWEX’s path. However, by the time
KMEX’s transnational investors began planning their entry into the L.A. TV market in the early
sixties KCOR was on the verge of switching away from its Spanish-language format due to the
heavy costs of creating programming for the station. Not even a decade into KCOR’s life it was
an open question as to whether full-time Spanish-language TV stations in the U.S. serving
Mexican Americans and other Latinos could succeed.
The role of transnational Mexican capital in creating the U.S. Spanish-language TV
industry in Los Angeles and throughout the nation comes into focus in the important role played
by radio and TV industrialist Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, founder of Mexico’s first TV
network – Telesistema Mexicano. With the help of U.S. business associates, Azcárraga
Vidaurreta purchased the struggling KCOR, renaming it KWEX-41, and financed the
development of KMEX-34. The San Antonio and Los Angeles stations – the founding stations of
the new Spanish International Network (SIN) – were to broadcast programming from
Azcárraga’s Telesistema network to the sizable ethnic Mexican population of the U.S.-Mexican

35

border region, thus generating additional revenue for him. Taking a chance on the SIN project in
the U.S. was enabled by Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s experience working with White American
partners to enter the San Diego, California, TV market through an English-format station located
south of the border in Tijuana. Ironically, Spanish-language KMEX-34 was made possible by the
success Azcárraga and his associates found in opening the first TV station in northwestern
Mexico as an English-format station serving U.S. viewers in San Diego.
KMEX’s origins prior to its 1962 debut symbolize the transnational character of the
station and the Southern California Latino community which made it (and later KVEA)
successful. Through proximity of Mexico, persistent Latin American immigration continually
replenished the Spanish-speaking population of Southern California, maintaining the viability of
KMEX and KVEA as Spanish-format TV stations, and also affirming Spanish as a language of
U.S. cultural life. In a flip of the usual U.S.-Mexican flow of capital, Mexican financial
investment north of the border established Spanish TV as a national U.S. media industry. As one
of Azcárraga’s White American partners put it, KMEX and its Spanish/English format sister
stations in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands were a case of “classic schizophrenia.”
2

Origins of the U.S. Television Industry
To fully consider how Spanish-language TV in Los Angeles advanced the formation of a
Spanish-speaking U.S. Latino cultural identity we must trace Spanish television’s transnational
origins between the United States and Mexico. The development of Spanish-language television
in the U.S. occurred principally by way of Mexico – the worldwide birthplace of Spanish TV
broadcasting – and was shaped by the different technological contributions made by inventors

2
John Freeman, “Channel 6 Looks to Past for Future,” San Diego Union-Tribune (March 26, 1993), E-10.

36

and investors across the world. From the 1884 invention of the Nipkow disk in Germany which
could scan images electronically to Russian physicist Constantin Perskyi giving television its
name in a 1900 technical paper to the first electronic TV invented by Kenjiro Takayanagi of
Japan in 1926, TV’s technological development is an inherently transnational phenomenon. As
TV historian Gary Edgerton writes, unlike many other modern inventions, no single person
invented the television which instead was the cumulative result of a transnational “process of
conception, invention, commercialization, program production, and nonstop innovation.”
3

The private ownership model under which KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 in Los Angeles
operated reflected the commercial, rather than public ownership, model of radio and TV
broadcasting which developed in the U.S. and was followed by developers of these media in
Mexico. Indeed, the infrastructure for the commercialization of U.S. television came about as a
direct result of the rise of radio technology and its commercialization in the 1920s. Commercial
radio broadcasting in the U.S. began in 1921 after the medium has been in development for many
years when the Department of Commerce began granting commercial broadcasting licenses to
station owners. The medium expanded in the U.S. over the ensuing years as radio investors
recruited advertisers to make their forays into broadcasting profitable.
4
Early U.S. radio stations

3
According to Edgerton, “The idea of television was an international conception from the beginning, due mainly to
the ever-expanding reach and influence of a growing, transnational scientific community.” In 1884 German inventor
Paul Gottlieb Nipkow patented a mechanical way of scanning images through a spinning “Nipkow disk” which
could scan an image and convert it to electric signals; Russian physicist Constantin Perskyi gave television its name
in a paper at the 1900 International Electricity Congress in Paris; and on Christmas Day 1926 Japanese inventor
Kenjiro Takayanagi publically demonstrated an all-electronic TV for the first time using a Nipkow disk with a
cathode-ray tube to receive the scanned images. On September 7, 1927, 21-year-old inventor Philo Farnsworth
invented an all-electronic television which used both electronic scanning and image displays and began displaying it
to the public from his workshop in San Francisco. Although mechanical television was the principal technological
medium used to receive early experimental TV signals in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, electronic
television (with its transmission of signals over electronic waves rather than mechanical moving parts) would
dominate the still-gestating TV industry as it entered commercialization by the end of the decade. Gary R. Edgerton,
Columbia History of American Television (New York: University of Columbia Press, 2007), 19, 24-25, 42, 48-55,
57.
4
It is unclear which radio station was the first in the U.S., station owners and scholars have identified 6XF or KQW
(today’s KCBS 740-AM) of San Jose, California (1909), and 8XK or KDKA 1020-AM of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

37

depended on revenue from businesses advertising on their airwaves to be financially viable, a
marked contrast from business models followed by radio in other nations such as the United
Kingdom which founded what became the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1922 as an
exclusively non-commercial public service entity. The British government established the BBC
as the country’s sole radio licensee specifically to avoid imitating the unregulated expansion of
the early U.S. radio industry in which different stations fought for control of the same air
frequencies. As an official monopoly and public corporation the BBC’s broadcasts were meant to
serve the British public rather than generate commercial revenue. Radio license fees collected
from British citizens funded the BBC rather than advertising (which it was prohibited from
airing). Many other nations such as France, Germany, and Japan followed variations of the
publicly financed BBC government radio monopoly model. Aside from limited frequency
regulation by the Department of Commerce and, after 1927, the Federal Radio Commission, the
U.S. radio broadcasting industry was decidedly a private enterprise dependent on advertising.
5

Rudimentary television technology developed gradually alongside radio’s own
technological development but the commercialization of radio accelerated the advancement of
TV broadcasting and reception technologies. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) invested
significant technical and financial capital in the development of television after the 1926
formation of its National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio network. By 1935 RCA

(1920) as two of the new broadcast industry’s first stations. See Joseph E. Baudino and John M. Kittross,
“Broadcasting's Oldest Stations: An Examination of Four Claimants,” Journal of Broadcasting vol. 21, no. 1
(Winter 1977): 61-84.
5
The differences in the commercial model of U.S. broadcasting vs. the public service orientation of the British
model are stark, but they were not a foregone conclusion at the time. A bill creating a national U.S. radio monopoly
was proposed in Congress in 1919 but was opposed by business interests. Efforts to create a public service -oriented
U.S. radio system without advertisers were debated in Congress until 1925. Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting
in the United Kingdom: Volume 1 – The Birth of Broadcasting 1896-1927 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
54-60; Thomas Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922-53 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2010), 10-11.

38

repurposed one of NBC’s radio studios at New York’s Rockefeller Center as a TV studio,
manufactured a limited quantity of TV sets, and experimented in early TV programming to
prepare the long-gestating medium for commercial operations.
6
The first TV stations in the U.S.
were on the air as early as 1928 with W2XB in Schenectady, RCA’s W2XBS in New York City
(predecessor of today’s WNBC Channel 4), and W3XK in the Washington, D.C., suburb of
Wheatland, Maryland, broadcasting experimental TV transmissions along with occasional live
entertainment and news reports. Other experimental stations emerged across the country by the
mid-1930s, but the Federal Radio Commission’s successor agency – the New Deal-era Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) – would not allow the commercialization of TV until the
medium was sufficiently developed in order to better serve the public.
7

RCA constantly pressed the FCC to allow the licensing of commercial television stations
and used the 1939 New York World’s Fair to showcase TV technology to a wide public (while
also forcing the regulatory agency’s hand). On April 20, 1939, days before the fair’s official
opening, RCA President David Sarnoff read prepared remarks telecast over NBC’s W2XBS
television transmitters (and re-broadcast through the network’s radio affiliates nation-wide) to
herald the arrival of TV in the United States. Sarnoff affirmed that TV represented “the birth in
this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society.”
Although the NBC broadcast via W2XBS was likely seen by no more than 1,000 people through
100-200 TV receivers in the New York area, RCA’s aggressive marketing of the experimental
telecasts created the impression that U.S. TV was born at the 1939 World’s Fair.
8
Protracted

6
Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 42, 48-55.
7
Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 28-31.
8
The New York World’s Fair’s official opening on April 30 also offered RCA and NBC the opportunity to
demonstrate their television technology when they televised President Franklin Roosevelt’s opening speech live
from the futuristic-themed fairgrounds. Roosevelt’s comments ma rked the first time a U.S. President ever appeared
on television. Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 12-14.

39

deliberations between the emergent TV industry’s engineers and investors (mainly RCA) and the
FCC over the technical and broadcasting standards of TV kept the medium from being officially
opened to commercial broadcasting until July 1, 1941, when TV broadcasts were first allowed to
include air advertising.
9
However, TV sales remained low due to the general lack of regular
programming on early stations when broadcasting lasted only a few hours each day.
10

World War II greatly hampered the transition from experimental to commercial TV
broadcasting but it also profoundly shaped the development of TV. Television benefitted from
the technological advances RCA and other companies developed for the military during the
conflict as well as the golden economic boom which accompanied the post-war years. Unlike the
six other countries with TV broadcasting at the outbreak of the war, only the U.S. – with all
seven of its privately-owned TV stations – maintained TV broadcasting during the conflict,
placing RCA-NBC and other private corporations on a strong footing to fully develop the TV
industry on a free-market orientation in the late 1940s.
11

The emergence of commercial TV in the U.S. – and the persistence of that business
model – once again demonstrates a significant divergence of U.S. broadcast media from its
counterparts in other parts of the developed world. The Nazi German and French postal services
brought those nations’ TV stations on the air through government support in March and April
1935, respectively, but the BBC’s publicly funded television service model left a broader
international impact upon its debut on November 2, 1936. As was the case with its radio service,

9
Lily Haw Newman, “America’s First TV Ad Cost $9 for 9 Seconds,” Slate (July 1, 2016),
(http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/01/the_first_legal_tv_commercial_aired_on_july_1_1941_for_bulo
va_watch_co_watch.html); Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 63-66.
10
Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 15, 18.
11
During World War II, the War Production Board prohibited the FCC from approving licenses for new TV
stations, limiting the U.S. to only seven privately-owned TV stations. Nevertheless, the seven stations stayed on the
air during the war distinguishing the U.S. from France, Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan (each with
about 500 TV receivers nationwide) as well as Britain (with 4-6,000 TV receivers scattered mainly around London)
which all had their transmissions cut during the war. Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 68-71.

40

the BBC’s government-chartered TV monopoly was meant as a public service for the British
people and prohibited advertising.
12
Although not alone in its public financing model, the non-
commercial BBC Television Service was the example that intellectuals in many countries with
TV industries still under development, such as in Mexico, promoted after World War II.
13

In contrast to the public service orientation of the BBC television broadcasting model, the
U.S. television industry developed almost entirely with private capital under the aegis of market
competition. NBC and the rival Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) competed against one
another in attracting viewers from the first day of commercial broadcasting in 1941, with CBS
developing the U.S. television news format by making full use of TV’s visual capabilities as an
alternative to early NBC newscasts which consisted only of static feed of a radio announcer
reading the news.
14
For its part NBC attracted audiences by producing entertainment shows
starring several of its radio network comedians (such as Jack Benny and Bob Hope) as well as
airing boxing, football, and baseball. NBC’s telecast of the 1947 World Series between the New
York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers (featuring Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson,
respectively) attracted an estimated audience of 3.8 million viewers and propelled a “television
boom.”
15
The 1948 TV entrance of the last of the big three networks, the American Broadcasting

12
John Cain, The BBC: 70 Years of Broadcasting (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1992), 10-13, 18;
Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting: Volume One, 1922-1939, Serving the
Nation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 3-22. Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom:
Volume II – The Golden Age of Wireless (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 547, 561-563. Berlin station
Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow broadcast from March 22, 1935 until November 1944. Using closed-circuit TV, the
station produced the first telecast of the Olympics during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Radio -PTT Vision (the
predecessor of today’s Télévision française 1) began broadcasting from the Eiffel Tower on April 26, 1935. “Early
French Broadcasting,” Early Television Museum (https://www.earlytelevision.org/french_tv.html), accessed April
27, 2020.
13
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (or NHK) was another nation which adopted the BBC model of public
financing of television in 1953. Ellis S. Krauss, Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 3, 47; “Full-Scale TV Broadcasting,” 50 Years of NHK Television
(https://www.nhk.or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years_en/history/p06/index.html).
14
Mike Conway, “The Birth of CBS-TV News,” Journalism History, vol. 32, no. 3 (2006), 128-137.
15
Indeed, state-funded public TV in the U.S. did not appear until the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (created
by an act of Congress) launched the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in 1970. Edgerton, Columbia History of

41

Company (ABC), as well as the proliferation of countless independent stations across the country
further added to the private, advertisement-based, commercial character of the U.S. television
model.
The postwar TV bonanza profusely engrained itself into U.S. society. There were only
8,000 TV sets nationwide served by seven TV stations in 1941 located in four major cities, but
by 1953 there were 20.4 million TV sets nationwide served by 198 stations in 241 cities.
16
Such
was the deluge of early TV’s growth that in 1948 the FCC instituted a “freeze” on new TV
stations construction and broadcasting licenses until the agency could determine new regulatory
standards to prevent broadcasting monopolies in geographic markets, avoid signal interference
between stations, as well as to promote a more streamlined technical development of the
industry. Television’s massive expansion, with limited regulation and no public investment,
brought about a whole new privately-run mass communication industry in just over a decade.
17

Historical Context of Early Television in Los Angeles
When Spanish-language television arrived in 1962, Los Angeles already had a
generation’s worth of TV history, much of it reflecting the private commercial development
trend of the larger U.S. TV industry. KTLA Channel 5 formerly claimed to be the first TV
station to sign on in Los Angeles (citing its 1941 beginning as experimental station W6XYZ
Channel 4), but L.A.’s TV history in fact dates to the late 1920s with TV antenna construction

American Television, 84-86; Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su Imperio
Televisa (México, DF: Grijalbo 2000), 43.
16
Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 69, 103.
17
Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 89; Douglas Gomery, “Finding TV’s Pioneering Audiences,”
Journal of Popular Film and Television 29, no. 3 (Fall 2001), 127.

42

permits reportedly licensed to businesses such as LeRoy’s Jewelers and Mays Department
Store.
18

The first truly sustained TV broadcasting operation in L.A. can be credited to Don Lee,
California’s exclusive Cadillac automobiles distributor. Lee entered the broadcasting world upon
purchasing radio stations KFRC (San Francisco) and KHJ (Los Angeles) in 1926 and 1927,
respectively. Using the capital he amassed in his Cadillac business, Lee launched a West Coast
radio network known as the Don Lee Broadcasting System. Similar to RCA-NBC, Lee
recognized the future potential in TV and hired electrical engineers to develop broadcasting
equipment and reception devices. On December 23, 1931, Lee debuted his first TV station,
W6XAO, in Downtown Los Angeles using an electronic TV system. W6XAO Channel 1 broke
onto the airwaves from the eighth floor of Don Lee Cadillac at the corner of Seventh and Bixel
streets – reaching all five of the city’s TV sets at the time!
19

Although its rudimentary broadcast signal covered only the central city and parts of the
South Bay, W6XAO is significant in Los Angeles television history for its long-lasting and
regular presence in the city’s airwaves throughout the 1930s.
20
By 1932, W6XAO Channel 1

18
KTLA Channel 5’s history can be traced to the days of experimental TV when it was W6XYZ Channel 4, signing
on in September 1942. The change from W6XYZ to KTLA in 1947 coincided with Channel 5’s entry into
commercial broadcasting, becoming the first station west of the Mississippi River to do so (but often incorrectly
remembered as the first TV station in the western U.S.). Roger M. Grace, “Look Out, W6XAO, Here Comes
Paramount,” Metropolitan News-Enterprise (Sept. 19, 2002),
(http://www.metnews.com/articles/reminiscing091902.htm); In 1929 three experimental stations – W6XC, W6XL,
and W6XAM – were all listed as operating in Los Angeles, though information on these amateur operations is scant.
Radio Service Bulletin, U.S. Department of Commerce Radio Division, no. 153 (Dec. 1929), 9-10.
19
Robert L. Pickering, “Eight Years of Television in California,” California-Magazine of the Pacific (June 1939)
(http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist5/donlee.html); “Don Lee System Given License for Television," Los Angeles Times,
(June 19, 1931), A1; "Los Angeles First With Television Broadcast," L.A. Times, (December 27, 1931), 14.
20
Greg Fischer, “Don Lee and the Transformation of Los Angeles,” Southern California Quarterly vol 96, no. 1
(Spring 2014), 110; Lee’s second TV station, W6XS, broadcast over a 500-watt transmitter in Gardena in 1931 and
transmitted a mechanical TV signal for a handful of hours each week until 1935. Grace, “It’s 1931, and W6XAO Is
on the Air.”

43

broadcast at least one hour daily (except Sundays), principally in the evening hours.
21
In addition
to broadcasting major motion pictures – “shown gratis at home to otherwise potential paying
patrons” – Channel 1 broke new ground when it broadcast footage of the March 10, 1933, Long
Beach earthquake days after the cataclysm in what is now considered the TV medium’s “first
documented evidence of television news coverage.” Dramas and soap operas also appeared in
W6XAO’s hour-long broadcast blocks.
22
W6XAO also broadcast the first ever live coverage of
the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1940 using new RCA cameras.
23
W6XAO and
KTLA predecessor W6XYZ were two of the seven U.S. TV stations to remain on the air during
World War II. In May 1948 experimental W6XAO began commercial broadcasting as KTSL
Channel 2. Given how the big three networks all entered the TV market through their radio
networks, Lee Broadcasting’s radio holdings potentially made KTSL-2 the founding station of a
West Coast-based network which could compete with the New York media giants.
Ultimately, however, Los Angeles television was subordinated by the big three New
York networks. NBC, CBS, and ABC all entered the L.A. market in 1949, quickly dominating it
while independent stations KTLA-5 and KTTV-11 (initially owned by Paramount Pictures and
the Los Angeles Times, respectively) competed against KTSL by offering local newscasts from
inside and outside their studios as well as different variety shows. The saturation of the L.A. TV
market reduced KTSL’s market share considerably. The passing of Don Lee and his son and
successor Thomas S. Lee by 1950 brought about the end of Lee Broadcasting with KTSL-2’s

21
See Grace, “It’s 1931, and W6XAO Is on the Air.” See Pickering, “Eight Years of Television in California”;
“Early TV Stations: W6XAO/KTSL/KNXT – Los Angeles,” Early Television,
(http://www.earlytelevision.org/w6xao.html); http://www.earlytelevision.org/mechanical_stations.html
22
Pickering, “Eight Years of Television in California”; “Early TV Stations: W6XAO/KTSL/KNXT – Los Angeles,”
Early Television.
23
W6XAO’s Tournament of Roses Parade telecast predates KTLA’s claim to be the first broadcaster of the Rose
Bowl Parade (1943). See “Early TV Stations: W6XAO/KTSL/KNXT – Los Angeles,” Early Television.

44

purchase by CBS while the company’s radio assets were bought by ABC Radio.
24
Lee
Broadcasting was unable to compete in the crowded market and particularly against the well-
financed New York networks with all their resources. Despite the accomplishments of its
independent stations, mid-century Southern California became an outpost of New York’s
commercial TV networks rather than the birthplace of competing national networks – although
Spanish-language television would subvert this trend with the metro L.A. Latino population
playing a key role in founding what became the SIN/Univision and Telemundo networks.

The Mexican Roots of U.S. Spanish-Language Television
Contextualizing the place of Spanish-language TV in the larger historical development of
the U.S. television industry brings the Spanish-format medium’s origins into better focus.
Spanish-language TV in Los Angeles has been profoundly shaped by its roots in Mexican
television, but a different branch of this genealogy reminds us of the Puerto Rican roots of this
industry. The first Spanish-language television station in the United States went on the air in San
Juan as WKAQ Channel 2 in 1954 and broadcast news as well as locally-produced telenovela
dramas.
25
Ángel Ramos, publisher of one of Puerto Rico’s most read newspapers, El Mundo,
launched WKAQ Canal 2 as his latest mass media venture which also included radio station
WKAQ 1240-AM. Ramos invested significant sums on locally-producing original telenovela
dramas, broadcast simultaneously over WKAQ’s radio and TV formats. By the 1970s WKAQ-
TV branded itself as “Telemundo Canal 2” in homage to its origins through the late Ramos’s El

24
Upon Don Lee’s death in 1934 at age 54, son Thomas S. Lee took over as President of DLBS and helped lead the
station’s early growth. After Thomas Lee’s suicide in 1950 at age 44, surviving members of the Lee family sold to
different parties, with DLBS’s radio stations going to the General Tire and Rubber Company while TV station
KTSL was sold to CBS in early 1951. Of note is KTSL’s call sign, named in honor of Thomas S. Lee – the station
was renamed KCBS-2 in 1984. See “Early TV Stations: W6XAO/KTSL/KNXT – Los Angeles,” Early Television.
25
“Ángel Ramos Torres,” Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico (https://enciclopediapr.org/en/encyclopedia/ramos-torres-
angel/), accessed April 28, 2020.

45

Mundo newspaper – the source of the eponymous network’s name.
26
Telemundo’s novelas
circulated around the Caribbean basin and often aired over independent stations in New York
and Miami. In the 1980s, several business concerns eyed buying WKAQ and its Telemundo
studios as a means of starting a new Spanish-language TV network.
Despite the historical significance of WKAQ-2, the San Juan-based station is not often
acknowledged in the limited literature on U.S. televisión hispanohablante (Spanish-speaking
television) which has tended to emphasize the industry’s origins in the U.S.-Mexican
borderlands. The reasons for this likely have much to do with the colonial, overseas character of
Puerto Rico as a U.S. territorial possession. Besides the out-of-sight, out-of-mind mainstream
U.S. perception of Puerto Rico, WKAQ Telemundo 2 did not immediately encourage the
formation of a Spanish-language TV network on the continental U.S., unlike KCOR/KWEX and
KMEX which directly launched the Spanish International Network (SIN). We will return to
WKAQ-2 later in this study when examining KVEA-52 and the mid-1980s birth of the
Telemundo Network, but for now we will turn to the Mexican roots of U.S. Spanish television.
Similar to the case of early U.S. stations and television networks, the Mexican television
industry was born in the wake of the rise of the mass consumer radio industry. The earliest
Mexican experimental radio broadcasts date to 1921 when the government sponsored radio tests
in Mexico City and Córdoba, Veracruz to commemorate the centennial of the Treaty of Córdoba
which formally concluded Mexico’s War of Independence. On October 9 of that year
Constantino de Tárnava, an electrical engineering graduate of the University of Notre Dame,
brought radio station Tárnava Notre Dame on the air in Monterrey, Nuevo León, with weekly
(and later daily) broadcasts. Radio Tárnava Notre Dame, which took on the call sign XEH in

26
“Angel Ramos Torres,” Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico. WKAQ 1240-AM was the first radio station in Puerto Rico
and the first fully Spanish-format radio station in the U.S. when its previous owners founded it in 1922.

46

1929, is still on the air as Mexico’s oldest radio station. The burgeoning radio industry
revolutionized communication and entertainment in the Mexican Republic.
27
Slowly, but surely,
vast geographic and social class distances were bridged by the impact of radio.
Mexican commercial radio began taking shape after the medium’s own development
north of the border, but several Mexican entrepreneurs and other government interests pushed
back on U.S. corporate attempts by RCA and others to enter the Mexican radio market with
minimal regulation. In its 1926 Law of Electronic Communications, the Mexican government
established the precedent that radio waves were a national resource. Furthermore, radio stations –
and eventually TV stations – could only be owned or controlled by Mexican citizens. Mexican
radio broadcasting became a “mixed system of commercial and government broadcasting.”
28
In
practice, however, the Mexican radio industry developed throughout the twenties and thirties
along a model closer to the U.S. experience rather than the national British radio monopoly –
presaging the framework under which Mexican television, the world’s first Spanish-language TV
industry, would emerge in the late 1940s.
The radio origins of Mexican Spanish-language television were also shaped by a handful
of wealthy industrialists with close connections to the Mexican government. The
collectivist/socialist ethos of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution was still strong during the
formation of radio and television mass media in Mexico, but in practice the country’s state
capitalism model favored the concentration of mass media ownership and investment among a

27
Gabriel Sosa Plata and Perla Olivia Rodríguez, “Hacia Los Cien Años de la Radio Mexicana,” Días de Radio:
Historias de la Radio en México, Gabriel Sosa Plata, ed. (Ciudad de México: Secretaría de Cultura, 2016), 13-14.
See also Joy Elizabeth Hayes, Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-
1950 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000).
28
Joy Elizabeth Hayes, “National Imaginings on the Air: Radio in Mexico, 1920 –1950,” in The Eagle and the
Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940, eds. Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen Lewis
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 246-247; J. Justin Castro, Radio in Revolution: Wireless Technology
and State Power in Mexico, 1897–1938 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 126-128.

47

small group of people. In this practice of what historians have termed “crony capitalism” the
Mexican government was less interested in popular ownership of the mass media, anti-trust
regulation, or administering radio and TV as non-commercial public services than it was
interested being a “gatekeeper state” which counteracted its internal and external weaknesses “by
the stabilizing, coalition-building tool of controlling access to capitalist markets.”
29

Spanish-language television in Mexico and by extension the United States formed in the
context of this favor-dependent model of Mexican state capitalism with radio and TV pioneer
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s cross-border experiences giving this phenomenon a distinct
transnational character. Emilio “El León” Azcárraga Vidaurreta was born in 1895 in Tampico
and grew up on both sides of the Mexico-Texas border, including Monterrey, Nuevo León, and
the Texan cities of San Antonio and Austin.
30
Azcárraga Vidaurreta became one of the first Ford
automobile dealers in Mexico upon opening his Monterrey dealership in 1917, quickly
expanding to other regional cities. In 1923 Azcárraga Vidaurreta, with increasing capital from
his dealerships, began a relationship with the Victor Phonograph Company to distribute its
products through his Mexico Music Company while identifying musicians who could record for
Victor. Victor’s merger with RCA – one of the primary builders of the U.S. radio and TV
industries – gave Azcárraga Vidaurreta a privileged position from which to develop those
industries in Mexico.
31

29
Paul Gillingham and Benjamin Smith, “The Paradoxes of Revolution,” Dictablanda: Politics, Work, and Culture
in Mexico, 1938–1968 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 1-43. For a detailed discussion of crony
capitalism in the Mexican cinema and TV industries see Andrew Paxman, “Cooling to Cinema and Warming to
Television: State Mass Media Policy, 1940– 1964,” pages 299-320 in that same volume.
30
Maria del Carmen Olivares Arriaga, Emilio Azcá rraga Vidaurreta: bosquejo biográ fico (Ciudad Victoria:
Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2002); Fernández and Paxman, El
Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 38.
31
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 39.

48

The union of transnational capital evident in Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s association with
RCA had profound consequences on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. RCA was “eager to
expand its sale of American-made radio parts, phonographs and records in Latin America,”
sociologist Cristina Mora notes, adding that the U.S. corporation recognized that it “needed to
first help develop the region’s radio industry.”
32
Consequently RCA provided Azcárraga and his
associates significant capital and technical investment in building radio station XEW in Mexico
City, which first went on the air on September 18, 1930. XEW benefitted from RCA’s financial
and technological capital as well as a low-cost distribution agreement for XEW and its future
sister stations to broadcast U.S. radio programs produced by NBC.
33
According to historians
Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, “at age 35, Azcárraga Vidaurreta was the owner of the
most modern radio station in Mexico City, the chief cornerstone of a true mass communications
empire.” Indeed, by 1941 Azcárraga’s Radio Programas de Mexico network grew to 60 stations
representing nearly half of the country’s total number of stations.
34

Given his success with XEW and the radio network of stations, recording musicians and
advertisers he built from it, as well as his close relationship with RCA-NBC it would seem
Azcárraga Vidaurreta was in a strong position to enter the Mexican TV industry, but the
gatekeeping power of Mexico’s state capitalism model prevented him from doing so. El León
Azcárraga drew the Mexican government’s ire when he backed right-wing opposition candidate
Juan Andreu Almazán’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in the 1940 election. Paxman has
noted that President Manuel Ávila Camacho, the government’s official candidate in 1940,

32
G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 120-121.
33
Mora, Making Hispanics, 121.
34
XEW – known as the “catedral de la radio” by some observers – propelled Azcarraga Vidaurreta’s growth as a
national capitalist-industrialist, enabling him to purchase more radio stations throughout the country as well as co -
ownership of Estudios Churubusco and a cinema chain in Mexico City. See Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre:
Emilio Azcárraga, 39 and Paxman, “State Mass Media Policy, 1940– 1964,” Dictablanda, 304-305.

49

harbored resentment at Azcárraga and had one of his main Mexico City radio stations moved to a
less-favorable frequency and blocked his petition for a TV concession. For much of the next two
decades Azcárraga Vidaurreta faced the Mexican state’s crony capitalism model as he pressed
forward with his TV project while being stalled by government officials.
35

The industry push to introduce television in Mexico increased after World War II, with
the state capitalist Mexican government playing an active role in brokering the formation of its
TV industry.
36
Given the Mexican state’s role as an industry gatekeeper, the opportunity existed
for Mexican TV to follow a model markedly different from the private, advertisement-based
framework of the big three U.S. networks. Before Mexico’s first TV stations went on the air,
intellectuals and artists pressured the government to follow the example of Britain and its public
service-oriented BBC in its development of the regulatory and legal frameworks for the coming
of the industria televisiva mexicana. President Miguel Alemán Valdés, Ávila Camacho’s
successor, also faced a different form of political pressure from Azcárraga and other radio
broadcasters seeking to enter the TV business along the lines of the U.S. free market model that
already characterized the Mexican radio industry. In 1947 Alemán Valdés directed the National
Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) to form a TV Commission composed of cultural critic Salvador
Novo and TV inventor/expert Guillermo González Camarena to study the matter. One of the
most overt practitioners of the state’s crony capitalism, Alemán Valdés was less interested in the
commission’s potential public service TV recommendations than he was in stalling Azcárraga

35
Paxman, “State Mass Media Policy, 1940– 1964,” Dictablanda, 305.
36
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 49.

50

again while buying time for his political allies to break into the Mexican TV market first and
dominate the new industry.
37

Nevertheless, the 1948 Novo Report, as the INBA study was called, represents what
could have been a major turning point for twentieth century Mexican history. Novo and
González Camarena visited the U.S., Britain, and France to assess their national TV broadcasting
models, but the technical, programming, and above all funding differences between the private
U.S. networks and the BBC were the report’s main focus. The Novo Report called for Mexican
television to follow the BBC TV public service monopoly model with its noncommercial, non-
advertisement-based funding. “The BBC is an example of how the best interests of the audience
and the State (disdained by commercial radio) can be reconciled with the material interests of
artistic talent.” If funded by a combination of TV license (or user) fees and government support
Mexican television could be “an instrument for entertainment, information, and education,” free
from the “worry” of appeasing advertisers and corporate sponsors.
38

Alemán rejected the Novo Report recommendations and continued using the apparatuses
of Mexican state capitalism to favor his political allies. Gonzalez Camarena’s sons stated in 1990
that Alemán rejected the Novo Report in part because he hoped to be a silent partner in his friend
Rómulo O’Farrill’s TV station project.
39
Indeed, although O’Farrill lacked Azcárraga’s nearly
twenty years’ worth of broadcasting experience (entering radio only in 1947), he was overtly

37
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 53; Sarah Corona Berkin, “La televisión: Informe de
Salvador Novo y Guillermo González Camarena, entre melón y sandía,” Comunicación y Sociedad, no. 16-17
(1992): 195-239.
38
“La BBC nos proporciona el ejemplo de cómo pueden conciliarse los intereses superiores del aud itorio y del
Estado (que la radiodifusión desdeña considerar) con los intereses materiales del talento profesional.” Corona
Berkin, “Informe de Salvador Novo y Guillermo González Camarena.”
39
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 53; Erik A. Stilling, “The History of Spanish-Language
Television in the U.S. and the Rise of Mexican International Syndication Strategies in the Americas,” Howard
Journal of Communications, 4 no. 4 (1995), 223-224.

51

favored by Alemán’s regime with an expedited TV broadcasting concession license.
40
As
Azcárraga’s concession languished in regulatory delays, O’Farrill purchased equipment,
conducted broadcasting tests, and brought XH-TV Channel 4 onto the Mexico City airwaves on
August 31, 1950, the first commercial television station in Mexico and all of the Spanish-
speaking world.
41
Few people in the Mexican capital owned television sets in 1950, but O’Farrill
arranged for the city’s leading department stores to display XH-TV’s signal in prominent places
to attract attention.
42
Although the inaugural program on Mexican television was a musical show
broadcast from the Hipódromo de las Americas race track, XH-TV’s debut happened just in time
for a live broadcast of President Alemán’s annual address to congress the next day (incidentally
the first newscast on Mexican TV).
43
The world debut of Spanish-language television thus took
place in the context of competing interests in mid-century Mexican state crony capitalism.
Azcárraga Vidaurreta – in a demonstration of the gumption he would display in starting
KMEX and other Spanish-language TV stations in the U.S. – regrouped, sold off radio stations in
smaller markets, and used the capital to go forward with the construction of XEW-TV Channel

40
Alex Saragoza and Andrew Paxman, “Globalization and Latin Media Powers: The Case of Mexico’s Televisa,”
Continental Order?: Integrating North America for Cybercapitalism, Vincent Mosco, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2001), 72-73; Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 52-54.
41
RCA Victor, a provider of some of O’Farrill’s broadcasting technology, congratulated XH -TV on its launch
saying “A new day in the history of Mexican homes begins…Your children will safely enjoy programming designed
specifically for them…You will receive exciting world news with accuracy and a realism never dreamt of
before…The most famous sports athletes will play for you and your family…and glistening cinema and theater stars
will perform in your own living room.” Quoted in “1950: Nace la television mexicana,” Revista Siglo Mexicano
(http://www.cursosinea.conevyt.org.mx/cursos/mexico/contenidos/recursos/revista2/1950.htm). Mexico beat Brazil
(Sept. 18, 1950) in having Latin America’s first TV station by a few weeks while Spain would not have televisión
until 1956.
42
Luis de Llano Macedo, “Los Azcárraga: Inicios de la televisión en Mexico,” Milenio (Nov. 27, 2017),
(https://www.pressreader.com/mexico/milenio/20171127/283261688156875).
43
President Alemán made a slight nod to XH-TV’s premiere in his September 1, 1950, address to congress.
“Provisional regulatory laws have been made for the television industry, with private citizens having established a
high-power TV station in the Federal District” Miguel Alemán Valdés, “Cuarto Informe de Gobierno,” 500 Años de
México en Documentos
(http://www.biblioteca.tv/artman2/publish/1950_255/Cuarto_Informe_de_Gobierno_del_presidente_Miguel_A_125
3.shtml); Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 54. see Jorge Angulo, “Canal 4 XHTV, 65 años y
contando…” ForoMedios (Aug. 31, 2015), (https://www.foromedios.com/topic/48247-canal-4-xhtv-65-
a%C3%B1os-y-contando/).

52

2’s studios and broadcast facilities. If his station was not to be the first chronologically, it would
be the best in quality. Modeled after RCA-NBC’s studios at Rockefeller Center, XEW-TV’s
studios were named Televicentro and were built to accommodate Azcárraga’s radio and
television operations.
44
After months of labor, XEW-TV Canal 2 beamed onto the airwaves on
March 21, 1951, with a telecast of baseball game from a nearby park. Don Emilio Azcárraga had
told his staff that Canal 2 had to go on the air that day “a como diera lugar” (“no matter what”),
but technical difficulties led to XEW-TV’s inaugural transmission lasting only a half-hour before
its systems crashed. Nevertheless, the technicians and staff at Canal 2 were optimistic. “In this
first battle for TV audiences we at Channel 2 had the advantage, we were coming from radio and
had great schooling in that field.”
45
Indeed, the radio veterans’ broadcasting experience helped
XEW-TV beat XH-TV’s viewership.
Alemán’s crony capitalist scheme to prop up an ally with a head start in the TV business,
done with the intention of having XH-TV eventually absorb and control XEW-TV (forcing
Azcárraga into presidential vassalage) backfired entirely. Azcarraga’s radio network not only had
long-running ties to countless singers, actors, musicians, and other artists but also served as a
“school” in which many of the early XEW-TV producers gained significant experience
developing programming. Distribution rights to Spanish dubs of NBC programming also helped
XEW-TV significantly. By early 1955 it was O’Farrill and XH-TV which sought a merger with
Azcárraga and XEW-TV, leading to the birth of the Telesistema Mexicano network that March.
The race to control the television industry in Mexico, influenced as it was by transnational U.S.

44
Televicentro was furnished by the most modern television and radio broadcasting equipment from RCA and
General Electric. “Televisa Chapultepec/Televicentro,” La Ciudadela y sus Alrededores (June 17, 2015),
(http://alrededoresciudadela.blogspot.com/2015/08/televisa-chapultepec-televicentro.html).
45
Luis de Llamo Palmer quoted in Luis de Llano Macedo, “Los Azcárraga: Inicios de la televisión en Mexico,”
Milenio (Nov. 27, 2017), (https://www.pressreader.com/mexico/milenio/20171127/283261688156875).

53

technical and financial capital and the Mexican state’s gatekeeping, was won in only five years.
The direct corporate predecessor of today’s Televisa, Telesistema Mexicano putatively had the
former rivals control equal shares of the company, but Azcárraga was the dominant partner.
From then on “the history of Mexican television is in fact the history of the Azcarragas.”
46

By the time he was positioned as the dominant figure in Mexican television, Azcárraga
Vidaurreta also recognized the responsibility that the Mexican TV industry had with respect to
U.S. television’s portrayal of Mexican people. Television in Mexico, Azcárraga asserted, needed
to “take advantage of the opportunity” of confronting the negative “bandido” imagery of
Mexicans that U.S. television promoted.
47
Telesistema’s programming has long been criticized
for its escapist tendencies and its depiction of only a small, usually fairer-skinned section of the
Mexican nation (in so doing, promoting a hegemonic identity formation process within Mexico).
However, many of Telesistema’s critics have also noted that the network’s programming also
countered hegemonic U.S. identity formation projects manifested in U.S. TV shows and films
which repeatedly depicted Mexican people as backward and criminal. Telesistema’s raison de
etre was not specifically to counter U.S. racial discourses, but its resources allowed it to contest
racist U.S. caricatures of Mexican people while the corporation’s very existence demonstrated
the modernity and economic development of Mexico as a nation-state.
The formation of Spanish-language television as a mass media industry was shaped by
Mexico’s model of state capitalism and the transnational relationships that enabled as seen in
how Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s entry into radio and television. El León Azcárraga’s cross-border

46
By the time of the merger with O’Farrill, Azcárraga had added XHGC-TV Canal 5 to his TV broadcasting
portfolio. Miguel Alemán had finished his six-year term as president when the 1955 Telesistema Mexicano took
place. Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 51, 54-57. Despite the supposed gambit on Alemán’s
part to neutralize Azcárraga’s TV ambitions, the former president’s son Miguel Alemán Velasco became a
prominent executive on Televisa in the 1970s and 1980s.
47
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 94.

54

business ties with RCA/Victor and NBC were critical in developing the Mexican radio and
television industries and shaped their long-term prospects. While educational public service-
oriented TV stations did emerge in Mexico, they lacked significant public financing as well as
the massive viewership of Telesistema affiliates.
48
Mexico’s TV industry combined the BBC
Television Service monopoly with the private ownership of U.S. TV in a case of classic
schizophrenia with Telesistema functioning as a de facto private monopoly dominating the field
with little major competition. It was in this context of Mexican state capitalism that Mexican
investment capital crossed north to begin the Spanish-language TV industry in the United States.

Moving Towards a Borderlands TV Project: XETV and XEWT in Tijuana
The formation of U.S. Spanish-language TV took shape soon as Azcárraga consolidated
his gains in the Mexican television industry – expanding northward into the U.S. by offering
Telesistema programming to Mexican American viewers in the U.S.-Mexican border region
seemed like a logical choice. With a growing library of TV shows and films at hand after
Telesistema Mexicano’s formation, Azcárraga viewed the large Spanish-speaking ethnic
Mexican population of the U.S. Southwest as a profitable business opportunity. An Azcárraga-
led consortium of transnational investors first tried selling Telesistema content to U.S. networks,
but in time sought to create its own Spanish TV network in the U.S. after making their first entry
into the U.S. television market with their successful Tijuana-based station English-format
serving San Diego County. Benefiting from Mexican state crony capitalism, Azcárraga subverted
the usual pattern of Mexico-bound U.S. capitalistic investment by investing in U.S. television

48
XEIPN Channel 11, managed by the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), debuted on March 2, 1959, as Mexico’s
first educational and cultural TV station. The IPN-owned network is now known as Canal Once. “Historia,” Canal
Once (https://canalonce.mx/docs/Historia_de_Canal_Once_ac.pdf), accessed April 28, 2020.

55

(via KMEX and its sister stations). In so doing, Azcárraga practiced a form of “dependent
entrepreneurship” shaped by the economic reality of Mexico’s overall subordinated position in
the global market.
49
Azcárraga’s investment in U.S. Spanish-language TV as a Mexican investor
represented the “dependent capitalism” contours of the U.S.-Mexican relationship as well as the
medium’s profound transnational origins.
During the 1950s Azcárraga Vidaurreta attempted to sell programming from XEW-TV to
U.S. stations, hoping that the potential windfall of engaging with the Spanish-speaking Mexican
American population of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands would entice station owners and network
executives. To accomplish this goal, he appointed a young Telesistema television producer
named Reynold “Rene” Anselmo as his business agent in the U.S. Anselmo, the son of an Italian
American who had previously lived in Argentina and Chile, moved to Mexico to write radio
programs in 1951 after having studied theater at the University of Chicago. Anselmo’s free-lance
work in television production in the Mexican capital led to his hiring at Telesistema, bringing
him into close contact with Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta.
50
Anselmo was Telesistema’s face in
the U.S. during the Mexican network’s attempts to sell programming north of the border, but in
time he would become one of the most significant persons involved in the development of U.S.
Spanish-language television, particularly with respect to L.A.’s KMEX Channel 34. Anselmo’s
contributions were such that by the mid-1980s Hispanic Business declared him “nearly
synonymous with Spanish-language television in the United States since the early 1960s.”
51

49
John Sinclair, Latin American Television: A Global View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 33.
50
D. Carlos Balkan, “Unorthodox and Energetic: An Interview with Rene Anselmo,” Hispanic Business (December
1986), 18. Rene Anselmo was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1926 and became the longtime larger-than-life
President of the Spanish International Network after re-launching San Antonio’s KWEX Channel 41 and founding
KMEX Channel 34 in Los Angeles. Anselmo moved to Mexico to work for the international ad firm J. Walter
Thompson and began working on plays and TV productions shortly afterwards, although Anselmo would tell people
he fell in love with Mexico after visiting it with his mother in 1951 and decided to just stay there. Fernández and
Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 70.
51
Balkan, “Unorthodox and Energetic,” 18.

56

At the time, though, Rene Anselmo struggled to get U.S. networks and stations to
purchase Mexican programming. “In the early days,” Anselmo reminisced, “before we started
into the stations, I would make tours of Texas, California, trying to sell Spanish programming to
the Anglo stations, which were the only ones available.” Most TV stations were not interested,
but those that bought limited Telesistema Mexicano programming did so to fulfill FCC
obligations and relegated the Mexican programming to “Saturday mornings at nine or ten a.m. or
Sunday mornings.”
52
The U.S. English-language networks’ reluctance to air Telesistema
programming spurred Anselmo and Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s interest in owning and managing
their own Spanish-language network in the U.S. The transnational partners determined “the only
way to create a market for Mexican programming was to get stations in operation.” Thus by the
end of the 1950s, Anselmo and Azcárraga Vidaurreta conceived of the strategy of purchasing
their own U.S. television stations and forming their own advertising base to attract revenue.
53
A unique experiment enabled by the transnational character of the Tijuana-San Diego
borderlands gave Azcárraga a chance to enter the U.S. television market with his own stations.
The success of Tijuana stations XETV Channel 6 (which broadcast in English beginning in
1953) and Spanish-language XEWT Channel 12 (appealing to ethnic Mexican San Diegans as
much as tijuanenses), laid the groundwork for the coming of KMEX and SIN.
The San Diego-Tijuana broadcasting experiment undertaken by Azcárraga and his
associates came about serendipitously amid a heated competition for channel frequency
allocations in Southern California. As mentioned previously, at the dawning of the Californian
television industry several Los Angeles-based investors felt they should have all of the 12
channels available on the very high frequency (VHF) band because they could supposedly better

52
Wilkinson, Fifty Years of Spanish-Language TV in the U.S., 37; Balkan, “Unorthodox and Energetic,” 18.
53
Wilkinson, Fifty Years of Spanish-Language TV in the U.S., 37; Balkan, “Unorthodox and Energetic,” 18.

57

serve the entirety of Southern California, metropolitan San Diego included. Prior to the 1962 All-
Channel Receiver Act, commercial TV sets could only receive VHF channels 2-13 but not
channels 14 and beyond which were beamed on ultra high frequency (UHF) waves. Expensive
conversion add-ons were required to receive UHF signals at a time when TV sets themselves
were already costly. Early TV grew primarily within the VHF band.
54

At the end of the 1940s a certain free-for-all existed as San Diego businessmen wrestled
with L.A. movie studio and radio station owners for control of the limited VHF channels
available. The border city grew a tremendous 64.4% between the 1940 and 1950 censuses and
numbered nearly 350,000 inhabitants as a result of federal wartime investment in its various
military facilities, but it was still far outpowered by Los Angeles (with its nearly 2,000,000
residents in 1950) and its vast business clout.
55
Prior to the enacting of a broader airwave
management regime by the FCC, early San Diego TV viewers would receive broadcast signal
interference from L.A. when trying to tune in to local signals on their TVs. This was the context
of the FCC’s 1948-1952 TV freeze in which new station licenses were denied until the FCC
determined how to better manage the TV airwaves. In the interim, San Diego only had one
channel serving the local community. Of consequence to the development of U.S. Spanish-
language TV, the beginning of the freeze coincided with the FCC granting the Mexican
government exclusive use of two San Diego-area channels on the VHF band (6 and 12) to serve
the eventual Tijuana television market.
56

54
Mark Schubin, “Research and Developments: Getting the Picture,” Videography, 27 no. 9 (Sept. 2002), 22-23, 26-
29.
55
Riley Moffat, Population History of Western U.S. Cities & Towns, 1850–1990 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,
1996), 54.
56
San Diego’s first TV station, KFMB Channel 8, went on the air on May 16, 1949, Iris Engstrand, San Diego:
California's Cornerstone, (San Diego: Sunbelt Publications, 2005), 180; Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The
Evolution of American Television (New York : Oxford University Press, 1990), 114-116; Dave McIntyre, “Spotlight
on San Diego: Afraid of Fortune Tellers?” Billboard (April 25, 1953), 38.

58

Sensing a business opportunity, in 1953 Azcárraga Vidaurreta secured a concession from
the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works to own and operate Tijuana’s VHF channel
6. Through his Tijuana-based concessionaire Radio y Televisión S.A. de C.V., Azcárraga aimed
to serve the San Diego market by broadcasting English-language programming from the 500 ft.
antenna on Mt. San Antonio, Tijuana, while collecting advertising revenue from Californian
businesses paying in U.S. dollars through the San Diego offices of Bay City Television, a
separate U.S. holding company.
57
XETV Channel 6 went on the air as a station broadcasting in
English and (to a lesser extent) Spanish on April 29, 1953, the first TV station in Tijuana and the
second in San Diego.
Although it was the first TV station in northwestern Mexico, XETV made its profits by
principally serving English-speaking U.S. audiences. Azcárraga and the Telesistema
consortium’s first entry into the U.S. television market through Tijuana has been almost entirely
ignored by scholars of U.S. Spanish-language TV. “Much of Tijuana broadcasting is actually a
San Diego operation in sombrero and serape disguise,” Billboard magazine wrote. “The larger
stations in the Mexican city broadcast almost exclusively in English, featuring pop music on
records. They maintain San Diego offices, competing frankly and openly for the business of San
Diego advertisers.”
58

Nevertheless, XETV attracted derision from many Anglo businessmen in San Diego who
felt that a Mexican-based TV station broadcasting across the border would inhibit their chance to
profit from the TV business. “This,” Billboard reported, “caused San Diego broadcasters to
simmer” as XETV was a “San Diego operation in all but collection of profits,” a situation which

57
“XETV TV to Carry ABC Films, Kines,” Broadcasting, (February 27, 1956), 88. XETV/Bay City Television’s
sales offices were located in the picturesque University Heights neighborhood north of Balboa Park. The U.S.
holding company became a subsidiary of Televisa in the 2000s.
58
McIntyre, “Afraid of Fortune Tellers?” Billboard, 33.

59

made Channel 6’s rivals “boil.”
59
Critics of XETV argued it would become like many Tijuana-
based radio stations known popularly as “border blasters” which broadcast tasteless
programming and advertising across wide distances using transmission strength far beyond what
the FCC permitted U.S. broadcasters.
60
XETV’s rivals also slammed Channel 6 by insinuating
that the station would broadcast “‘substandard’ programs and ‘debauch’ the San Diego
audience.”
61
Opposition to XETV included even Senator Ed Johnson of distant Colorado. “If the
Mexican station is permitted to operate from San Diego and carry U.S. programs, it will build up
a large American audience.” The senator further stated “This audience will then be subjected to
the astrologers, fortune tellers and like programs which can be said to have been financed and
supported indirectly by American interests and American advertising.”
62
TV airwaves
disregarded political borders.
The reactions of tijuanenses to XETV’s debut as a Mexican TV station serving English-
speakers in San Diego are harder to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests some level of
ambivalence towards the station existed in the border city. As opposed to when XEWT Channel
12 debuted as the city’s first Spanish-language TV station in 1960 – which included an interview
with Azcárraga Vidaurreta affirming the station would be dedicated to serving the community –
local Tijuana papers did not cover XETV’s opening or first years on the air at all.
63
As XETV’s
founding general manager Julian “Julie” Kaufman later noted, “they hated me in Tijuana because

59
McIntyre, “Afraid of Fortune Tellers?” Billboard, 33, 38.
60
Border blasters “along the South Side of the Baja California line,” one trade magazine recalled, “made life
miserable for U.S. radio men by a casual attitude toward wave length restrictions which resulted in frequent
interference problems.” McIntyre, “Afraid of Fortune Tellers?” Billboard, 33; see also Gene Fowler and Bill
Crawford, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American
Airwaves (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002).
61
“XETV TV to Carry ABC Films, Kines,” Broadcasting (Feb. 27, 1956), 88.
62
McIntyre, “Afraid of Fortune Tellers?” Billboard, 38. Johnson, formerly the chair of the Senate Interstate and
Foreign Commerce Committee, vocally complained to the FCC when it allowed XETV to affiliate with ABC.
63
Mario Ortiz Villacorta, “La Televisora Canal Doce se Dedicará a Servir a Tijuana, nos Dijo el Sr. Emilio
Azcárraga,” El Heraldo Baja California (Tijuana, B.C., MX), (April 27, 1960), 4, Archivo Histórico de Tijuana.

60

in Tijuana we were programming a Mexican-licensed station and 99% of the programs were in
English. Thus, I was not a favored child.”
64

Against this transnational opposition, Kaufman worked vigorously to establish a firm
advertising revenue base for XETV Channel 6, refining skills that he and Azcárraga would
utilize when founding KMEX and SIN in the early sixties.
65
Azcárraga Vidaurreta personally
hired Kaufman after reading an article he wrote in the influential trade journal Broadcasting on
how to develop and manage a TV station for a medium-sized city. Although his article generated
nearly two dozen job offers from across the U.S., for Kaufman the opportunity at Mexican
XETV “was the most imposing and interesting” and offered a sense of adventure. “It was a
station licensed to Mexico, serving a U.S. market,” Kaufman later recalled, “It would be unique,
and I liked that very much. And I liked being associated with Don Emilio.”
66

In addition to the inherent challenges of starting a new TV channel, as general manager
of Bay City Television/XETV Kaufman also confronted the White American San Diego business
community’s opposition, including a boycott of XETV by the San Diego Chamber of
Commerce. “We were viewed as unwanted interlopers” because of Channel 6’s Mexican owners,
Kaufman recalled. “Even though our programming was all-English, we were not welcomed in
San Diego. People would throw rocks at us, both literally and figuratively.” According to
Kaufman, the true gist of opposition to XETV was anti-Mexican sentiment. “Mexicans were

64
Julian Kaufman quoted in The Heart of San Diego, “Julian Kaufman,” hosted by Fred Lewis (June 1, 2003), DVD
5408 no. 434, DVD Collection, San Diego State University Library.
65
Julian “Julie” Kaufman was born in 1918 and grew up in the Newark, New Jersey, area before enlisting in the
U.S. Army Air Corps. during World War II. After the war Kaufman studied television arts and met his wife
Katherine “Kitty” who compelled him to eventually move back to her hometown, San Diego. Prior to their return to
the San Diego border region, the Kaufmans lived in Phoenix and San Francisco where they established themselves
as “prominent business and social activists” through Julie’s work in television stations in those cities. “Katherine L.
Kaufman Obituary,” San Diego Union-Tribune (Oct. 2, 2016); Robert P. Laurence, “From Hal to Homer,
Kaufman’s TV Path had Satisfying Turns,” San Diego Union-Tribune (April 1, 1996), E-1.
66
Julian Kaufman, “Tips on TV Operation in City of Medium Size,” Broadcasting, (Sept. 8, 1952), 68, 85, 87;
Laurence, “Kaufman’s TV Path had Satisfying Turns,” San Diego Union-Tribune, E-1.

61

viewed as second-class citizens by the San Diego establishment.”
67
Nevertheless, in February
1956 Kaufman snagged ABC programming away from rival KFMB Channel 8, thus essentially
making XETV a Mexican ABC affiliate and affirming the cross-border station’s economic
viability.
68

Indeed, XETV’s broadcasts were well-received by San Diegans and many advertisers
comfortably purchased ad time on Channel 6 in the 1950s and throughout its six decade run as a
Mexican English-language station. By the 2000s the Grupo Televisa-owned XETV, with a
broadcast signal emanating from Tijuana, boldly branded itself as “San Diego 6.” In 2017
XETV’s general manager recognized Channel 6’s place in the local social landscape. “If your
family is a native, your grandparents, your parents, and you all probably grew up watching
Channel 6.”
69
XETV broadcast in English until May 2017 when the station was unable to renew
its affiliation agreement with the CW Network. As a result, XETV’s owners at Grupo Televisa –
by that point led by Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s grandson, Emilio Azcárraga Jean – switched
the station to an all-Spanish-language format. After 64 years, the first TV station in northwestern
Mexico became a Spanish-language station.
70

67
John Freeman, “Channel 6 Looks to Past for Future,” San Diego Union-Tribune (March 26, 1993), E-10.
Opposition to XETV – often in the form of lawsuits – would be a constant facet of the station’s life, leading to the
FCC forcing the end of the XETV-ABC affiliation in 1972 as well as legal disputes in the 1990s and 2000s when
XETV became a Fox and then a CW affiliate. Many of the opponents of XETV also criticized the channel for
branding itself as a San Diego station even though it was based in Tijuana, Baja California.
68
“XETV TV to Carry ABC Films, Kines,” Broadcasting, (February 27, 1956), 88. XETV would typically
broadcast the ABC programming after the network delivered its signal to the XETV offices in University Heights
where it was reproduced on film or kinescope and physically transported across the border to th e Channel 6
transmission facilities in Tijuana in a process called “bicycling” by industry insiders.
69
XETV/Bay City Television Vice President and General Manager Chuck Dunning also stated, “I’ve talked to a
number of people whose primary language is Spanish and they said they grew up here or in Tijuana watching
Channel 6 and that’s how they learned English.” “History of XETV,” in Carlos Correa YouTube Channel
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItIoOTZfhdM, uploaded March 31, 2017); see also Gary Sassaman, “I t's
Official: XETV picks up The CW affiliation,” Innocent Bystander Blog (June 3, 2008).
70
George Varga, “CW6 to end news programming to become Spanish-language outlet,” San Diego Union-Tribune
(January 26, 2017); Brad Graves, “Bay City Television Shutting Down, to Lay Off 127,” San Diego Business
Journal (February 16, 2017). The end of the CW affiliation was ultimately the end of an era as XETV’s transition to
becoming an affiliate of Televisa’s Canal 5 network led to the dissolution of Bay City Television subsidiary and the
laying off of its 150 staff.

62

Nevertheless, the success of XETV gave impetus for Azcárraga (by then on the favored
end of crony state capitalism) to acquire the concession for Tijuana’s other VHF TV frequency,
XEWT-12. Canal 12 went on the air on July 18, 1960, as a Telesistema affiliate solely in
Spanish to serve viewers in Tijuana and – to the delight of Azcárraga and his associates –
Spanish-speaking San Diegans.
71
As communications scholar Kristin Moran notes, XEWT
became “popular with Spanish-speaking San Diego audiences who had direct access to Mexican
television.” XEWT aired telenovelas, sports, and local news. While by no means a U.S. Spanish-
language TV station, XEWT’s cross-border appeal among Mexican American viewers enticed
Azcarraga and his Telesistema associates to enter the U.S. TV market directly.
72

Abandoning attempts to sell programming to the U.S. networks, the Telesistema investors
began entering the U.S. airwaves by purchasing TV stations in Mexican border towns to repeat
XEWT’s border TV model of successfully building an advertising base on the U.S. side of the
border as well as cultivating audiences of Spanish-speaking Mexican Americans. In less than a
decade Telesistema investors launched TV stations throughout the U.S.-Mexican border region,
including XHBC (Mexicali-Calexico, 1957), XEJ-TV (Ciudad Juárez-El Paso, 1954), XEFE
(Nuevo Laredo-Laredo, 1962), followed by XHFA (Ambos Nogales) and XHAB (Matamoros-
Brownsville) in the 1960s.
73
Advertising accounts from U.S. businesses, paying in dollars just as
San Diego businesses did for XETV-6 commercials, were always welcomed by these border TV
stations.
74

71
Azcarraga Vidaurreta and O’Farrill owned XEWT Channel 12 through their concessionaire, Television Calimex,
S.A. de C.V.
72
Kristin C. Moran, “The Development of Spanish-Language Television in San Diego: A Contemporary History,”
Journal of San Diego History, Vol. 50, no. 1 and 2 (Winter/Spring 2004): 47–48.
73
“Habla Espanol?” Television Age (January 15, 1968), 61-62.
74
Kenton T. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development (New York,
Routledge, 2016), 37.

63

The Tijuana-San Diego borderland TV stations XETV and XEWT laid the path for a
greater involvement in the U.S. Spanish-speaking television market on the part of Azcárraga,
Kaufman, Rene Anselmo and other partners. Strengthened by the structure of Mexican state
capitalism and Telesistema’s essential private monopoly, Azcárraga and his transnational
associates were in a strong position to enter the U.S. TV market through their experience
utilizing their Mexican border town stations to access U.S. viewers and advertisers.

Raoul Cortez and U.S. Spanish-Language Broadcasting in San Antonio
Before Azcárraga and his associates formally entered the U.S. TV market by acquiring
U.S. stations in the winter of 1961-1962, there already was a small, but historically significant
Spanish-language TV presence in the U.S. Southwest with Raoul Cortez of San Antonio, Texas,
as its main protagonist. Cortez’s founding of KCOR-TV Channel 41, the first Spanish TV station
in the continental U.S. stands as a story of immigrant tenacity in the context of mid-twentieth
century as well as the longer history of U.S. mass media given how people of color have
generally lacked the capital to own their own print, radio or TV outlets.
75
Cortez and KCOR-41’s
history demonstrate how U.S. Spanish-language TV was already serving as a form of U.S. Latino
identity-building prior to the industry’s 1960s expansion with the entry of Mexican capital.
Although there was a limited Spanish-language presence in early U.S. radio and TV
broadcasting history, the first days of U.S. broadcasting were almost entirely in English.
Throughout the border region, radio broadcasters scoffed at requests to devote airtime to Spanish
broadcasting. Airtime was expensive and, the station owners reasoned, should be exploited to the

75
Susan Brinson has noted the vitriolic opposition from conservatives whenever state support to encourage greater
ethnic/racial minority ownership of media outlets has been proposed - see “Radio’s Covenant: The Regulatory
Failure of Minority Ownership of Broadcast Radio Facilities,” in Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American
Life, ed. Michael Keith (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008), 9-22; Mora, Making Hispanics, 141-142.

64

full in English. Although no full-time Spanish-language stations in either radio or television
emerged in the 1920s or 1930s, it was clear that interest in Spanish-language broadcasting
existed in communities with large Mexican immigrant populations. Through a radio brokerage
system, intermediaries (predominantly Mexican American) convinced Anglo radio station
owners to sell them blocks of airtime for Mexican musicians, performers and disc jockeys to
perform. A notable example of this is Pedro González who became a pioneer of Spanish-
language radio in Los Angeles when he and his musician friends formed “Los Madrugadores”
(the early-risers) to play Mexican rancheras in the early dawn-hour blocks of time he purchased
from KMPC-AM. González incorporated news commentary into his program, famously
criticizing the deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in L.A. during the Great
Depression, culminating in his imprisonment and his own deportation under false accusations.
76

Other Mexican American brokers in L.A. and throughout the borderlands successfully
gained blocks of radio airtime to entertain the region’s Mexican communities, including Raoul
Cortez who had significant success as a broker in San Antonio. Born in 1905 in Jalapa, Veracruz,
Cortez and his family migrated to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas amid the high violence of the
Mexican Revolution. During the family’s time on the border, young Raoul worked as a street
vendor to help support the family.
77
As an adult, he moved to San Antonio where he worked as a
reporter for the Mexican immigrant-owned La Prensa newspaper, gaining insight into the realm

76
González’s critiques against city political and law enforcement leaders grew to the point that civic leaders used an
allegation of rape to imprison and then deport the early morning radio personality and community advocate.
Although the young woman who claimed Gonzalez raped her recanted (acknowledging the pressure of civic leaders
to make her allegations in the first place), the leader of Los Madrugadores languished in jail until appeals from
Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas succeeded in acquiring a comm uting of González’s prison term and his
deportation to Mexico. See Cecilia Rasmussen, “The Hard Life of a Latino Hero,” L.A. Times (May 3, 1998); also
Paul Espinosa’s Ballad of an Unsung Hero a 2006 PBS documentary film on the life of Pedro Gonzalez.
77
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez and Emilio Zamora, Beyond the Latino World War II Hero: The Social and Political
Legacy of a Generation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 187.

65

of mass media. Cortez also worked as a booking agent for Mexican musicians, actors and
performers who visited town, giving him the social capital to enter the radio broker system.
78

In addition to his entrepreneurialism, Cortez was an active member of the local chapter of
the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Mexican American-serving civil
rights organization founded in Corpus Christi dedicated to repealing discriminatory laws
targeting Tejanos. Cortez served as the organization’s president for two terms in 1948 and
1949.
79
Cortez’s activism was inspired by the racism he encountered as a Mexican immigrant
throughout his life, including an incident when he was already a radio station owner. Cortez and
Cosmé Hinojosa, the Mexican Consul in San Antonio, were denied service at an area café after
they “started conversing in Spanish.” The café’s Anglo janitor dismissively told them the
establishment did not serve Spanish-speakers. Cortez questioned the café’s owner about this
degrading policy, but the proprietor reportedly responded “I serve even white trash in my place,
but no Mexicans.”
80
Cortez’s entry into Spanish-language radio in the 1940s and television in the
1950s was defined by his entrepreneurial streak and by a sense of promoting social and political
empowerment among Tejanos and more recent Mexican immigrants in the San Antonio area
during a time of overt racism in the Anglo Texas.
After successfully brokering time slots for Mexican radio performers for numerous years,
Cortez submitted a broadcasting license application to the FCC in 1944 to construct and operate

78
By the late 1930s and 1940s, KMAC 630 AM, an English-language station, was Cortez’s main buyer of time slots
for Mexican musicians and artists who then performed their works live on the air. Rivas-Rodriguez and Zamora,
Beyond the Latino World War II Hero, 187; Jordan Grant, “Earning a place on the dial: Raoul Cortez, KCOR, and
Spanish-language radio,” O Say Can You See? Stories from the National Museum of American History (Oct. 12,
2015),
(http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/earning-place-dial-raoul-cortez-kcor-and-spanish-language-radio).
79
LULAC, founded in 1929, soon expanded throughout South Texas and chapters later opened in Southern
California. Benjamin Marquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1993). Grant, “Earning a place on the dial.”
80
“Consul Says Café Owner Insulted Him,” Austin Statesman (June 12, 1952), A-16. According to the Statesman,
LULAC investigated the matter.

66

a 1,000-kilowatt radio station serving San Antonio. In a sign of a recurrent theme of U.S.
Spanish-language mass media identity-building, Cortez argued that a Spanish-language AM
station would encourage Mexican American support for U.S. efforts in World War II. Cortez
“won over” the FCC and secured a $75,000 loan to build the first Spanish-format radio station in
the continental U.S., but it did not beam onto the airwaves until after the war due to materials
scarcity. Cortez’s radio station went on the air on May 1, 1946, as KCOR 1350 AM, with a call
sign in his honor. Scholar Donald Browne has suggested Cortez may also have been the first
minority businessman to own and operate a radio station in the continental U.S.
81

The early days of KCOR-AM were humble. Initially, KCOR-AM broadcast only in the
daytime hours when most listeners were awake but then went dark in the evening. KCOR-AM’s
programming was composed principally of recorded popular Mexican music and live
performances by Mexican and Tejano singers and musicians in addition to occasional radio soap
operas and quiz shows. KCOR-AM inaugurated a period of slow but marked growth in Spanish-
language radio stations throughout the U.S. Southwest.
82
It is worth remembering that in this
regional context U.S. Spanish-language mass media like KCOR-AM was not yet cultivating a

81
Jorge Reina Schement and Ricardo Flores, “The Origins of Spanish-Language Radio: The Case of San Antonio,
Texas,” Journalism History (Summer 1977), 56-57; Donald Browne, “Speaking in Our Own Tongues: Linguistic
Minority Radio in the United States,” in Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life, ed. Michael Keith
(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008), 25-28. The idea that Cortez was the first non-white businessperson in the
U.S. to own and operate a radio station is further supported by the fact that the first African American -owned radio
station did not go on the air until October 3, 1949, as WERD 860AM, broadcasting from Atlanta, Georgia. See
William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999, 136-138;
Nick Manos, “Blayton, Jesse B., Sr. (1879-1977),” BlackPast.org, (http://www.blackpast.org/aah/blayton-sr-jesse-b-
1879-1977); Yasmin Amer, “America’s First Black-Owned Radio Station Let the Words of MLK and Others Ring,”
CNN (Feb. 10, 2016), (https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/10/living/werd-first-black-radio-station-feat/index.html).
82
Mexican actor Francisco “Paco” Astol was a regular personality on the station, serving as the host of a quiz show
and acting in “Los Abuelitos,” a radio soap opera. Paco’s brother, Leonardo “Lalo” García Astol served as the
station’s director of programming, on-air-announcer, and traffic manager. Lalo Astol used his experience as a
comedic actor in in Mexican and Tejano theater to write scripts for radio dramas on KCOR -AM. Elizabeth C.
Ramírez, “Astol, Leonardo GarcÍa [Lalo],” Handbook of Texas Online
(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fas08), accessed Feb. 1, 2018; Federico A. Subervi-Velez,
Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States-Sociology, 328; Félix F. Gutiérrez and Jorge Reina Schement,
Spanish-Language Radio in the Southwestern United States (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 9-12.

67

broader Latino identity – it was still mainly oriented to capturing ethnic Mexican consumers
north of the border.
The pattern of radio setting the stage for television, as we have seen in the U.S. and
Mexico, holds true for the case of Spanish-language television in the U.S. as well. KCOR-AM’s
success helped create momentum for the opening of more Spanish-language radio stations in the
borderlands, but the Spanish language’s leap into the U.S. television field was a slow process
that closely resembled the many years of “brokering” Spanish broadcasts on U.S. radio stations.
KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles, for example, aired one-hour blocks of Spanish-language
programming on the weekends; English-language stations in New York and Miami similarly
aired short blocks of Spanish programming throughout their weekly schedules.
83

In a development similar to his transition from radio broker to station owner, Cortez
opened the U.S. Spanish-language television market by starting his own TV station in mid-1955.
Cortez submitted his permit application to the FCC to construct KCOR-TV Channel 41 two
years earlier, reportedly investing $400,000 in building the station and buying the necessary
equipment to reach the 800,000 Spanish-speaking people he estimated lived within a 100 mile
radius of San Antonio.
84
KCOR-41 broke onto the airwaves with its inaugural June 10, 1955,
broadcast hosted by KCOR-AM radio personality “Lalo” Astol.
85
Live variety show
performances, broadcast simultaneously on KCOR-AM, made up most of the station’s

83
Wilkinson, Fifty Years of Spanish-Language TV in the U.S., 53.
84
“Spanish Television Station Sought,” Austin Statesman (June 24, 1953), 20.
85
Elizabeth C. Ramírez, "Astol, Leonardo GarcÍa [Lalo]," Handbook of Texas Online,
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fas08. Lalo Astol’s presence on Channel 41’s premiere bears
witness to the close-knit community of associates that defined the Cortez-led radio and television projects in mid-
century San Antonio which shared the same two-story studio. See also Rene A. Guzman, “Spanish-language TV
born in S.A.,” San Antonio Express-News (June 21, 2015),
http://www.expressnews.com/150years/culture/article/San-Antonio-is-home-to-the-nation-s-first-6340586.php

68

programming.
86
The live programming KCOR-41 aired was made possible by the station’s only
camera – an RCA model. Emilio Nicolás, Sr., Raoul Cortez’s son-in-law and an early general
manager of Channel 41, later recalled “We used that one camera to do miracles.”
87
Though a
bold business venture, Cortez’s independent Spanish-language TV project lacked the resources
of larger English-language network affiliates.
KCOR Channel 41 became San Antonio’s third television station upon its 1955 launch,
but broadcast as a UHF channel. With VHF channels in the San Antonio area having already
been assigned to other local stations as well as to broadcasters with powerful signals in Austin,
Corpus Christi, and Houston, Cortez had no choice but to broadcast on Channel 41.
88
As stated
previously, early TV sets could only receive signals from channels 2-13 and needed an expensive
converter box to receive channels 14-84. KCOR’s UHF signal profoundly limited the economic
prospects of the fledgling Spanish-language station and heralded the challenges KMEX Channel
34 and other Spanish-language TV stations would also face in their early years.
In addition to live programming, a significant chunk of KCOR’s airtime was comprised
of programs purchased from Telesistema Mexicano. Cortez purchased telenovelas, sporting
events, and cultural events previously filmed and broadcast by Telesistema because of his need
to bolster the station’s afternoon and weekend schedules. Prior to the advent of satellite
communication, Telesistema shows were sent north for re-broadcasting via the Laredo border

86
Like Astol, many other early KCOR-AM and KCOR-TV announcers and personalities came from transnational
backgrounds marked by careers which crisscrossed Spanish-speaking border communities along the Mexico-Texas
boundary. Federico A. Subervi-Velez, Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States-Sociology, 335.
87
Rene A. Guzmán, “Spanish-language TV born in S.A.,” San Antonio Express-News (June 21, 2015),
http://www.expressnews.com/150years/culture/article/San-Antonio-is-home-to-the-nation-s-first-6340586.php
88
San Antonio’s VHF stations were 4, 5, 9, and 12 while Austin (7), Corpus Christi (3 and 10), and Houston (2, 8,
11, and 13) took up the rest of the VHF channels. “Television,” Handbook of Texas Online,
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ect03).

69

crossing where the films would clear customs before being transported to the KCOR-TV studios
in a process called “bicycling” by industry insiders.
Importing Telesistema programming helped lower KCOR-41’s expenditures in producing
its own programming but its financial success was hardly a foregone conclusion. The few
scholarly works that have explored U.S. Spanish-language television have often hailed its
historical importance without sufficiently noting the enormous logistical challenges Canal 41
faced as the station’s production costs outpaced its ability to attract advertising revenue from
local businesses. Emilio Nicolás, Sr. (Cortez’s son-in-law) later recalled that recruiting
advertisers was difficult because ad buyers did not acknowledge the station’s popularity among
viewers. Due to the methodologies of ratings service companies, Mexican and other Latino
viewers were generally not included in ratings calculations for local San Antonio stations.
89

By January 1961 it appeared that KCOR-41, in dire financial straits, would either switch
to a predominantly English-language format or go out of business altogether. In an appeal to a
wider audience, Cortez renamed KCOR-TV into KUAL-TV (“quality TV”) and increased
English-language programming on the station but did not completely eliminate Mexican-oriented
programming.
90
In addition to its self-produced English classes, KUAL aired more shows in
English such as Hawkeye and I am the Law, a program simply titled Science Fiction, and
collections of black-and-white silent films titled Mischief Makers. Interestingly, KUAL also
regularly carried the local San Antonio LULAC chapter’s meetings live – an early sign of
attempts to use Spanish-language TV to raise Latino participation in U.S. political systems.
91

89
Federico A. Subervi-Velez, Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States-Sociology, 335.
90
Federico A. Subervi-Velez, Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States-Sociology, 335. Some secondary
sources assert that Cortez sold KCOR to Anglo businessmen who renamed the station KUAL, but newspaper
coverage of the station’s call-sign change indicate Cortez Enterprises remained the owner of the station, see
“Channel 41 Now KUAL-TV,” San Antonio Light (Jan. 26, 1961), 8.
91
“KUAL-TV Channel 41 Schedule,” San Antonio Express and News (January 29, 1961), 2 and (July 2, 1961), GE-
2. The daily presence of Mischief Makers on the KUAL TV schedule suggests the 1910s/1920s era shorts featuring

70

The challenges faced by KCOR/KUAL’s Mexican American management reflected the
struggles faced by other entrepreneurs of color in the U.S. who have tried to own and operate
their own TV stations. It was not until 1975 that the first wholly African American-owned TV
station went on the air with Detroit’s WGPR Channel 62. WGPR struggled to generate ratings
and revenue until being purchased by CBS in 1995.
92
TV stations oriented for (but not owned
by) African Americans debuted earlier, such as WOOK-14 in Washington, D.C., as the first
Black-oriented TV station in the country in March 1963, followed weeks later by KIIX-22 in Los
Angeles. KIIX-22 abandoned its African American programming by August 1963 due to the
channel’s high content production costs while WOOK-14 had more success with its
entertainment and news programming until financial and FCC licensing issues took the station
off the air in 1972.
93
The intensive capital required to run and develop content for independent
TV stations effectively rendered U.S. television unreachable for most businesspeople of color.
KCOR-41’s 1955 debut is a historically-significant milestone for the U.S. Spanish-
language TV industry (and critically important for KMEX-34’s founding), but the station’s
precarious financial situation by the early sixties put the medium’s economic viability in
question. Was there room in U.S. television for ethnic-oriented Spanish-language TV? The
medium’s expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with KMEX in 1962, bears witness to

the hijinks of mischievous children were accessible for Spanish-speaking viewers due to their lack of English-
language dialogue.
92
WGPR-TV’s programming, which included a mix of African American variety and dance shows, as well as an
Arab American-focused variety show, was unique but struggled to compete for ratings against the local NBC and
CBS affiliates as well as the local Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) affiliate across the border in Windsor,
Ontario. By 1995 WGPR-TV lost its status as an independent African American-owned station when it was sold to
CBS amid a change in local channel affiliations. Dan Holly, “The Battle to Keep Detroit’s WGPR,” Black
Enterprise vol. 25, no. 8 (March 1995), 19-20; Matt Van Houten, “WGPR-TV (1975–1995),” BlackPast.org
(http://www.blackpast.org/aah/wgpr-tv-1975-1995).
93
J. M. Richards, “WOOK-TV/14, Washington DC,” The History of UHF Television
(http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/wook.html); Cecil Smith, “The TV Scene: Things Get Wild on New KIIX-
TV,” L.A. Times (April 5, 1963), D-20; K.M. Richards, “KBIC-TV/22, Los Angeles CA,” The History of UHF
Television (http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/kbic.html); Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A.
Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14; “KIIX Cancels Shows, Fires 35 Employees,” L.A. Times (Aug. 3, 1970), B-3.

71

Spanish TV’s appeal among Mexican Americans and other Latinos. However, the financial
realities of the U.S. TV business meant that the main architects of U.S. Spanish-language
television had to be well-financed capitalists capable of making the massive expenditures
required by the TV industry rather than independent Latino businesspeople.

The Entry of Mexican Capital into the U.S. Spanish-language TV Industry
Buoyed by the success of Tijuana’s XETV and XEWT, Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta and
his business associates, supported by the profits generated by Telesistema under Mexican state
capitalism, began entering the U.S. TV market in late 1961 through station purchases. The tiny
and struggling U.S. Spanish-language TV industry was about to be dominated and expanded by
Mexican television. Kenton Wilkinson, a scholar of Spanish-language TV history, has written
that this would allow for Telesistema Mexicano to earn more money for the existing productions
(paid for in Mexican pesos) while also attracting higher advertising revenue (paid for in U.S.
dollars).
94
Although purchasing and operating TV stations in the U.S. would be expensive, it
could turn profits amid the untapped potential of the Spanish-speaking people of the United
States. The sizable Los Angeles market with its great Mexican immigrant population loomed as
one of the most promising areas in which to initiate a TV operation.
95

Nevertheless, as a Mexican national, Azcárraga Vidaurreta could not outright purchase
U.S. stations himself. According to Section 310 (b) of the 1934 Communications Act which
established the modern FCC, it was forbidden for “any alien or the representative of any alien”
as well as for “any corporation” or subsidiary “organized under the laws of any foreign

94
Kenton T. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development (New York,
Routledge, 2016), 37.
95
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 94.

72

government” to own or hold a license for a U.S. broadcast station. Furthermore, the
Communications Act made it unlawful for more than 20% of a U.S. broadcasting corporation’s
capital to be owned or voted on by “aliens or their representatives.” As a solution, Azcárraga
Vidaurreta turned to his associates to create the U.S.-based Spanish International Broadcasting
Corporation (SIBC) in 1961 to serve as the legal owner/holding company of the TV stations the
Azcárraga-led transnational group would purchase. Azcárraga sweetened the deal by
underwriting SIBC’s financial losses in its first years.
96
Although the SIBC partners filed permits
for the construction and operation of KMEX Channel 34 in Los Angeles first, a rebranded
KCOR/KUAL would be the first SIBC-run station.
97

SIBC was transnational in character and provided the legal framework for KMEX’s
formation, but in reality the company was financed by Azcárraga Vidaurreta and followed his
initiative. The Azcárragas’ seigneurial dominance of SIBC would prove problematic for the SIN
network in the 1980s, but in 1961 SIBC served its purpose in allowing Azcárraga and fellow
investors to formally enter the U.S. TV market.
98

Longtime Azcárraga associates Rene Anselmo (Telesistema’s U.S. agent) and Julian
Kaufman of XETV and Edward Noble (founder of the advertising firm Noble y Asociados) were
among the first partners on SIBC as well as theater owner Frank Fouce, Sr. A descendant of
Spanish immigrants, he formed Fouce Amusement Enterprises which purchased and operated the
Mayan, California, Liberty, and Roosevelt theaters in Downtown Los Angeles. By the 1950s
Fouce leased the Million Dollar Theater to host Mexican vaudeville shows and project Spanish-

96
Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the U.S., 38; Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. § 310 (b).
97
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 94.
98
Fernández and Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga, 93-95; Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the
United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,” in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual
Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 142.

73

language films for the city’s Mexican immigrant and Mexican American populations. Fouce’s
distribution of Mexican films brought him into contact with Azcárraga Vidaurreta (by way of the
latter’s ownership stake in RKO’s Churubusco Studios). The two men’s transnational business
partnership solidified when Fouce supported Azcárraga’s entry into TV by working with
Southern Californian manufacturers to supply TV sets to the Mexican capital ahead of XEW-
TV’s 1951 launch. At the time Fouce reportedly said “television is a game destined to separate
the men from the boys.” Azcárraga Vidaurreta remembered Fouce’s crucial support in the early
Mexican TV race by naming Fouce the president of XETV/Bay City Television.
99
The capital
from Fouce’s theater company was critical in orienting SIBC to initially target the Los Angeles
TV market first. A great deal of the funds for construction and early operations of what became
KMEX-34 came from the Fouce partnership. Frank Fouce Sr. did not live to see the potential of
his investment in SIBC (passing away at age 62 in January 1962), but his son Frank Jr. took the
reins of Fouce Amusement Enterprises and worked diligently with Anselmo, Kaufman, and
Azcárraga to bring Spanish-language television to Los Angeles.
100

The transnational SIBC investors aimed to begin their U.S. TV venture in Los Angeles
through what became KMEX-34, but their first formal U.S. operations began in San Antonio
through their purchase of Raoul Cortez’s KCOR/KUAL Channel 41. According to TV industry
scholar Kenton Wilkinson, Cortez approached Azcárraga Vidaurreta as early as 1960 and offered
to sell him the station due to its high operating costs. Emilio Nicolás, Sr., Cortez’s son-in-law

99
“Frank Fouce, Theater Owner, Dies,” L.A. Times (Jan. 13, 1962), 3. Although not directly quoted, Walter Ames’s
article “Mexico Television Chain Plans Told,” L.A. Times (June 11, 1950), B-6 suggests Fouce made this comment
when interviewed about his television collaboration with Azcárraga Vidaurreta.
100
The Fouces are also consequential in the history of la televisión hispanohablante in the U.S. for Frank Fouce Jr.’s
long legal conflict with SIN network President Rene Anselmo; the shareholder lawsuit the younger Fouce initiated
in the mid-1970s ultimately led to the dissolution of SIN and KMEX’s sale to Hallmark Cards and its new Univision
network in 1986-1987. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the U.S., 38; “Frank Fouce, Theater Owner,
Dies,” L.A. Times (Jan. 13, 1962), 3; América Rodriguez, Making Latino News: Race, Language, Class (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 62.

74

and one of the principal investors in SIBC, arranged KCOR/KUAL Channel 41’s sale to SIBC in
September 1961 for $200,000 although the sale was not announced until December 27 of that
year.
101
Scholar Nicholas Valenzuela asserts Channel 41’s selling price was a “bargain
basement” value “even for those days, due largely to the fact that no one wanted UHF stations.”
His pioneering and historically significant television station sold off, Cortez focused his energies
on managing KCOR 1350AM for most of the next decade before passing away at age 68 in
1971.
102

The SIBC purchase of KCOR/KUAL allowed the transnational partners to transform the
station into the inaugural flagship of SIBC’s coming SIN TV network. Although there was
continuity with the appointment of Emilio Nicolás, Sr., as the station’s general manager,
profound changes came quickly.
103
In a move which asserted the station’s regime change,
KCOR/KUAL’s call sign was changed to KWEX Channel 41 in homage to Telesistema
Mexicano’s flagship TV station in Mexico City, XEW-TV.

Beginning with KWEX’s highly
advertised “official” birthday on February 2, 1962, telenovelas, such as Pecado Mortal and
María Guadalupe, as well as bullfights, variety shows, and 15-minute nightly newscasts defined
KWEX’s new daily schedule.
104

101
Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the U.S., 38-39. Cortez likely also felt that a wider breadth of
Telesistema Mexicano programming on Channel 41 would greatly help the station. “Mexicans Buy S.A. Channel
41,” San Antonio Light (Dec 28, 1961), 31.Emilio Nicolas, Sr., was born in Ciudad Frontera, Coahuila, Mexico.
Rene A. Guzman, “Spanish-language TV born in S.A.,” San Antonio Express-News (June 21, 2015),
http://www.expressnews.com/150years/culture/article/San-Antonio-is-home-to-the-nation-s-first-6340586.php
102
Nicholas Valenzuela, “Organizational Evolution of a Spanish-Language Television Network: An Environmental
Approach,” (PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 1985), 188-190; “Broadcaster Dies,” Austin Statesman (Dec. 18,
1971), A19; “Raoul Cortez Dies at 66,” San Antonio Express and News (December 18, 1971), 52.
103
“Ch. 41 Given New Name, New Manager,” San Antonio Light (Jan. 28, 1962), 2-F; Emilio Nicolas, Sr., married
Raoul Cortez’s daughter Irma Alicia in 1953, allowing him the opportunity to enter the emerging world of Spanish
television in the U.S. Prior to emigrating to San Antonio where he served as KWEX’s long-time general manager
(and a key member of SIBC and SIN), Nicolas, of Spanish and Armenian ancestry, grew up in the rural northern
Coahuila community of Fronteras. Kay Powers, “Channel 9 to Take on Mexican Flavor,” Austin American (Nov. 18,
1962), F-16; “Emilio Nicolas, Sr.,” SIN TV (http://www.sintv.org/emilio-nicolas-sr.html)
104
Wilkinson, Fifty Years of Spanish-Language TV in the U.S., 38-39; Valenzuela, “Evolution of a Spanish-
Language TV Network,” 188-190; “KWEX Buys Programs From Mexico,” San Antonio Light (Jan. 28, 1962), 3-F;

75

After the Canal 41 purchase, Azcárraga Vidaurreta founded the Spanish International
Network (SIN) in 1961 to create the programming and marketing for the stations SIBC (a
separate legal entity) was purchasing. Although U.S. law limited foreign ownership of TV
stations, it did not limit foreign ownership of TV networks.
105
KWEX Channel 41’s role as SIN’s
flagship station came about after the Telesistema stations in the Mexican border communities of
Nuevo Laredo (XEFE Canal 11), Ciudad Juárez (XEJ Canal 5), Heroica Nogales (XHFA Canal
2), Mexicali (XHBC Canal 3), and of course Tijuana XEWT Canal 12 affiliated with SIN. These
VHF-band stations were accessible over their respective sister U.S. cities’ airwaves and recruited
advertisers through SIN’s U.S. offices.
106
From its start SIN was a cross-border U.S.-oriented
Spanish-language network – it mattered less where one was tuning in from than whether one
spoke Spanish.
After KWEX-41’s successful debut in February 1962, the transnational SIBC investors
set their sights on premiering a Spanish-language TV station in what was still their principal U.S.
target – the Los Angeles television market with its sizable Spanish-speaking Mexican/Latino
audience. KWEX was the Spanish International Network’s flagship and first station, but KMEX-
34 in Southern California would be the station which would expand and shape the developing
U.S. Spanish-language TV market.

“KWEX-TV Ad,” San Antonio Light (Feb. 2, 1962), 17; “Today’s Television Picture,” San Antonio Express (Feb. 5,
1962), 9-A. The two novelas originally aired in 1960 on Telesistema Mexicano.
105
Félix F. Gutiérrez and Jorge Reina Schement, “Spanish International Network: the Flow of Television from
Mexico to the United States,” Communication Research vol. 11, no. 2 (April 1984), 244-245. SIBC partner and
long-time Telesistema Mexicano associate Rene Anselmo served as SIN’s president from 1961 until 1986 .
106
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in
Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

76

Conclusion
Spanish-language television in Los Angeles was the result of a long trajectory of
transnational technical, financial, and cultural interaction which shaped television from the late
1920s to the 1960s. The formation of Spanish-language television through its worldwide debut
starting on August 31, 1950 was profoundly shaped by the workings of Mexican state capitalism
which often privileged businessmen enjoying the state’s favor. Spanish-language television
would entertain, inform, and educate on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border, but the rejection
of Mexican TV as a publicly funded service similar to the BBC and the monopolistic private
ownership model the country adopted held significant implications for how Spanish TV in the
U.S. would function. Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta advanced the television industry in Mexico
and by the 1950s promoted Telesistema Mexicano in the United States. Encouraged by success
in Tijuana-San Diego broadcasting in English from Mexico across international borders,
Azcárraga and his business associates began entering the U.S. TV market broadcasting into the
U.S. from Mexican border towns before deciding to purchase U.S. stations from which to
broadcast Telesistema programming.
The history of Raoul Cortez’s KCOR-41 in San Antonio represents a historic
accomplishment for ethnic U.S. media, but the station’s massive capital costs endangered its
survival. The entry of transnational Mexican capital through Azcárraga and his associates’
purchase of KCOR (rebranded as KWEX) gave the small and struggling U.S. Spanish-language
TV industry renewed impetus. Mexican industrialists, beneficiaries of Mexico’s mid-century
state capitalism model, would dominate and finance U.S. Spanish-language TV rather than
Mexican American or other Latino American entrepreneurs – a problematization of the struggles
faced by people of color in owning mass media outlets in the United States. Before the Spanish-

77

language TV medium began its prolific expansion in Los Angeles, la televisión hispanohablante
already promoted Spanish as a unifying characteristic of a U.S. Latino ethnic and cultural
identity. Questions on the place of Spanish in Latinos’ life in the U.S., identity, and belonging
would shape Spanish-language TV’s growth in Southern California.

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Chapter 2: Television and Community-Building for “A City Within a City”
during KMEX-34’s Early Years, 1962-1970

“Estamos comenzando a escribir la historia de la televisión en español en el oeste
norteamericano.”
1

– Fernando Escandón,

September 30, 1962

Upon premiering in fall 1962 as the first Spanish-language TV station in California,
KMEX’s business model focusing on Spanish-speaking viewers signaled one of the earliest
segmentations of the metro Los Angeles TV landscape. KMEX, one industry reporter wrote, was
different because rather than attracting “every viewer in sight” it was aimed at a specific group
many observers considered a niche market – predominantly Mexican American Spanish-
speakers. Channel 34 was “significant because it will soon show whether a station can select the
viewers it wants – and hold them long enough to turn a profit.”
2
SIN President Rene Anselmo
summed up KMEX’s Latino ethnic identity-building project soon after the station’s launch.
KMEX’s task, Anselmo asserted, was to instigate “the gradual integration of these people into
the American community, and…to do all in our power to help them retain their own cultural
identity.”
3

KMEX’s historical development in the 1960s demonstrates the ways in which the U.S.
Spanish-format TV medium used language to promote a U.S. Latino ethnic identity. By using
Spanish as a language for entertaining viewers (televidentes) with soap operas, films, and sports

1
“We are beginning to write the history of Spanish-language television in the U.S. West,” Fernando Escandón
quoted in Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad. Directed by Gerardo Pallanes, narrated by Fernando Escandón.
Univision KMEX Channel 34, September 27, 1992; quoted also in Martin Rossman, “New TV Station Aims at
Spanish-Speaking,” Los Angeles Times (Sept. 30, 1962), H1. Fernando Escandón, whose actual name was Josue
Quezada Escandón, had experience as a radio host on radio station XEQF-AM in his hometown of Cananea, Sonora,
Mexico. Early program listings for KMEX list him as Josue rather than Fernando. “Pide alcalde de Cananea Luis
Carlos Cha apoyo a las fuerzas federales y estatales,” Termómetro (Aug. 17, 2008),
(https://www.termometroenlinea.com.mx/vernoticiashistorial.php?artid=3465), accessed May 13, 2020.
2
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
3
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.

79

as well as a language for advertising U.S. consumer products and services, KMEX asserted the
role of Spanish as a public language of consumption and everyday life for Latinos living in the
U.S. Beyond merely serving to coalesce a niche market of viewers/consumers, KMEX-34
promoted the recognition of an ethnic identity anchored in the Spanish language as a cultural and
ethnic identifier. As Cristina Mora has written, the national Spanish-language TV in the 1970s
promoted an inclusive U.S.-based Latino panethnicity transcending Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto
Rican differences.
In the early 1960s when U.S. Spanish-language TV was not yet a national project – but
rather an untested pair of local stations operating in San Antonio and Los Angeles serving
mainly ethnic Mexican audiences – much of the medium’s dissemination of Latino identity
assumed most viewers were of Mexican ancestry. From the beginning the station’s content
reflected its’ owners and advertisers’ interest to appeal to as broad a Spanish-speaking consumer
base as possible – and thus the use of panethnic identifiers such as “Latino” and “Hispano
Americano” – but most content was aimed at ethnic Mexican viewers. KMEX’s need to attract
Spanish-speakers from other Latin American nationalities in Southern California, however, made
KMEX more than just a Telesistema Mexicano operation north of the border.
The first years KMEX-34 broke onto the Southern Californian airwaves demonstrate the
myriad economic and programming challenges that went into making the station financially
successful as it established itself as a U.S.-based Spanish-language television station. Canal 34’s
appeal among Mexican/Latino televidentes was formed through its content, which can be broadly
divided into two overarching genres: entertainment programming and public
service/informational programming. For the purposes of this analysis a wide variety of popular
culture (mass-produced and mass-consumed forms of entertainment) will be considered under

80

the umbrella term of entertainment – including variety shows, telenovelas, and sporting events.
4

Although of varying genres and degrees of culture, entertainment programs all appealed to
viewers’ broad sense of seeking TV to relax, laugh, or escape from their daily lives. As a rule,
most of the station’s entertainment programming was imported from Emilio Azcárraga
Vidaurreta’s Telesistema Mexicano network. In contrast, KMEX’s public service programming –
including the local Noticiero 34 newscast and different community affairs shows – stands out for
being mostly produced in a U.S. context by L.A.-based station staff. Canal 34’s combination of
entertainment and public service programming and the mixing of imported and local productions
worked to capture viewers’ attention and make the station successful.

4
John Street, Sanna Inthorn, and Martin Scott, From Entertainment to Citizenship: Politics and Popular Culture,
(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2013), 8.

81

The historical context of KMEX-34’s debut in the Southern California airwaves reveals
much about not only the challenges the station’s owners faced in creating a new Spanish-
language TV industry in an English-language and White American-dominant metropolitan area,
but also about how language and culture intertwined to shape a U.S. Latino ethnic identity. In
1960s greater Los Angeles ethnic Mexicans occupied a heavily-minoritized social space
representing 9 percent of the population of Los Angeles County and even smaller proportions of
the population in neighboring Orange, Ventura, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties (Figure
2.1).
5
Given the cultural assimilationist sentiment of the times and the unique challenges of
running an ethnic-oriented TV station in a language other than English, the success of Spanish-
language TV was anything but a foregone conclusion.
Financial support from Azcárraga Vidaurreta was not enough by itself to make KMEX
succeed, let alone be a site of ethnic identity formation. Instead the station’s utilization of its
most unique characteristic – its Spanish-language format – worked to make KMEX appealing for
Spanish-speaking Latinos. In educating, informing, and entertaining viewers in Spanish, KMEX-
34 opened a new public sphere for a U.S. Latino identity to be cultivated amid the mix of
imported and locally produced entertainment shows, informational programs, and
advertisements. Through Los Angeles KMEX-34’s success in the early 1960s the U.S. Spanish-
language TV industry – with all of its larger national implications for shaping a U.S. Latino
ethnic identity – became possible.

5
“Table P-1, General Characteristics of the Population, by Census Tracts: 1960,” on pages 25 in Census Tracts –
Los Angeles-Long Beach, Calif., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, U.S. Census Bureau.

82

Bringing KMEX on the Air in 1962
KMEX’s fall 1962 debut marked not only a crucial moment for the growing Spanish
International Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC)/Spanish International Network (SIN) project in
the Mexico-U.S. border region, but also for the predominantly ethnic Mexican Los Angeles
Latino community. As SIN President and SIBC investor Rene Anselmo noted when explaining
his and Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s interests in the Southern Californian TV market, L.A. was “the
largest Mexican community outside Mexico City.”
6

The market the SIBC investors entered was incredibly promising. The Southern
Californian U.S. Latino population rose by 87 percent between the 1950s and 1960s, offering the
potential for the new station to grow.
7
Market surveys commissioned by SIBC revealed that most
of the station’s first viewers were U.S.-born (46.1 percent) followed closely by those born in
Mexico (41.6 percent).
8
Figure 2.1 demonstrates the distribution of income among KMEX’s
viewers in 1963. Although a significant proportion of KMEX viewers (26 percent) were
working-class viewers earning less than $4,000 annually (roughly $34,400 in 2021 dollars), the
station attracted a high percentage of its televidentes from middle and upper income levels.
KMEX’s biggest income demographic (over 35 percent) earned between $4,000-$6,999 per year
($34,400-$60,200 in 2021 dollars), suggesting the station enjoyed wide support from middle and

6
Quoted in Rossman, “New TV Station Aims at Spanish-Speaking,” L.A. Times (Sept. 30, 1962), H1; Frank Fouce,
Jr. made similar comments in retrospect in KMEX’s 1992 special, Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad. As
may be remembered, SIBC owned TV stations KWEX-41 and KMEX-34 while SIN was the network signal the
individual stations broadcast.
7
Art Seidenbaum, “Special Interest TV: Limited Appeal Pays Off,” L.A. Times (May 19, 1963); Interest in KMEX’s
signal grew throughout the greater Southern California region, with attempts being made by cable to broadcast
Channel 34’s programming in the Central Coast communities of Santa Barbara and Lompoc.
Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A. Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14.
8
The Facts Consolidated research firm further segmented the respondents’ places of origin into South America
(4.3%), Europe (4.9%) and “no answer” (3.1%) but did not include an option for viewers born in Central America or
the Caribbean. “Qualitative Evaluation” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford.

83

upper-middle income viewers too (Figure 2.2). Language transcended class for KMEX viewers –
a reflection of the power of Spanish as a unifying cultural marker of U.S. Latino ethnic identity.

The survey also revealed provocative characteristics about language-use among KMEX’s
audience base in the 1960s Los Angeles Spanish-speaking Latino community. With respect to
languages spoken at home, 46 percent of KMEX’s target audience spoke both Spanish and
English, 33 percent spoke mostly Spanish, and 17.8 percent spoke mostly English.
9

In fall 1961 the FCC granted SIBC/SIN’s new Spanish-language television station the
UHF channel 34 assignation as well as approval for its iconic call sign, KMEX (“Mexico”), a
reflection of the channel’s intended audience and the source of its programming.
10
KMEX was
intended for anyone in greater Los Angeles who could speak Spanish but telecasts of bullfights

9
“Qualitative Evaluation” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford;
Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator, https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=6999&year1=196209&year2=202101 (accessed May 15, 2021).
10
Frank Fouce, Jr., quoted in Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad.

84

from bullrings across Mexico, the steady stream of Mexican films and Telesistema Mexicano
novelas (soap operas), as well as imported newsreels covering Mexican political officials (rather
than similar programming from the Caribbean basin or Central or South America) indicate the
station’s target audience were the ethnic Mexicans who were the vast majority of the L.A. area
Latino population in the 1960s. Spanish-language TV in the U.S. disseminated notions of a
Latino identity rooted in participation in U.S. social and political structures, but in the medium’s
earliest days in this identity was heavily Mexican in its presentation owing to the dominance of
the ethnic Mexican audience in Southern California.
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta was KMEX’s main financier but could not own the station
outright due to FCC regulations preventing foreign nationals from owning more than 20 percent
of any U.S. station. Unable to operate under the state capitalist model that made him Mexico’s
most important mass media industrialist, “El León” Azcárraga co-owned KMEX with his U.S.
citizen SIBC business partners. Azcárraga often personally called the station to give orders, such
as when he directed specific aspects of its coverage of the 1970 World Cup. Azcárraga
Vidaurreta might not have been KMEX’s president or majority owner but the financial
contributions he made to keep KMEX-34 and KWEX-41 in San Antonio on the air were made at
a loss. KMEX would not turn a profit until 1965. The stations were a financial drain, but
Azcárraga pressed his U.S. associates on, arguing that the stations would, in some years’ time,
generate profits after initial losses. Without someone like Azcárraga financing it, KMEX and the
larger project of Spanish-language television in the U.S would not have taken shape – or at least
would have taken much longer to accomplish.
11

11
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 150; Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El tigre Emilio Azcá rraga
y su imperio Televisa, México, D.F.: Editorial Grijalbo, (2000), 95-96.

85

Nevertheless, the White American members of the transnational project played
significant roles in laying the groundwork for U.S. Spanish-language TV. Frank Fouce Jr. – son
of Azcarraga’s key ally in his initial entry into Mexican TV – assumed the station’s presidency
upon his father’s passing in early 1962, bringing the vast Mexican film library distributed by
Fouce Amusement Enterprises to KMEX’s disposal. Located at 721 North Bronson Avenue in
Hollywood across from Paramount Studios, KMEX-34 entered construction immediately after its
permit application to the FCC was approved on November 1, 1961.
12

In addition, fellow SIBC principal investor and San Diego XETV Channel 6 general
manager Julian Kaufman played a significant role in launching KMEX Channel 34 that fall. For
most of 1962 “Julie” Kaufman drove back and forth up the recently opened Interstate 5 freeway
between San Diego and Los Angeles as KMEX’s acting-general manager while still fulfilling his
managerial duties at XETV. As KMEX’s first general manager, Kaufman’s familiarity with the
Southern California market enabled the station to recruit several advertisers.
13
During his drives
back to San Diego, Kaufman mused how he “was managing a station [in San Diego] owned by
Mexicans and licensed in Mexico, programmed in English” while up in L.A. “it was a station
owned by Americans, programmed in Spanish -- that's classic schizophrenia.”
14

Although KMEX’s facilities were still being built, by mid-July the SIBC investors saw
the station’s premiere nearing. Rene Anselmo told the Los Angeles Times that KMEX would go
on the air in time for Mexican Independence Day on Saturday, September 15, 1962.
15
Word-of-

12
Joseph Rank oral history interview by Kathleen Franz, KMEX Studios Los Angeles, July 13, 2017, Escúchame:
the History of Spanish Language Broadcasting in the U.S. Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of
American History. Frank Fouce, Jr., quoted in Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad.
13
Joseph Rank oral history interview by Kathleen Franz, KMEX Studios Los Angeles, July 13, 2017, Escúchame:
the History of Spanish Language Broadcasting in the U.S. Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of
American History.
14
John Freeman, “Channel 6 Looks to Past for Future,” San Diego Union-Tribune (March 26, 1993), E-10.
15
Cecil Smith, “Utra-High TV on the Horizon,” L.A. Times (July 17, 1962), C-8.

86

mouth buzz for the launch of Los Angeles’s first Spanish-language TV station increased when
local newspapers reported on the construction of KMEX’s 192-foot transmitter and tower on
Mount Wilson, joining the steel forest of the region’s major television and radio broadcasting
towers.
16
Reminiscing later, one Latino furniture store owner noted that the arrival of Spanish-
language TV in Los Angeles was highly anticipated and welcomed at the time.
17

Amid the excitement over Spanish-language TV’s arrival in Los Angeles was the need
for viewers to purchase an ultra high frequency converter in order to access KMEX Channel 34.
At the time of KMEX’s debut only 9 million of the estimated 55 million TV sets in the U.S. were
equipped to tune into UHF channels.
18
After reminding the public that they would need to buy a
converter for their television (costing $20-$25 in 1962 or $172-$215 when adjusted for inflation
in 2021), Anselmo proclaimed that he and his SIBC partners were not afraid of the “UHF curse.”
Channel 34’s content, Anselmo asserted, would reel in its viewers.
19
In this vein, KMEX entered
a five-year exclusive contract with Telesistema Mexicano to air its programming, bolstering the
station’s content through the Mexican media corporation’s vast library of films and televised
programming. Cash-strapped KMEX received “a full format of videotape shows at a cost well
below what VHF domestic channels must pay for their programming.”
20
The mix of imported
movies, telenovelas, sports and other entertainment programs complemented by U.S./California-
focused public service programming indicates the wide net the SIBC cast to reel in viewers from

16
“Spanish Language TV Transmitter Rising,” L.A. Times (August 8, 1962), C-15.
17
Retired bullfighter Oscar Carabello, owner of Mueblerías Carabello, remembered how warmly the Spanish -
speaking public received KMEX-34’s arrival in the 1992 special, Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad.
18
“New Act Increases Television Channels,” Oxnard Press Courier (July 12, 1962), 14.
19
Cecil Smith, “Ultra-High TV on the Horizon,” L.A. Times (July 17, 1962), C-8; Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI
Inflation Calculator, https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=196209&year2=202101 (accessed May
15, 2021).
20
Art Seidenbaum, “Special Interest TV: Limited Appeal Pays Off,” L.A. Times (May 19, 1963).

87

varying socioeconomic classes and viewing tastes – the same general model XEW-TV and its
sister Telesistema stations utilized in Mexico.
Recalling the economic characteristics of KMEX’s viewers from Figure 2.1 – with
individuals with lower and middle incomes representing over half of their early viewers – the
transnational SIBC investors understood they needed to offset the barrier represented by its UHF
frequency. Acting-General Manager Kaufman collaborated with area TV stores and parts
providers to organize a “school on wheels” to instruct prospective viewers on how to tune into
UHF-band channels. Rented truck-trailers toured L.A.’s Mexican American neighborhoods,
setting up camp in highly-transited sites such as supermarket parking lots. Curious onlookers
received demonstrations on how to use the UHF converter by the “mobile school’s” presenters.
21

KMEX also sponsored the “Fabulous Olé! 34 Contest” in the Thrifty drug store chain where
customers could win trips to Mexico City and Acapulco or a brand new 1962 Chevy Corvair
with the purchase of a converter kit.
22
The response was such that Thrifty created its own in-
house, somewhat cheaper UHF converter and used KMEX accessibility as a selling point.
“Convert your television device for CHANNEL 34 with a new ‘AZTECA’ TV Converter”. For
$15.88 and a quick 2-minute installation, prospective KMEX viewers could tune in (only) to
Channel 34 with the “Aztec” interior UHF antenna.
23

KMEX also advertised itself extensively in La Opinión, Los Angeles’s most widely-
circulated Spanish-language daily newspaper. Using cartoons, KMEX announced the sports,
drama, musicals and “the best” programming from Mexico City which awaited viewers while

21
“New Act Increases Television Channels,” Oxnard Press Courier (July 12, 1962), 14.
22
“Thrifty Drug Stores Advertisement,” L.A. Times (Sept. 16, 1962), D-24. KWEX Channel 41 ran similar contests
in the lead-up to its February 1962 rebranding in which contestants could win a trip to Acapulco or a UHF-equipped
TV set, “KWEX-TV Ad,” San Antonio Light (Feb. 2, 1962), 17.
23
La Opinión (Sept. 30, 1962), 5.

88

also reminding them to acquire UHF-converters. La Opinión’s classified section had several
individual announcements in late summer 1962 offering converter services.
24
In the days before
KMEX-34 went on the air, La Opinión carried numerous advertisements for UHF-capable
televisions and UHF-converters being sold at stores throughout the area, including Sears
department store and the Universal Television Company, the latter of which paid for a nearly
half-page’s worth of advertising space using the KMEX debut as its sales pitch.
25
Prospective
viewers interested in catching KMEX-34 in its opening week could visit the iconic Sears store in
Boyle Heights to purchase either a UHF-capable TV console with “clear reception” for $199.95
or just a UHF-converter for $17.88. The ad’s banner strongly emphasized Channel 34’s
accessibility among the UHF stations customers could now access at prices equivalent to
$1720.50 and $153.85, respectively, in 2021. Billboards around L.A. area thoroughfares also
announced KMEX’s coming, in English, promising bullfights using a cartoon matador with “Los
Angeles’s new channel 34 KMEX” emblazoned on his long cape (Figure 2.3).
26

24
La Opinión classifieds Sept. 27-Oct. 2, 1962.
25
La Opinión, (Sept. 30, 1962), 8.
26
Even before going on the air, KMEX and its Spanish-language programming were used to reel in Mexican and
other Latin American customers as both the Universal Television Company and Sears advertisements highlighted
KMEX in particular among the nearly 70 additional channels UHF offered. “Convert your current Silverstone TV,”
one Sears ad said, “from VHF to UHF and receive channels 2 through 83, including Channel 34.” La Opinión, (Sept.
27, 1962), 3; for matador cartoon ad, see “Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88; Bureau of Labor Statistics
CPI Inflation Calculator, https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=196209&year2=202101 (accessed
May 15, 2021).

89

Figure 2.3 – KMEX premiere advertisement. Variations of this ad in La Opinión (Sept. 30, 1962)
appeared as billboards throughout the Los Angeles area. The cartoons on the right represent
bullfights, dramas (telenovelas), and musical entertainment shows – KMEX-34’s main staples in
the early 1960s.

Buzz over KMEX created a rush on UHF converter boxes all over metropolitan Los
Angeles. Julie Kaufman noted that 15,000 UHF converters had been sold in the lead up to the
KMEX premiere and that demand outpaced supplies. Excitement for KMEX’s debut generated
revenue for many Mexican American-owned television stores and repair shops throughout the
region, such as Mejia TV and Radio in Corona which promised customers access to the “great
new Spanish speaking television station” through their UHF conversion services available for all
TV sets, “no matter how old or new it is.”
27
The L.A. Times reported that manufacturers received
a “sharp increase” in demand for UHF converters in Los Angeles while TV repairmen asked
KMEX to delay its broadcasting in order to allow them to use the station’s test pattern signal to

27
“Mejia T.V. and Radio Advertisement,” Corona Daily Independent (Oct. 5, 1962), 7.

90

install and test the converters.
28
Kaufman ultimately postponed KMEX’s initial Mexican
Independence Day debut by two weeks to the end of September.
29

As a further sign of the interest KMEX’s debut was generating, Los Angeles City
Councilman Edward Roybal (the first Mexican American on the council since the 19th century)
proposed a resolution in the city council welcoming Channel 34 to the L.A. airwaves. The
resolution extended a “special welcome” to KMEX “on the occasion of its opening d ay of
broadcasting” and wished the station “many years of successful endeavor.” Roybal expressed his
excitement at KMEX bringing “the songs, dances, and culture of Spain, Mexico and Latin
America to the enjoyment of all Los Angeles TV viewers.” Roybal presented the council’s
official welcome resolution to KMEX President Frank Fouce in person during the council’s
regular meeting on September 27, 1962.
30
However, despite the apparent enthusiasm KMEX’s
imminent debut raised as well as the station’s attempt to confront the UHF issue, it is likely the
significant costs of UHF converters prevented some working-class Latinas and Latinos from
accessing KMEX-34 during its first years on the air.
Nevertheless, by the following Sunday – September 30, 1962 – KMEX Channel 34
beamed onto the airwaves for the first time, beginning the presence of Spanish-language
television in the Greater Los Angeles area. “Muy buenas tardes señoras y señores,” host
Fernando Escandón announced in KMEX’s first official broadcast. “KMEX Televisión Canal 34

28
Rossman, “New TV Station Aims at Spanish-Speaking.”
29
Cecil Smith, “Mexico Station’s UHF Bow Delayed,” Los Angeles Times (Sept. 14, 1962), C-14. In addition to
giving potential viewers more time to purchase UHF converter boxes (and increasing viewership), Kaufman likely
also delayed the premiere in order to give KMEX’s technicians more time to complete their technical preparations.
30
Minutes of Regular Los Angeles City Council Meeting, Los Angeles Office of the City Clerk (Sept. 27, 1962),
(http://clkrep.lacity.org/oldcfidocs/); “La ciudad dio la bienvenida ayer a la estación KMEX-TV,” La Opinión,
(Sept. 28, 1962), 6; La Opinión, (Sept. 30, 1962), 5. While La Opinión did not dedicate a significant amount of
coverage to KMEX’s debut, its advertisements and its coverage of the City Council resolution reminded readers of
the station’s imminent debut as the “first to open here with the sole purpose of serving the vast Latin American
community.”

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inicia en estos momentos sus transmisiones” (“KMEX-TV Channel 34 is now initiating its
broadcasting”). Escandón added “estamos comenzando a escribir la historia de la televisión en
español en el oeste norteamericano” (“We are beginning to write the history of Spanish-
language TV in the U.S. West”).
31
Escandón was joined by co-hosts Sergio González and
newscaster Alejandro Nervo in leading the very first program on KMEX, which incidentally
went on the air 10 minutes late. The inaugural program also included dignitaries such as Los
Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Mexican Consul Luis Orci, Councilman Roybal, Sheriff Peter
Pitchess as well as taped comments by Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown, Sr., and then-GOP
gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon. Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno, recent Academy
Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for her role in West Side Story, also joined the
inaugural fiesta and reached out to skeptics of UHF channels. “UHF television is the future. Get
behind it!”
32

As the most prominent Latina celebrity of the moment, Moreno’s appearance at KMEX’s
premiere makes much sense but also stands out amid the station’s imported Mexican content and
its orientation towards an ethnic Mexican audience. Moreno’s prominence at the station’s debut
as a Puerto Rican actress, rather than KMEX’s transnational owners arranging for a Mexican
actress to be flown in from Mexico City for the large ethnic Mexican audience in Southern
California, spoke to the larger panethnic U.S. Latino identity KMEX and Spanish-language TV
in the U.S. would shape in the following years.
After KMEX’s inaugural 30-minute fiesta program, the schedule for its first day on the
airwaves was modest. Following the dedication program, KMEX aired 2.5 hours of Telesistema

31
Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad; Martin Rossman, “New TV Station Aims at Spanish-Speaking,” L.A.
Times (Sept. 30, 1962), H-1.
32
Pepe Arciga, “Mexican UHF Debut Here Stars Kennedy,” L.A. Times (Oct. 2, 1962), D-11.

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Mexicano’s coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s trip to Mexico City from earlier in 1962.
KMEX’s news coverage would take several years to fully develop, but the lengthy rebroadcast of
Kennedy’s state visit three months’ prior was a strategic appeal to ethnic Mexican viewers born
on both sides of the border. Mexican American voters in the Southwest, particularly in Texas,
helped tip the 1960 election in Kennedy’s favor while Mexican nationals valued his commitment
to improving relations with Mexico.
33
The station saw the archived coverage of Kennedy’s
Mexican trip as a draw for viewers and a chance to inform them news-wise. At 6pm, Channel 34
aired its first regular program, Teatro Fantástico, followed by La Hora de Bellas Artes at 7pm.
The first sports-related program to air on KMEX was a taped two-hour block of bullfighting in
Mexico. Hombres de México (Men from Mexico) aired at 10pm with KMEX’s first day of
broadcasting closing with a newscast at 10:30pm.
34
Amid the excitement, however, there were
reports of viewers experiencing difficulty receiving Channel 34’s signal. Despite Kaufman’s
two-week launch delay, KMEX still faced technical difficulties as it went on the air.
35

Upon beaming onto the airwaves that September afternoon, KMEX Channel 34 became
the first Spanish-language television station in the U.S. West Coast as well as the first permanent
UHF station in Los Angeles proper. TV industry reporter Cecil Smith commented that “the
installation of a Spanish station to serve the 785,000 Spanish-speaking residents of this area is
one of the most important recent developments in television.” Moreover, “if the station is

33
Pepe Arciga, “Mexican UHF Debut Here Stars Kennedy,” L.A. Times (Oct. 2, 1962), D-11. Kennedy’s visit to
Mexico City was an important stage for his Alliance for Progress initiative aimed at curtailing rising leftist,
communist sentiment in Latin America. During his Mexico City trip JFK a ddressed U.S.-Mexican border concerns,
such as Chamizal border dispute wherein the U.S. contemplated the return of a strip of land in El Paso, Texas, to the
Mexican government. See Ignacio García, Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot (College
Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000) and Courtney Brianne Kennedy, “Vivas for Kennedy: John F.
Kennedy’s 1962 Presidential Visit to Mexico City,” (M.A. Thesis, University of Texas at Dallas, 2012).
34
La Opinión, (Sept. 30, 1962), 5.
35
Cecil Smith, “It’s a Sad, Sad, Sad World,” L.A. Times (Oct. 2, 1962), D12.

93

successful, it might open the door for other UHF installations to serve special audiences.”
36

Despite the investment televidentes hispanohablantes had to make in purchasing UHF
converters, the station’s overall successful first months on the air led industry observers to note
“that UHF stations have a place on their air.”
37
Investors and broadcasters interested in offering
programming lacking on the national networks (such as the education-centered mission of future
PBS-affiliate KCET Channel 28 upon its 1964 launch) could look to KMEX for an example of
what could be accomplished on the UHF band.
38

Tuning into the First Days of KMEX Programming
The hiring of a permanent general manager at KMEX in late 1962 signaled the station’s
intent to establish its own identity. SIBC investor KMEX co-founder Julian Kaufman played a
pivotal role in launching Channel 34, but ultimately returned to San Diego to resume his
managership at XETV. On November 14, 1962, the network announced the hiring of 38-year-old
Burt Simm Avedon as vice-president and general manager of KMEX and its staff of 21
employees. Avedon primarily gained the attention of the SIBC investors because of his
experience working in the Kenyon and Eckhardt advertising firm.
39

36
“KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford. Cecil Smith, “Mexico
Station’s UHF Bow Delayed,” L.A. Times (Sept. 14, 1962), C14. KMEX joined one San Bernardino, two
Bakersfield, and three Fresno TV stations on the UHF airwaves; see Rossman, “New TV Station Aims at Spanish -
Speaking.”
37
Bob Hull, “TV Talk with Bob Hull: Happy Birthday, KMEX-TV,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (Sept. 30,
1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
38
Cecil Smith, “VHF, UHF Strike Up the Bands,” L.A. Times (May 1, 1964), C-20.
39
Burt Avedon had a Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard and had been serving as vice president and
assistant to the president at the West Coast offices of Kenyon and Eckhardt when he was tapped by Anselmo to
serve as KMEX’s general manager. Avedon had earlier studied at UCLA and fought in World War II’s Pacific
Theater as a Navy pilot, earning a Purple Heart in the process. “Business and Finance: Burt S. Avedon Named
KMEX Vice President,” L.A. Times (Nov. 14, 1962), C-8; Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A.
Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14; John Martin, “The Great Lost Expedition Brand,” Vice (March 4, 2013),
(https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avnmdp/the-great-lost-expedition-brand-000212-v20n2); Rank oral history
interview by Kathleen Franz, NMAH; 21 employees figure from “A 25-Year Commitment to Spanish-Language
Programming,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 29, 1987, S-4, in Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.

94

The ad man-turned-TV general manager showed his skills when explaining that KMEX-
34 was unique because it gave TV viewers “something they can’t get anywhere else, something
they’ve got to come to you to see.”
40
Avedon explained the reason for KMEX’s initial success
was recognizing that “the chink in the armor” in the L.A. TV market was recognizing that the
city had “the largest Spanish-speaking population of any city on the continent outside Mexico
City.” Echoing anthropologist Arlene Dávila’s later characterization of U.S. Latinos representing
a “nation within a nation” in the minds of marketers, Avedon asserted Spanish-speaking
Angelinos numbered “more than a million people” essentially “a city within a city, and [there is]
no programming for them.”
41
Indeed, coverage of Latino issues in English-language mass media
lacked both quality and breadth; with KMEX there was hope that metro L.A.’s sizable Latino
community could be better represented.
42

The stated intention of KMEX’s investors and management of promoting Latino identity
and greater involvement in U.S. political life invites reflection into what the station’s social
contributions entailed in the context of the 1960s. KMEX’s primary goal was to generate
revenue for Azcárraga Vidaurreta and his transnational SIBC associates as economically as
possible using imported Telesistema programming. Given the small proportion of U.S. Latino-
centered programming – limited mainly to KMEX’s news and public service programs – many
scholars of U.S. Spanish-language television have understandably emphasized how the early
Spanish International Network stations functioned primarily to generate revenue for “El León”

40
Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A. Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14.
41
Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A. Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14.
42
Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,” L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), Part V,
Page 19, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections. Industry reporting on
KMEX’s debut suggests the Southern Californian mass media industry was interested in what the new Spanish-
format UHF station could achieve from a commercial standpoint but otherwise did not seem to view Channel 34 as
much more than a niche station.

95

Azcárraga and his business partners.
43
However, it is important to consider the ways in which
KMEX programming was presented to specifically appeal to Latinos living throughout Southern
California.
A perusal of KMEX’s programming schedules from its first months on the air
demonstrates how the station relied on Telesistema’s programming as a sort of “export market”
but also broadcast content it produced in a mid-century Los Angeles social context.
44
In most of
the mid-1960s programming on el canal 34 generally began at 4pm on weekdays and between
noon and 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The typical weekday broadcasting schedule opened
with a 30-minute musical variety show titled Reloj Musical featuring different artists such as
Linda Arce and Delia Ortiz followed at 4:30pm with Un Canto de Mexico with folkoric music
such as rancheras and other regional pieces. At 5pm Escuela KMEX provided “English lessons
for non-English-speaking adults” while the 5:30pm slot was defined by changing programs, such
as a public service programs explaining how to use the U.S. Social Security system though
occasionally special shows like Puertas Abiertas (produced in collaboration with the University
of Southern California) provided cultural education content. At 6pm a “dramatic serial” or
telenovela aired before the 6:30pm Noticiero 34 hosted by Alejandro Nervo. After the news, the
remainder of the nascent station’s programming block typically included more telenovelas such
as Elena (starring Silvia Derbez), La Leona, and Pecado Mortal, these three being among the
earliest telenovelas produced by Telesistema Mexicano.
45
Musical variety shows would follow,

43
See América Rodríguez, Making Latino News: Race, Language, Class (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1999),
Kenton T. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development (New York:
Routledge, 2016).
44
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 149.
45
Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El tigre Emilio Azcá rraga y su imperio Televisa, México, D.F.: Editorial
Grijalbo, (2000), 76-80.

96

interrupted only by Sintesis Mundial (a 5 minute news flash by Nervo airing at 8:25pm) and
Notas Deportivas, a short 5-minute sportscast delivered by Sergio Niño González at 9:25pm who
also presented a final 15-minute, late night Noticiero 34 newscast at 11:30pm. Previously
recorded soccer and boxing matches took up the 10pm timeslot. Aside from the content and
language format, programming on KMEX was generally similar to that of mainstream English-
format TV during the fifties and early sixties.
46

Channel 34’s mostly entertainment-oriented line-up on Sundays further underscores the
Latino-oriented station’s dependence on imported Mexican TV content. Sundays on KMEX-34
typically included 2-hour block repeats of the week’s telenovela episodes followed by an hour of
Teatro Fantástico at 6pm, La Hora de Bellas Artes at 7pm, two hours of “Bullfights from
Mexico City” starting at 8pm, Humorismo Musical at 10pm, Hombres de México at 10:30, and
finally a 15-minute edition of Noticiero 34 at 11pm.
47
The various newscast time slots on
weekdays and on Sundays nights reflect the KMEX management team’s early interest in
delivering information to the community – a phenomenon explored in greater detail in the
following chapter.
Perhaps few things better illustrate KMEX’s dependence on Telesistema programming
than the 70,000-80,000 feet of videotape and film it received each week from Mexico by way of
KWEX Channel 41 in San Antonio.
48
It is worth noting that despite being united as a network
under the SIN umbrella, KMEX and KWEX could not share the exact same programming as

46
“KMEX-TV Programming Schedule, Week of May 12, 1963,” Folder 9, Box 2, Eduardo Quevedo Papers,
Stanford Special Collections; KMEX’s 15-minute newscasts followed the industry standard – CBS, NBC, and ABC
all also aired 15-minute newscasts during Channel 34’s early years. Steve M. Barkin, American Television News:
The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 37.
47
The Sunday line-up indicated here is from the end of KMEX’s first week on the air in 1962. The early telenovelas
which aired during canal 34’s first week were Estafa de Amor and La Cobarde. La Opinión (Oct. 7, 1962), 5.
48
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 150.

97

their five sister stations in the Mexican border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Juárez, Heroica Nogales,
Mexicali, and Tijuana because of distribution rights preventing the SIN stations from airing
Spanish-language dubs of U.S. shows. Ironically, while KMEX and its U.S.-based sisters have
been characterized as simply repeating Telesistema broadcasts, the Mexico-based SIN border
stations’ primary programming was dubbed U.S. movies and shows, with Perry Mason and
Route 66 being some of those stations’ highest-rated programs.
49

Public Service Programs on Early KMEX
Despite its dependence on imported Telesistema programming, KMEX-34’s local public
service/information productions demonstrate the ways in which the station utilized the Spanish
language to promote a Latino ethnic identity rooted in participation in U.S. social and political
institutions. During Avedon’s years as station manager (1962-1964), KMEX experimented with
a variety of ways of engaging with the Spanish-speaking public such as by airing public service
programming tailored to the needs of Latino immigrants in Los Angeles. KMEX public service
programs included “teaching English to newly-arrived Mexicans, [and] explaining the Social
Security program,” while also encouraging televidentes to cooperate with the Los Angeles police
and fire departments through crime and fire prevention forums. Channel 34 also focused on
“attacking health problems such as cancer and tuberculosis.”
50

Other public service/informational programs on KMEX demonstrate the different ways in
which the station sought to inform Latino viewers about health and educational access in the
U.S. In late 1962 the American Cancer Society became an early collaborator with KMEX on

49
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in
Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
50
“KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford.

98

public service programs. The Society’s weekly Spanish-language program on KMEX was hosted
by the station’s news announcer, Alejandro Nervo.
51
After a few broadcasts, the Society noted its
airtime on Channel 34 led to greater requests for Spanish-language literature. “This is proof-
positive,” Society spokespeople said, “that we are reaching people with life-saving information
through the facilities of KMEX-TV.” In spring 1963 the Los Angeles County Chapter of the
American Cancer Society awarded a citation to KMEX for its advocacy work. The Los Angeles
Board of Education also offered pamphlets regarding its various programs in the city through
programming time it bought on KMEX. In less than three days the Board of Education had to
print more literature due to the high demand created by the Channel 34 spots.
52
Additionally
KMEX partnered with the Council of Mexican-American Affairs and Spanish-language radio
stations to raise scholarship money for aspiring Mexican American college students.
53
Not
everyone in TV-land was pleased with the station’s attempts at civic engagement. An unnamed
Newsweek reviewer noted “this kind of fare is far from sprightly, of course, and nobody holds a
taco party to watch Usted y Su Salud.”
54

Nevertheless, KMEX’s sense of “obligation to do more than exploit its market” shaped
its programming orientation to help its Latino audience acculturate into U.S. life rather than only
generate revenue from ethnic Mexican viewers by entertaining them with mostly imported
Mexican content.
55
Besides public service programs in Spanish, KMEX also aired educational

51
“KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford.
52
“Even Public Service Sells – If It is Advertised over KMEX-TV,”in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box
2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford; “KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34
Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
53
Although KMEX and the Council of Mexican-American Affairs struggled to raise money in the Latino
community (ultimately collecting only $25), the effort demonstrates the Latino press’s interest in civic engagement
by reaching out to the community and encouraging Latino youth to pursue college. See Carlos Borja, Jr., “Mexican -
American Community’s Lack of Interest Told by Group,” L.A. Times (April 20, 1964), A-4.
54
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
55
Art Seidenbaum, “Special Interest TV: Limited Appeal Pays Off,” L.A. Times (May 19, 1963).

99

programs like Operation Alphabet to teach English to viewers. Broadcast originally in San
Francisco and Baltimore, Operation Alphabet taught English and occasionally other languages
over TV. Beginning on October 8, 1962, Operation Alphabet broadcast on Channel 34 for half
an hour daily at 5pm. The English literacy content of Operation Alphabet was reportedly popular
among Spanish-speaking viewers.
56
TV schedules carried in local newspapers indicate that other
televised language courses (live and pre-recorded) were also offered by KMEX during its first
months on the air.
57
Public service programming comprised ten hours of KMEX’s sixty hours’
worth of broadcasting in 1962-1963.
58

Burt Avedon articulated the community-building dynamic of the relationship KMEX’s
transnational investors envisioned for the station to have with its Mexican and other Latin
American viewers in the early 1960s. Noting that many Mexican Americans exhibited “self-
ostracizing” tendencies, Avedon affirmed that the station saw its programming as a means to
“reawaken a sense of cultural pride among its viewers.” The influence of the Mexican American
population needed to make its influence felt adding that “they should be entering the second
phase of social maturity – and that second phase is leadership.” Furthermore, it was KMEX’s
“responsibility to become involved; to editorialize, to help create leaders.”
59
It is worth noting
that in addition to its interest in civically engaging with its predominantly ethnic Mexican
audience, the station was also legally obligated by the FCC to air locally produced news and
public service programming.
60

56
“Clase de Ingles por el Canal 34 de la TV,” La Opinión, Oct. 3, 1962, pg. 4 (Online PDF 3).
57
“KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963) in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Quevedo Papers, Folder
16, Box 2, Stanford.
58
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 12-13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
59
Art Seidenbaum, “Special Interest TV: Limited Appeal Pays Off,” L.A. Times (May 19, 1963).
60
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 150.

100

KMEX station personnel ranging from Avedon to Noticiero 34 cameramen promoted a
U.S. Latino identity conscious of the social and political challenges affecting it, even if that
identity was more Mexican-focused in its earlier years. Avedon’s stated interest in using KMEX
to create a new generation of Mexican American leaders was greatly strengthened by his hiring
of Eduardo Quevedo, a life-long labor and community activist in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
Quevedo’s time collaborating with Avedon and KMEX held significant influence in producing
some of Canal 34’s earliest news and community affairs programming particularly because of his
desire to raise Latino political consciousness by using TV in “terms which are understandable, to
do-gooders” in both English and Spanish.
61

Eduardo Quevedo and KMEX’s Early Identity-Building Efforts
Eduardo Quevedo’s contributions to KMEX come into context in light of his larger life
work in the Los Angeles Mexican American community. Quevedo was born on May 2, 1903, in
the copper-rich southwestern New Mexico mountain town of Santa Rita.
62
The Quevedos
crossed the border back and forth in search of work, with Eduardo working mining jobs in Santa
Rita and in southeastern Arizona as well as driving a hearse in El Paso before ultimately moving
to Los Angeles.
63
Once established in Southern California, Quevedo was active in electoral
politics and activism from the 1930s to 1960s, participating in a slew of different political
causes, including Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign, Upton Sinclair’s
unsuccessful 1934 End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement, Edward Roybal’s campaigns for

61
Of critical importance for historians, Quevedo kept dozens of notes, memos, scripts, surveys, and correspondence
associated with his work at the TV station that enable researchers to reconstruct the increasingly distant early years
of a mass media institution that may be easy to take for granted. Box 1, Folder 1, “Resume,” Quevedo Papers,
Stanford
62
Box 1, Folder 1, “Resume,” Quevedo Papers, Stanford
63
Box 1, Folder 2, “Eduardo Quevedo: The Years 1903-1904,” Manuscript by Southern California Spanish
Speaking Committee to Honor Eduardo Quevedo, Quevedo Papers, Stanford

101

a seat on the Los Angeles City Council and helped coordinate the local “Viva Kennedy” club for
John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential run.
64
As an activist, Quevedo participated in various
initiatives, including efforts to stop Mexican American property owners in Boyle Heights from
losing their homes to eminent domain and pushing for an investigation of conditions at the
Whittier State School after a Mexican American teen committed suicide on that campus under
questionable circumstances. By the mid-1960s, Quevedo served as President of the Mexican
American Political Organization (MAPA) one of the foremost Latino organizations serving the
L.A. Latino community during the latter part of the so-called “Mexican American Generation.”
65

Part of Quevedo’s rationale for joining KMEX as a community affairs TV host and
producer was his belief that the “Spanish-speaking people are not united […] the principal
obstacle has been lack of communications.”
66
One of Quevedo’s first contributions to KMEX
was to develop a program which would fulfill Avedon’s desire for KMEX to serve an
“immensely important function” of raising awareness of local issues among Mexican American
viewers. In this vein, KMEX aired the locally produced Voces y Rostros de la Comunidad
(Voices and Faces of the Community) on a daily basis to objectively explore local political and
social issues.
67
The rationale Quevedo and Avedon had in creating Voces y Rostros for Channel

64
Box 1, Folder 2, “Eduardo Quevedo: The Years 1903-1904,” Manuscript by Southern California Spanish
Speaking Committee to Honor Eduardo Quevedo, Quevedo Papers, Stanford
65
Amid the tensions of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and Zoot Suit Riots, Quevedo worked with Manuel Ruiz to
form the Coordinating Council of Latin American Youths to create recreational opportunities for Mexican American
youth. Additionally, he was one of many Mexican American community leaders who in 1939 fought to initiate an
investigation into the racist and violent conditions of the Whittier State School after the tragic suicide of 13 -year-old
Benny Moreno following a severe beating the boy received at the hands of school personnel. The investigation
ultimately led to the incarceration of the school’s superintendent and two of its guards. His later protests against the
L.A. Housing Authority were a response to its attempt to build the Ramona Gardens Housing Project b y seizing
Mexican American homeowners’ property. Box 1, Folder 2, “Eduardo Quevedo: The Years 1903 -1904,” Manuscript
by Southern California Spanish Speaking Committee to Honor Eduardo Quevedo, Quevedo Papers, Stanford. For
more on the Mexican American generation see Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, &
Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
66
“MAPA Newspaper to Serve Entire Southwestern States,” The Voice of the Spanish -Speaking People (Nov. 11,
1965), 1, in Folder 2, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
67
“Voces y Rostros de la Comunidad,” (no date), in Box 2, Folder 13, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

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34 was to “serve as a vehicle for orientation of and information [sic] about the Spanish-American
community, one related to its needs, interests, and aspirations.”
68
Quevedo and his associate
Octavio Costa pledged to develop content for the show of a “high idiomatic and ideological
quality” that would “vitalize the life of the Spanish-speaking community in its varied
dimensions, namely, civic, professional, social, and economic.” In a document sent to potential
program sponsors, KMEX reminded its recipients that “the sponsor who underwrites this project
will be reaching an extensive and positive television audience with an ever-increasing purchasing
power which to date remains an untapped source by reason of the fact that heretofore no one has
undertaken to organize a publicity channel that will reach it.”
69

Another program hosted by Quevedo, Hispano America, received acclaim for its
exploration of a variety of topics, including anthropology, history, U.S. politics, and even
hemispheric news with occasional guest appearances by consuls from the different Latin
American consulates operating in Los Angeles.
70
La Opinión’s own Ignacio Lozano Jr. helped
coordinate the talk shows by assisting Quevedo in recruiting guests and determining the topic of
discussion for each show.
71

Airing Thursday evenings at 5:45pm just before the primetime line-up of nightly
Telesistema telenovelas, Hispano America sought to “explore important problems facing the
Mexican American community.”
72
The program’s mostly Mexican American guests provided a
professional Latino presence on television for KMEX’s televidentes at a time when English-

68
“The Voice and the Image of the Community,” (no date), in Box 2, Folder 13, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
69
“The Voice and the Image of the Community,” (no date), in Box 2, Folder 13, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
70
“Instantaneas,” La Opinión (April 22, 1963), no page given, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevdo
Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
71
“Instantaneas,” La Opinión (April 22, 1963), no page given, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevdo
Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
72
Translated from “ventilar importantes problemas de la comunidad mexico-americana.” “Instantaneas,” La Opinión
(April 22, 1963), no page given, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevdo Papers, Stanford Special Collections.

103

language TV stations all but ignored Latinos. The May 9 episode featured a talk about
opportunities available for Mexican Americans in California with guests architect Arturo Rendon
and lawyer Manuel Q. Sanz; the May 16 episode featured Reynaldo J. Carreón, a successful local
doctor, in a show highlighting great accomplishments by Mexican Americans while the May 23
show featured a panel which included municipal judge Leopoldo G. Sánchez and city council
candidate Richard Tafoya for a talk on Mexican American participation in politics.
73

Indeed, the appearance of Mexican American politicians and political aspirants on
Hispano America demonstrates efforts by KMEX to instill a sense of ethnic political solidarity
shaped by notions of U.S. political participation. KMEX and Quevedo sought to raise Mexican
American political participation and representation by giving Tafoya greater exposure in his bid
to replace outgoing Councilman Edward Roybal after his election to the U.S. House of
Representatives. Quevedo followed up on Tafoya’s appearance by focusing a subsequent show
on the successful election of Mexican Americans to the positions of mayor and city council in
Crystal City, Texas, earlier that spring as an example of what could be done through collective
ethnic solidarity.
74
Ultimately Tafoya lost the June 1963 municipal election, leaving the L.A.
City Council without a Latino member for over two decades, but the coverage and larger

73
“Instantaneas,” La Opinión (May 10, 1963), pg. 10, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevdo Papers,
Stanford Special Collections; Leopoldo G. Sánchez campaign ad, The Voice, (June 3, 1966) pg. 2, Folder 2, Box 20,
Eduardo Quevdo Papers, Stanford Special Collections. Although most guests were Mexican Americans, the show
sometimes scheduled notable men from other Latin American nations to appear on the show. KMEX “scored a
coup” in hosting three of the top military leaders in Argentina when the officers were touring Southern California -
area aerospace industry facilities. “KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
74
Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,” L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), Part V,
Page 19, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections. Kevin Allen Leonard,
“From the ‘Next Best Thing to One of Us’ to ‘One of Us’: Edward Roybal, Gilbert Lindsay, and Racial Politics in
Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s,” in Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the
Twentieth-Century United States, Brian D. Behnken, ed. (Athens, University of Georgia Press: 2016), 20-41.

104

regional context Hispano America provided the race demonstrates the potential for U.S. Spanish-
language TV to form ideals of ethnic identity and community-building.
Although Quevedo and KMEX presented Hispano America as a public service program
focusing on “Latin American Art, Culture, and Customs,” viewers noticed the show’s clear intent
on promoting Mexican Americans participation in Los Angeles and Southern Californian
politics. Los Angeles Times columnist Rubén Salazar quipped that the show was “not what the
Spanish-language station’s publicists have billed it” as and could be better titled “Putting a
Sombrero on Uncle Sam.”
75
Other commentators at La Opinión questioned how much of
substance could be said by the invited panelists if each show was limited to 15 minutes.
However, the Spanish-language paper described Quevedo’s discussion moderating as being
informed with serenity and experience.
76
But beyond Hispano America’s production quality lay
another issue – the show’s potential impact. Public service programs like Hispano America on
“Spanish-language TV in Los Angeles could, for better or worse,” Salazar wrote “help
conformity infiltrate the stubborn individualism of the Mexican American.” Quevedo affirmed
“TV will help us get that, wait and see.”
77
Ratings information for Hispano America (and
programs like it) is not available, but the end of the show’s run by July 1963 could be interpreted
as a reaction to viewer interest. 30-minute-long documentaries and a local social events show
alternated in replacing Hispano America in an expanded 5:30pm timeslot later that summer.
78

75
Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,” L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), D-19.
76
“Instantaneas,” La Opinión (April 22, 1963), no page given, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevdo
Papers, Stanford Special Collections; Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,”
L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), D-19.
77
Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,” L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), Part V,
Page 19, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
78
Quevedo continued working at KMEX with Avedon after Hispano America ended. During the weekday evening
Noticiero 34 at 6:30pm hosted by Alejandro Nervo, Quevedo shared civic engagement-related news in “Notas de la
Comunidad” where he reported on community events and organizations. Whatever the circumstances behind the end
of Hispano America, TV schedules printed La Opinión late summer 1963 indicate the show off the air by that July.

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The direct political and ideological impact of KMEX programming on viewers cannot be
satisfactorily quantified (particularly in the absence of reliable ratings and polling data), but the
station’s intention in raising Mexican Americans’ participation in the U.S. political system in the
early sixties is historically significant for representing the beginning of the U.S. Spanish TV
medium’s efforts to create a U.S. Latino ethnic constituency.
KMEX’s attempts to mobilize U.S. Latinos into greater political participation through its
public service content inevitably raised questions about the station’s journalistic integrity. When
the L.A. Times inquired into the station’s political stances, Avedon answered, “We are purely
objective, middle of the road, because we feel our audience is not politically sophisticated
enough for us to editorialize [about politics]. We will not dictate to them.”
79
Avedon’s comments
defending KMEX’s role in advocating for its Mexican/Latino American viewing community
reflect many of the same feelings future KMEX journalists such as María Elena Salinas and
Jorge Ramos expressed when asked about their journalistic objectivity with regards to Latino
immigration issues in the 1990s and 2000s.
80
Nevertheless, Hispano America serves as an
example of Spanish-language TV’s earliest attempts to create ethnic identity based around the
Latino experience in the United States. We will examine more of KMEX-34’s identity and
community-building efforts through its news programming in the next chapter.

See “Programas de televisión para hoy jueves,” La Opinión (July 18, 1963), 3 and “Programas de televisión para
hoy jueves,” in the August 28 and September 5 issues of La Opinión (page 5 for both).
79
Cecil Smith, “He Found Chink in VHF Armor,” L.A. Times (Sept. 30, 1963), Part IV, 14.
80
Mirta Ojito, “Voice of (Hispanic) America”, New York Times (April 30, 2006),
(https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/arts/television/voice-of-hispanic-america.html); Christine Mai-Duc, “Jorge
Ramos is on the defensive over his role as journalist and immigrant advocate” L.A. Times (Sept. 3, 2015),
(http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la -na-jorge-ramos-journalist-advocate-20150903-story.html)

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Spanish as the Language of Everyday Life through Entertainment and Sports
Early KMEX’s public service programming is historically significant because of the clear
ways in which it sought to shape a U.S.-centered Latino ethnic identity (albeit a mostly Mexican
American identity in the context of the 1960s), but promoting the role of Spanish as a language
of everyday life in the U.S. through entertainment programming is also relevant in the formation
of the Latino community in metropolitan Los Angeles. As already noted, the majority of the
station’s schedule was made up of entertainment programming meant for viewers’ leisure rather
than their education. Entertainment programming was comprised of various genres, including
variety shows, musical programs, Mexican soap operas, and taped sporting events. KMEX-34
began producing musical and infotainment programs in its studios beginning in the latter 1960s,
but overwhelmingly its entertainment programming was imported from Telesistema.
Telenovelas which had already been broadcast in Mexico months or years before made
up a large portion of KMEX-34’s entertainment programming. It is unclear how much of an
audience telenovelas on early KMEX brought to the station in terms of viewership, but the
primetime scheduling of Mexican soap operas suggests these programs were reasonably popular
among the Southern California Spanish-speaking TV audience. During the station’s first months
on the air four different half-hour telenovelas like La Leona and Pecado Mortal took up two
hours of KMEX’s broadcasting time on weekday evenings.
81
Given how ratings on Univision,
KMEX’s parent network after the mid-1980s, have historically relied on Mexican telenovelas to
beat the English-language TV competition, it is probable that telenovelas on Canal 34 similarly
bolstered the early station’s ratings alongside bullfighting and other sports.
82

81
“KMEX-TV Programming Schedule, Week of May 12, 1963,” Folder 9, Box 2, Eduardo Quevedo Papers,
Stanford Special Collections.
82
Andrew Bowser, “Univision Rules with Telenovelas,” Broadcasting and Cable, vol. 128, no. 46 (Nov 9, 1998),
34-35.

107

Locally produced popular cultural programming on KMEX may only have made up a
small part of entertainment programming on the station, but those early shows (in addition to
locally developed public service programs) demonstrate the emergent station’s creative potential
to produce programs in Los Angeles made for a U.S.-based Latino public. The relevance of
KMEX’s production apparatus would become evident as parent network Spanish International
(SIN) grew nationally in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1964 hiring of Joseph S. Rank as Burt
Avedon’s successor coincided with the gradual emergence of the station’s locally produced
entertainment programming.
83
The SIBC investors hired Rank, an advertising executive with
John Blair and Company, to help the station generate greater revenue because of his advertising
experience. Although successful in attracting local and some national advertisers, the station was
losing money at the time (and would not return a profit until 1965), obligating SIBC/KMEX co-
founder Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta to underwrite the station’s first years of losses.
84

During Rank’s seven years as the station’s general manager, KMEX began producing
more original content and local-oriented programming that helped the station begin to establish a
stronger brand identity within the L.A. Mexican/Latino community. Rank began by giving a
small facelift to the studio’s main entrance and a light redesign of the newsroom. In addition to

83
Avedon lived a colorful life after guiding KMEX through its first days on the airwaves, serving as the president of
the Eve of Roma cosmetics firm, marrying (and divorcing) Italian Princess Luciana Pignatelli, and eventually
starting his own adventure expedition outfitting firm – Willis and Geiger Outfitters – with his third wife before
passing away at age 94. John Martin, “The Great Lost Expedition Brand,” Vice, (March 4, 2013),
(https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avnmdp/the-great-lost-expedition-brand-000212-v20n2); Brittney Lacoste, “At
91, Burt Avedon, Former Willis & Geiger Icon, Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Fund New Signature Clothing
Label,” Cision: PR Web (Oct. 6, 2014), (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/10/prweb12218507.htm); “Princess
Pignatelli Is Bride Of Burt S. Avedon on Coast,” New York Times, (July 3, 1970),
(http://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/03/archives/princess-pignatelli-is-bride-of-burt-s-avedon-on-coast.html); Chris
Aadland, “Outdoors clothing designer, adventurer and WWII fighter pilot Burt Avedon dies at 94,” Wisconsin State
Journal (May 3, 2018), https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/outdoors-clothing-designer-adventurer-and-wwii-
fighter-pilot-burt-avedon/article_2dc25b6e-d311-5341-901c-79912fc3e934.html).
84
Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,”
in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 150.

108

the station’s physical changes, Rank also purchased KMEX’s first news van, a station wagon to
elevate the fledgling KMEX broadcasting enterprise onto levels closer to that of the local Los
Angeles English-language stations. Rank experienced a great sense of pressure given his lack of
experience in managing a TV station (“I had never been in a TV station in my life”) as well as
the station’s problematic economic situation.
85

¿Cómo es Posible?
Rank’s purchase of a news van as part of the professionalization of the KMEX newscast
serendipitously allowed the station to create one of its first entertainment programs, the
infotainment show ¿Cómo es Posible? (How is this possible?). Indicative of the larger panethnic
Latino public KMEX and U.S. Spanish-language TV involved, Ecuadorian immigrant Francisco
“Paco” Crow used the Noticiero 34 news van to film his own show driving around the busy
streets of Los Angeles engaging viewers in “man-on-the-street” style impromptu interviews.
Paco Crow’s work at KMEX is symbolic of the type of human capital that the station had
access to via Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s influence in the transnational U.S. Spanish-language
TV project. Crow began a nearly thirty-year production career at Canal 34 after gaining
managing experience producing several films in Mexico, including María Félix and Pedro
Infante’s 1957 hit Tizoc.
86
Azcárraga’s film distribution rights helped him facilitate Crow’s
involvement with KMEX. In ¿Cómo es Posible? Crow showed up in the KMEX news van and
set up cameras and microphones to tape random individuals’ opinions on different issues, usually
of the “soft” or entertainment variety. “On one occasion,” Crow reminisced, “I asked ‘Why can’t
priests and nuns marry? Do you think this would be acceptable?’ To my surprise, when one

85
Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.
86
“Paco Crow,” Internet Movie Database (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0189547/), accessed March 9, 2019.

109

person began answering, onlookers started chiming in their comments and, before we knew it,
the whole thing had snowballed into a huge debate among the crowd.”
87

The José Feliciano Show
Besides ¿Cómo es Posible?, Noticiero 34, and the KMEX public service programs, the
José Feliciano Show (starring the eponymous Puerto Rican guitarist) was of the station’s most
significant locally-produced programs during the later 1960s. Twenty two-year-old Feliciano
was still mostly unknown when he electrified the audience with a stirring rendition of “Zorba the
Greek” at a 1967 KMEX-organized community publicity event called “Festival Latino.” General
Manager Joseph Rank excitedly offered Feliciano his own live show at the station after his
concert. Videotaped in color and syndicated nationwide, the KMEX-produced José Feliciano
Show garnered the TV industry’s attention.
88

The station had little money to produce its own entertainment shows within its small
studios, but the KMEX staff worked to create their own stage for the José Feliciano Show. A
construction crew built a small set for Feliciano and his guests to sit and perform from while
Rank and other staff made holes in the studio’s cyclorama (the large drape behind studio stages)
and wired Christmas lightbulbs through them to make the set look like a night sky.
89

Although initially produced on a shoe-string budget, the José Feliciano Show premiered
October 1968 and was an immediate hit with viewers as well as non-Spanish-speaking Anglos.
In later live audience episodes of the show, long lines of people formed around the station

87
Silvio G. Gutierrez, “Paco Crow: A 25-Year Veteran,” The Hollywood Reporter (Sept. 29, 1987), S17, in Folder
23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian; Mary Escamilla, Memorias del Million Dollar y . . . Secretos de los Más
Famosos! (Bloomington, IN: Palibrio Books, 2014), 126-127; “Paco Crow,” IMDB
(https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0189547/)
88
Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH; “Feliciano to Star in Series,” Billboard (Oct. 12, 1968), 40.
89
Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.

110

waiting for their turn to watch Feliciano and his invited musical guests such as Mexican
American singer Vikki Carr as well as English-format artists such as the Everly Brothers, and
Big Momma Thorton among others. While most of the audience members waiting around the
KMEX building on Bronson Avenue were Mexicans and other Latinos, a significant number
were Anglos, many of which had never heard of Channel 34 before. “It wasn’t just a Mexican
thing,” Rank recalled, “it also brought all these gringos and people, because ‘Feliciano is on
Channel 34.’”
90

As much as the José Feliciano Show was a breakout moment for the young guitarist as he
became big in the larger U.S. entertainment industry, the program was also a coup for KMEX-34
in demonstrating how Spanish-language television was becoming a part of larger U.S. cultural
life.
91
Watching Feliciano interview prominent musical artists in the late sixties conveyed to
viewers that the Spanish language was a cultural marker of the U.S. Latino experience in the
present rather than a language of the past or the “old country.” In addition to strengthening the
role of Spanish in the lives of ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos, the show’s appeal to White
Americans signaled KMEX’s growing potential to leave a cultural impact across the larger
Southern California social landscape. Although Canal 34 would remain faithful to its Spanish
format, the presence of artists like Big Momma Thorton suggests Feliciano may have regularly
integrated English into his show, thus making it appealing to less-Spanish-fluent TV viewers,
including U.S.-born or –raised Latinos who otherwise might not have tuned into a Spanish-
language TV station. Besides standing out as a U.S. Latino TV production amid the mass of
imported Mexican fare, Feliciano’s prominence as a Puerto Rican artist on a station serving a

90
Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.
91
Cecil Smith, “Feliciano and Guitar Light Fires Amid Darkness,” L.A. Times (April 27, 1969), S2.

111

predominantly ethnic Mexican audience speaks to the larger U.S.-based Latino constituency
Spanish-language TV’s programming advanced.
KMEX’s José Feliciano Show and ¿Cómo es Posible? attest to the transnational TV
station’s distinctly U.S. Latino programming produced in a U.S. context for an ethnic audience in
the United States. Histories of SIN/Univision have rightfully emphasized the presence of
Telesistema/Televisa programming on the network, but often have not given sufficient attention
to the local U.S. productions developed by KMEX and its sister stations. Although imported
Mexican programming comprised the vast bulk of KMEX’s schedule, programs produced in the
U.S. by and for U.S. Latinos are important for understanding the role of Spanish-language TV as
a site for ethnic identity formation.
92

Early KMEX Sports: Bullfighting, Soccer, and Boxing
Taped sports programs represented a significant portion of KMEX’s leisure
programming. Newsweek, dismissive of the station’s public service programs (describing them as
“nothing to write home to Chihuahua about”), nevertheless recognized the popularity of its sports
programming noting that Mexican soccer, bullfighting and boxing encouraged TV-owners with
UHF reception in East L.A. to invite family and friends to taco parties to watch those sporting

92
The Jose Feliciano Show also notably marked one of the first times that a KMEX-produced program was
rebroadcast across other SIN stations, including the northern Mexican border town stations. Besides airing on
KWEX and the northern Mexican border town SIN stations, the José Feliciano Show’s 32 episodes from 1969 and
1970 were aired on XEW in Mexico City, becoming the fourth top-rated show on Mexican TV. Though initially
formed to generate further revenue for Telesistema programs, KMEX was now producing content appearing on
Azcárraga’s Mexican TV stations! Tony Scott, “KMEX-TV Reaches Audience of 1,500,000 Spanish-Speaking
Residents of 5 Counties,” Daily Variety (April 24, 1970), 19, in Folder 164, Box 5, Rubén Salazar Papers, USC
Special Collections; Rubén Soto, Univision, America’s Largest Spanish-Language Television Network, (Miami, FL,
Self-Published E-Book, 2015), 15; Federico Subervi-Vélez, “Mass Communication and Hispanics: Television,”
Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States Sociology, ed. Félix Padilla, (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press,
1994), 337.

112

events.
93
Sports has been a regular part of KMEX’s broadcast schedule beginning with a two-
hour broadcast of Mexico City bullfights during Channel 34’s debut on September 30, 1962.
KMEX’s offering of taped soccer matches were a significant part of its popular cultural
programming sports schedule. Soccer games beamed through KMEX – at the time mostly
matches between Mexican teams “well sprinkled with high-salaried South American forwards
and backs” – gave futbol fans a regular delight to watch on Channel 34 at a time when no other
Southland outlets aired the sport. However, one reviewer of KMEX’s first soccer broadcasts
lamented “If only camera movements were able to keep pace with the ball, then televised soccer
would be less of a strain on viewers.”
94
Technical developments related to the filming of soccer
matches would later revolutionize KMEX viewers’ futbol experience, but in 1962 soccer
broadcasting on Channel 34 was still embryonic.
As important as soccer and boxing were for KMEX sports-based leisure programming, it
was bullfighting which dominated the station’s ratings during its first months on the air. Prior to
its decline in the latter twentieth century, the corridas de toros had a potent grip over the
primarily Mexican immigrant audience early KMEX sought to attract. At the time bullfighting
was still popular through the Spanish-speaking world, but the sport’s ban in the U.S. meant
Southland fiesta brava aficionados had to travel to Tijuana’s border-adjacent Bullring by the Sea
(or needed access to Mexico-based TV stations) to watch bullfights. In Los Angeles an early
post-U.S. conquest city council banned bullfighting in 1860.
95

93
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
94
Joseph “Pepe” Arciga, “TV Review – The Image of KMEX: Good, Bad,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18, 1962), C-20.
95
According to historian Richard Griswold del Castillo, bullfighting was banned by the Los Angeles City Council in
1860 but non-lethal bullfights where the bull was not killed at the end of the fiesta brava continued until 1872 when
the sport definitively vanished from the city. See The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850-1890: A Social History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979), 116; Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Bullfighting: A Troubled History (London:
Reaktion, 2010).

113

In an indirect sense KMEX brought bullfighting back to L.A. by making it accessible to
anyone with a UHF-capable TV. “This was an unheard-of TV ‘first,’ for no one had dared pull
such a rabbit out of a UHF sombrero,” wrote Joseph “Pepe” Arciga of the L.A. Times who also
noted that the station’s bullfights elicited complaints from some members of the community.
“Will Angelenos be able to continue watching these Sunday wars by way of KMEX-TV Channel
34?”
96
The general White American antagonism towards bullfighting was such that
entertainment journalist Cecil Smith had to temper his review of an early KMEX bullfight
broadcast in which he praised the bull as a “very stalwart fellow who clung tenaciously to life
and took a great deal of killing” quickly adding he was “not recommending the watching of
bullfights – a practice frowned upon in certain circles. I’m simply reporting on this particular
program.”
97

Anticipating the problems that could arise in airing the entirety of the bullfight – with the
killing of the bull at the end of the telecast – KMEX aired announcements in October and
November 1962 requesting viewer feedback on whether it should show the “complete bullfight.”
Indeed, for many bullfighting aficionados, the killing of the bull (or sometimes the bullfighter)
was the spectacle’s climactic moment. According to marketing papers, KMEX received 2,600
letters supporting the uncut corridas de toros along with 16 letters “condemning that area of
KMEX-TV programming.”
98
Based on the responses of its informal survey, Channel 34 began
airing the unabridged footage flown northward from Telesistema Mexicano.

96
Pepe Arciga, “Bullfight Detractors Toss Hat Into Ring,” L.A. Times (Nov. 8, 1962), C-12; Charles Lee Poss letter
printed in Cecil Smith, “L.A. Bullfights? No Beefs Yet,” L.A. Times (Sept. 28, 1962), D-20.
97
Cecil Smith, “Bullfight Action From Mexico,” L.A. Times (Oct. 16, 1962), D-14.
98
“Even Pulic Service Sells – If It is Advertised over KMEX-TV,” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2,
Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

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Despite some loud protests, televised bullfighting became one of KMEX’s biggest
popular cultural programming draws. L.A. Times columnist Rubén Salazar detailed the allure of
watching bullfighting on Canal 34 was so great for many Mexicans and Latinos in the area that
families would often host carne asada parties to watch the spectacle.
99
“The family with a TV
converter, which brings Los Angeles Spanish-language television station KMEX, can now
impress the neighbors with the exotic-sounding invitation: ‘Want to come over to a taco party
and watch the bullfights?’”
100
Indeed, many L.A. area Latinos who grew up watching bullfights
on early KMEX recall the experience bringing different generations of the family together.
101

Several local businesses took advantage of KMEX’s popular corridas de toros by
advertising on the station and using the bullfights to bring in customers to their stores. The
Atlantic Dodge car dealership in East Los Angeles, an early local advertiser with Canal 34, wrote
to General Manager Burt Avedon thanking him for setting up multiple TV sets in the car
showroom during the dealership’s grand opening. KMEX’s 4-hour-long bullfight broadcast
attracted many car shoppers and neighbors to the new dealership, making the showroom “look as
if the bullfight was actually taking place” there. The attendance was such that the dealership’s
president wished he had sold tickets to the event since it became standing room only. KMEX
also held televised giveaways at Atlantic Dodge that “created a stampede” through the
dealership’s doors for “three solid days.” The dealership sold a total of 42 new and used vehicles
during its opening as a result of its televised partnership with KMEX, an unusual number of
sales, according to its president, considering that dealership openings typically did not draw in

99
“Ole Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
100
Ruben Salazar, “Ole! Pass the Tacos-Hey Down in Front,” L.A. Times (May 20, 1963), in Box 2, Folder 16,
Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
101
One Mexican American who grew up in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood during the 1970s fondly recalls
being glued to the TV in his grandmother’s house eating her homemade tacos as the family watched the bullfights.
Eric González correspondence (Sept. 6, 2018), in the possession of the author.

115

large numbers of customers. “I could not be any happier than if I had been the winning
matador.”
102

Ironically, the often-controversial bullfights attracted a significant White American
audience. KMEX even instigated a taco party “fad” among white Angelinos through its
bullfighting programming. The centerpiece of the suburbanite Anglos’ taco parties were the
frozen tacos served at such gatherings, an intercultural manifestation Rubén Salazar succinctly
christened as the “first sacrilege” of the night.
103
Defenders of the fiesta brava would compare
the bullfight itself to an art while others – described by Salazar as white, suburban insurance
salesmen – defended the bravery of the matadors, arguing that more people died on freeways
each year than in the corridas de toros. The white suburbanites, Salazar mused, employed “a very
un-Latin rationalization.”
104
Exploring the cultural meaning of watching a bullfight (with its
heavy connotations of Hispanic culture) on a U.S. television broadcast watched by Babbitt-like
white Californians eating frozen tacos, Salazar mused that the taco parties KMEX fostered was
“pure Americana” in all of its midcentury kitsch glory. “Televised bullfighting at taco parties can
give you a hint of a way of life which still makes the blood of millions tingle. And in this
thermonuclear age, a frozen taco and an electronic hint are probably better than nothing.”
105

The energetic audience reception to the bullfight broadcasts reveals much about the
cultural value of KMEX’s entertainment programming. Bullfights and other sports programming
might not quite have shaped Latino viewers’ ethnic consciousness in the direct way the station’s

102
Seymour Markowitz, Atlantic Dodge, to Burt Avedon (April 22, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford. The dealership was located at 657 S. Atlantic Boulevard in East Los
Angeles.
103
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 12-13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
104
Rubén Salazar, “Ole! Pass the Tacos-Hey Down in Front,” L.A. Times (May 20, 1963), in Box 2, Folder 16,
Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
105
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 12-13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

116

news and public service programming was clearly meant to, but entertainment on Spanish-
language TV still reaffirmed long-standing cultural practices among Latinos living in the Los
Angeles area. By popularizing bullfight watching in private homes and L.A. area business
venues KMEX promoted Spanish as a language of everyday life for U.S. Latinos. Information
from surviving records do not make it possible to determine more details about who was
watching the bullfights – such as the proportion of Mexicans, Cubans, Central Americans, and
other Latin American nationalities – but the general popularity the bullfights attracted suggests
they had appeal over a wide audience. Bringing individuals together, even if just to watch a taped
bullfight from Mexico, created a sense of cultural community and a direct connection to home
for Mexican immigrants through the power of television and the Spanish language. Advertisers’
utilization of bullfights and other Latino-oriented programming to lure in customers (revenue)
further underscores the significance of media outlets like KMEX-34 in reinforcing Spanish as a
language of everyday life in the social landscape of Latino Southern California.

Daniel Villanueva and Local Sportscasting on KMEX
The high ratings potential of sports programming on KMEX compelled the station to
have a dedicated sportscaster to guide viewers. General Manager Burt Avedon hired Danny
Villanueva, a man with deep roots throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region and a kicker with
the Los Angeles Rams, to serve as one of the station’s first sportscasters. Villanueva’s hiring
proved highly consequential as he slowly became one of the most important individuals in the
expansion of KMEX and the Spanish International Network. From his early involvement as a
sports announcer to serving as KMEX General Manager for nearly twenty years until 1989,

117

Villanueva was one of the most prominent Mexican Americans involved in the development of
Spanish-language television in the U.S.
The ninth of twelve children, Daniel Dario Villanueva was born in a two-room adobe
home to Mexican immigrant parents in Tucumcari, New Mexico, in 1937.
106
After a few years in
Arizona, the Villanuevas moved to the arid California border town of Calexico where Daniel
spent his boyhood working in the fields picking watermelons and cantaloupes to help his
family.
107
As a young adult, Villanueva attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces on
a football scholarship that enabled him to major in English and serve as editor of The Round Up,
NMSU’s student newspaper.
108
Villanueva was recruited by the Los Angeles Rams in 1960 after
a scout saw Villanueva kick a long-distance field goal during an NMSU Aggies football game.
109

The eight years Villanueva spent in the NFL (primarily with the Rams but also two years
with the Dallas Cowboys) exposed him to a wide social milieu, including brushes with racial
tension. Although he led the NFL punting yardage with 3,960 at a time when there were few
Latino kickers in the league, Villanueva still became the target of Mexican puns. Besides being
accompanied by the sound of bullfighting music whenever he entered the field at Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum, sportscasters nicknamed Villanueva “El Kickador.” Villanueva later told

106
Margalit Fox, “Daniel Villanueva, a Creator of Univision, Dies at 77,” New York Times (June 22, 2015),
(https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/business/daniel-villanueva-creator-of-univision-dies-at-77.html); David
Colker, “Danny Villanueva, co-founder of Univision, dies at 77,” L.A. Times (June 20, 2015),
(http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la -me-danny-villanueva-20150621-story.html).
107
The Villanuevas moved often because Daniel’s father was a Methodist minister. In Calexico the elder Villanueva
ministered to migrant farmworkers. Colker, “Danny Villanueva,” L.A. Times; Kevin Starr, Coast of Dreams (Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group: New York, 2011), 255-256; Fox, “Daniel Villanueva,” N.Y. Times.
108
According to Villanueva, part of the reason he chose his major was to assimilate into white American culture. “I
went so far from Spanish that I majored in English. That's the ultimate." Gary Libman, “Danny Villanueva,
President of KMEX-TV: He Gets His Kicks Serving Latino Community,” L.A. Times (Sept. 29, 1985),
(http://articles.latimes.com/1985-09-29/news/vw-18584_1_danny-villanueva/2); Fox, “Daniel Villanueva,” N.Y.
Times.
109
Fox, “Daniel Villanueva,” N.Y. Times.

118

ESPN “I realized very fast that I was different.”
110
Alternatively, Villanueva was also made fun
of by proud Mexicans; in one instance, a spectator screamed at him saying “Pocho, ¡aprenda su
propia idioma!” (“Pocho! Learn your own language!”)
111
Villanueva also confronted the fact that
he earned a low paycheck from the Rams, earning just $5,500 in his first season.
112
Despite the
discrimination he faced, Villanueva remained an enthusiastic member of the Rams and made
good impressions on his fans, including one he taught to kick at a training camp. That casual
sports mentoring moment inadvertently changed the trajectory of Villanueva’s life: the boy’s
father introduced him to KMEX’s Burt Avedon who hired him to deliver a nightly sportscast
beginning in early July 1964.
113

Villanueva accepted the KMEX sportscaster job despite the fact that he had lost most of
his Spanish-language proficiency as an adolescent. Amid the racial discrimination that
characterized life in the mid-twentieth century U.S.-Mexican borderlands, Villanueva and his
siblings were pressured to assimilate to normative white cultural values. “I was a member of that
transitional generation of Mexican Americans who thought it was necessary to give up Mexico in
order to make it in America,” Villanueva later reminisced. “It didn't work.” Villanueva’s limited
Spanish-proficiency ultimately did not hinder him significantly within the constraints of the five-
minute sports show sponsored by Ford Motor Company, but his trouble with pronunciation and
grammatical fluency forced him to relearn his native language. Villanueva recalled that at
KMEX he experienced a different type of discrimination on the part of Spanish-speaking
personnel. “People laughed at me because I couldn’t speak Spanish. I was hurt here, really

110
Elizabeth Merrill, “Villanueva saw NFL as a path to greater opportunity,” ESPN (Oct. 12, 2008),
(http://www.espn.com/espn/hispanicheritage2008/news/story?id=3640336).
111
Richard Rodríguez, “S.I.N. is In,” California (April 1986), 80. Pocho is a pejorative term used by individuals in
Mexico against Mexican Americans who struggle to speak Spanish fluently.
112
Merrill, “Villanueva saw NFL as a path to greater opportunity,” ESPN.
113
Libman, “President of KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times;

119

hurt.”
114
Despite the challenges he faced as a U.S.-born Spanish-language sportscaster,
Villanueva remained at KMEX even after he transferred to the Dallas Cowboys; the kicker
regularly flew red-eye flights back to L.A. to continue his gig at Channel 34. Villanueva finally
committed himself full-time to KMEX after the Cowboys lost to the Green Bay Packers in the
infamous December 31, 1967, NFL Championship Game better known as the “Ice Bowl.”
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Some of the earliest surviving recordings of Villanueva’s sportscasting on KMEX
includes footage from one of its other main sports draws in the 1960s: boxing. Although one
local TV reviewer dismissed boxing on Channel 34 as fare “strictly for those resigned to follow
boxing to its grave” due to the blurry image quality of the taped matches, KMEX boxing drew in
scores of viewers hankering for a regular schedule of fights. Initially boxing telecasts and
commentary were wholly imported from Telesistema but boxing matches KMEX began filming
at local L.A. area venues included in-house commentary. Villanueva and other KMEX
sportscasters’ commentary was often essential during boxing matches, particularly when they
were shot at a distance, making some of the pugilists’ moves difficult to follow.
116
The presence
of an NFL player gave KMEX-34’s sportscasting more recognition among viewers and industry

114
According to Richard Rodríguez, Villanueva’s confession about his linguistic ambivalency is significant. “This is
the confession one Mexican American makes to another. You may not understand its full import. For Mexican
immigrants and for those of us who are the children of immigrant parents, the matter of language is an obsession.
Which language to speak and how well?” See “S.I.N. is In,” California (April 1986), 80; “Villanueva signs as a
sportscaster,” L.A. Times (July 7, 1964), C-10; Libman, “President of KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times.
115
The “Ice Bowl” is legendary for having been played in subzero temperatures (-15*F) with an average wind chill
of -48*F. The 21-17 loss to Green Bay and the miserably cold weather compelled 29-year-old Villanueva to return
to the U.S.-Mexican borderlands and work full-time as a newscaster for KMEX. See Merrill, “Villanueva saw NFL
as a path to greater opportunity,” ESPN; Fox, “Daniel Villanueva,” N.Y. Times.
116
An example of this commentary is Villanueva’s co-hosted commentary duties in the May 7, 1965, fight at the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between Raul Reyes of San Pedro, California, and defending f eatherweight world
boxing champion Vicente “El Zurdo de Oro” Saldívar of Mexico City. The camera’s distant location during the 15 -
round match made the boxing commentary essential. Although the visual quality of the Reyes-Saldívar match
suffered because of the camera’s distance from the ring, other boxing matches aired on KMEX (such as those
imported from Mexico) were placed closer and often alternated between one or two shooting locations. Ernesto
Barrera vs Carlos Gómez (May 5, 1962), DVD# 15296, T123921, UCLA Film and Television Archive; Raul Reyes
vs Vicente Saldívar (May 7, 1965), DVD# 15332, T123907, UCLA FTVA. See also Pepe Arciga, “The Image of
KMEX: Good, Bad,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18, 1962).

120

observers. By the end of the 1960s Villanueva would be delivering many of KMEX’s nightly
newscasts - his sports announcer work was an entryway for him to influence the station as a
news anchor and later as its long-time general manager.

Taking Advertisers by the Hand
KMEX’s programming conveyed notions of a distinct Latino community living in the
U.S. while its appeals to advertisers similarly promoted the notion Latinos were a distinct
consumer base which could be best reached through Spanish-language TV. Nevertheless,
corporate America’s embrace of Spanish-language TV – a trend carefully documented by Arlene
Dávila in Latinos, Inc. – was a phenomenon which more clearly expanded in the later
1970s/early 1980s – during KMEX-34’s first years on the air in the 1960s the station’s success
with ad revenue was a mixed experience, attracting skepticism and indifference from national
advertisers while local Southern Californian businesses enthusiastically supported the station
through commercials.
National advertisers were “wary of big commitments to KMEX-TV, as to most UHF
channels.” With rates as low as $75 per each one-minute spot, KMEX generated approximately
$500,000 in advertising revenue between September 1962 and March 1963. Nevertheless, many
advertising agencies still stayed away, claiming the cheap rates were still too high considering
the small number of TV viewers with UHF band capability.
117
Other national advertising
agencies interested in reaching Mexican American consumers were “scared off by the sloppy
operating procedures” of some Spanish-language radio stations and felt Spanish TV was a risky
venture to invest in.
118

117
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
118
Richard Pickens, “Spanish Air Media-Ole!” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 4

121

While many advertisers simply believed there was no such thing as a Spanish-speaking
Latino market in the U.S., other White American advertisers held more racist rationales for not
advertising on Spanish television or radio. Early KMEX general manager Joe Rank experienced
a visceral rejection when he approached the Disneyland media representative at the influential J.
Walter Thompson advertising firm about having Disney buy commercial time on Canal 34. Ron
Ziegler, the J. Walter Thompson ad man on the Disneyland account, told KMEX “we don’t want
Mexicans at Disneyland.” Despite his racist aversion to running Disneyland commercials on
Spanish-language TV, Ziegler went on to serve as President Richard Nixon’s press secretary.
119

Much of the skepticism national advertisers felt towards running commercials on KMEX-
34 and Spanish-language TV as a whole was due to the lack of market studies on the Latino
viewing audience. Ratings-service agencies did not conduct surveys to determine the number of
people watching Canal 34. Having these statistics were critical to convince prospective
advertisers that it made financial sense to buy commercial airtime on KMEX.
120
Avedon
summed up KMEX’s predicament, saying “We’ve got to take the ad agencies by the hand and
lead them step by step, to show them there’s a market in selective advertising.”
121

In addition to commissioning research studies on KMEX’s viewing audience, Avedon
actively courted advertisers by emphasizing how the station would help them make Spanish-
language commercials on the cheap while helping advertisers get a high return on investment.
Promotional materials constantly presented KMEX as the only true broadcaster for the region’s
large Latino population. “KMEX-TV is literally one station in a market of over 1,200,000

119
Ziegler was President Nixon’s press secretary from 1969-1974. Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.
For more on transnational J. Walter Thompson and its Mexican connections see Julio E. Moreno, “J. Walter
Thompson, the Good Neighbor Policy, and Lessons in Mexican Business Culture, 1920 –1950,” Enterprise and
Society vol. 5, no. 2 (2004): 254-280.
120
Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.
121
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963).

122

people,” the station told advertisers.
122
Avedon and the KMEX market strategists offered to take
clients’ existing English-language commercials and dub them into Spanish at “very moderate
costs” or help them produce original commercials in Spanish using Telesistema facilities in
Tijuana or Mexico City.
123
In convincing advertisers through market surveys that a distinct
Latino TV viewer/consumer demographic existed - a city within a city – Spanish-language TV
was essentially creating a distinct U.S. Latino ethnic constituency.
By 1963 SIN recruited a variety of national advertisers to run commercials on KMEX.
Besides Schick shaving blades – which used pictures of on-air KMEX personalities like
Fernando Escandón in its promotions – other national advertisers included Procter and Gamble,
Colgate-Palmolive, Coca Cola, Orange Crush, Squirt, Simoniz, Quaker Oats, and Carnation milk
into its commercial line up.
124
Despite this roster, KMEX and SIN’s advertising accounts ran for
prices cheaper than on the big three networks and prevented SIN and its individual stations from
fully exploiting their advertising revenue.
125

However, local businesses and advertising agencies demonstrated much more faith in
Canal 34 despite their own initial skepticism. Unlike the national firms in New York, local
businesses were better positioned to see direct results of running ads on KMEX. Al Avalon
Enterprises, an advertising agency based in Hollywood, initially expressed skepticism about

122
Avedon also notably emphasized that brands and products advertised on the sole-Spanish TV station in town
would yield the same sort of historic revenue many brands enjoyed during the 1948 -1952 FCC television freeze
restrictions when “everything that was advertised” on TV was sold due to the fact that during that time most U.S.
cities were restricted to having only one or two TV stations. “Audience Reaction to KMEX-TV and to Ch. 34
Sponsors” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
123
KMEX and SIN further sweetened the deal, assuring their clients that the AFTRA and SAG unions in Hollywood
indicated “that no residual talent payments will be necessary if commercials are made or dubbed in Tijuana or
Mexico City.” “How Do You Work With Ch, 34?” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16,
Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
124
“If its Advertised on KMEX-TV it sells” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford; “Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963); “Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8,
1963), 13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
125
“Sponsors look at Spanish television,” Sponsor (July 8, 1963), 12-13, in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,”
in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford; Rank oral history interview by Franz, NMAH.

123

advertising on the Spanish-language UHF station. “I was not at all sold on your station or its
potential,” CEO Al Avalon wrote to KMEX. Avalon’s agency ran commercials for the same
product in 15 large U.S. markets, but thanks to KMEX, its Los Angeles market far outsold the
others despite being the only UHF and Spanish-language account in Avalon’s portfolio. “Based
upon the unprecedented success of your station, I believe it is safe for me to assume that the
Spanish market is immense and untapped” Avalon wrote, adding that he was having his staff
adjust to better handle their “hundreds of new Spanish-speaking customers.”
126

Another local ad firm, Frank Robinson Advertising, gave KMEX an animated
explanation for cancelling their commercials on the station. “It is with great reluctance that we
must cancel our sewing machine schedule on KMEX,” Robinson wrote, adding “The reason is
simply that WE HAVE TOO MANY LEADS!!” (Emphasis in original). Robinson added that the
amount of customers generated by the commercials on KMEX went beyond the ad firm’s
“wildest expectations” and that its Spanish-speaking salesmen were not enough to handle the
influx of new Latino customers. Sales positions were being announced to help manage the flow
of Spanish-speaking shoppers; once filled, Robinson would resume the commercials, “but
perhaps at a lower frequency so as we don’t overload ourselves again.” It was the first time in
that ad man’s career that he had to cancel a commercial schedule for such reasons.
127

Jesus “Chuy” Alcaraz, the general manager for Central Electric – an appliance,
television, and air conditioning distributor in downtown L.A. – was one local Mexican American
businessman who noticed an uptick in customers after advertising on KMEX. According to

126
Avalon ended his letter stating that he would “brush up” on his Spanish and try to his success with KMEX secret.
“Perhaps I should think twice about sending this letter. I would like to keep the Spanish market entirely for myself.”
Al Avalon to Burt Avedon, KMEX Channel 34 (May 27, 1963), in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2,
Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
127
Robinson also told KMEX that it should be “very proud of the results” it was “garnering for its advertisers during
its comparatively short tenure on the air.” Frank Robinson to Al Pryor, KMEX Channel 34 (November 12, 1963), in
“KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

124

Alcaraz, Central Electric had a 32.5 percent increase in customers after running ads on Channel
34 and had to hire more salesmen “to handle the crowd at peak hours”, a change that “can only
be attributed to a more effective exposure of our advertising through KMEX.”
128
Chuy Alcaraz
maintained a steadfast advertising presence on the channel for over a generation, later
reminiscing that KMEX had left “una huella incalculable” (immeasurable footprint) in the
Latino community.
129

Long-time advertisers on the channel often became local celebrities, such as Isaac
Ramberg of Phoenix Furniture. A Jewish Lithuanian-Mexican immigrant to Boyle Heights,
Ramberg asserted that he wanted to be part of Spanish-language TV and became one of KMEX’s
earliest advertisers, starring in countless commercials for his store. Over the course of 25 years,
“Don Isaac” (typically clad in a guayabera) was often more easily recognized by KMEX
televidentes than the mayors of Los Angeles.
130
Anecdotes like these allowed KMEX to
approach prospective advertisers asking “Can you afford not to include this audience and their
station in your advertising and marketing plans for the area?”
131
KMEX-34’s mixed success
recruiting advertisers led to the station turning its first profit in 1965, but it also demonstrates
much about the audience reception to the new station.
132

128
Jesus “Chuy” Alcaraz to Burt Avedon, KMEX Channel 34 (May 1, 1963), in “KMEX-TV Channel 34
Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
129
In 1992 Alcaraz said Central Electric grew because of KMEX and valued its “mission to communicate, inform,
and entertain” while serving the public. Jesus “Chuy” Alcaraz quoted in Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad.
130
Ernesto Cervera in KMEX los 30 del 34 (UCLA).
131
“Summary” in “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
132
KMEX fell short of the $800,000 revenue Burt Avedon told the press the station needed to break even at the end
of its first year and, as may be remembered, the station did not turn a profit until three years after it wa s on the air.
Art Seidenbaum, “Special Interest TV: Limited Appeal Pays Off,” L.A. Times (May 19, 1963); Félix Gutiérrez,
“Mexico’s Television Network in the United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,” in Dordick, H. S.
(Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books, 1979), 150.

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Indeed, the positive audience reception of KMEX’s programming manifest in viewer
patronage of businesses advertising on the station did much to strengthen the Spanish-language
TV medium’s discourses about the existence of a distinct U.S. Latino constituency. KMEX’s
marketing surveys and appeals to advertisers were an important component of the different
forces – which included community activists, government bureaucrats, and advertisers
themselves – that influenced the development and propagation of discourses affirming that
Latinos living in the U.S. were a single panethnic group united by their common Spanish-
language heritage. The results of the Spanish TV medium’s promoting of a U.S. Latino identity
amid the significant cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic differences existing between
Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans, would not be evident until the 1980s,
but KMEX-34’s work in helping initiate that conversation is key in historicizing the role of
Spanish TV as a site for identity formation as well as in strengthening the place of Spanish as
language of everyday life in the U.S.

Conclusion
The arrival of Spanish-language television in the Southern Californian – let alone its
success – was anything but a foregone conclusion in the early 1960s. KMEX-34 was profoundly
shaped by Mexican financial capital and the vast amount of imported Telesistema content it
aired, but from the beginning it also operated as a site for U.S. Latino cultural identity formation,
even if its programming was still mostly (though not exclusively) oriented towards ethnic
Mexican televidentes. By informing, educating, and entertaining viewers KMEX-34 promoted a
U.S.-based Latinidad based around speaking Spanish. Moreover, in broadcasting entertainment

126

and news/public service content to viewers in Spanish the station reinforced the role of Spanish
as a relevant language of everyday life for Latinos living in the United States.
It cannot be asserted that KMEX was the singular voice of the early 1960s Southern
California Latino population, but the station’s vision of serving the viewing interests of a
distinctly U.S.-based Latino audience gave the U.S. Spanish TV medium an important basis for
existing. Burt Avedon told reporters “As pioneers, we’ve taken our licks, and had our successes
too.” Avedon next comments spoke to intentions of the larger Latino community-building work
the station saw itself promoting. “We’re not broadcasting to a minority audience,” he said.
“Rather we’re serving the cultural heritage of the area. We all belong to it.”
133

133
Bob Hull, “TV Talk with Bob Hull: Happy Birthday, KMEX-TV,” L.A. Herald-Examiner (Sept. 30, 1963),
“KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.

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Chapter 3: “Communicating with the community directly and in their
language”: Spanish-Language TV News during the 1960s and 1970s

“Our newscast is dedicated to covering significant community news first and broader and more
general news second. The reason for this is simple: we believe awareness begins at home. We
cannot hope to cope with large national and international issues until we learn how to cope with
barrio issues.”
1

– Rubén Salazar, KMEX News Director

KMEX-34 debuted as an attempt by Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta and his transnational
partners to generate more revenue from Telesistema Mexicano programming, but in practice its
Spanish-language format and its appeal to ethnic Mexican viewers made the station a public
sphere for the creation and exploration of a U.S. Latino ethnic and cultural identity. “El León”
Azcárraga raised public interest in his transnational Spanish-language TV project by asserting
the Spanish International Network would resisting the racist anti-Mexican imagery so prevalent
in U.S. television. Given U.S. TV’s brutish representation of Mexicans, Azcárraga asserted U.S.
Spanish-language TV like KMEX was an “opportunity to send our Mexican compatriots
programming which can bring them closer to the country that saw their birth.”
2
Similar remarks
by Azcárraga partners/subordinates like Rene Anselmo and Burt Avedon who said KMEX-34
was intended to help acculturate Latinos viewers into U.S. society while celebrating their cultural
heritage suggested the station was founded as public service. While Azcárraga and others’
characterization of KMEX as a service to the L.A. Latino community may have been more of a
component of a promotional campaign than a fully committed statement of policy, their remarks
do point to the identity-building potential of the U.S. Spanish-language TV medium.

1
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Rubén Salazar Papers, Special
Collections, Doheny Library, University of Southern California (hereafter Salazar Papers, USC Special Collection s).
2
1962 Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta remarks quoted in Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio
Azcárraga y su Imperio Televisa (México, D.F.: Grijalbo, 2000), 94.

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When considered in the context of Latinos’ heavily minoritized position in midcentury
Southern California, all of KMEX-34’s programming can be viewed as propagating notions of
identity (particularly mexicanidad, Mexican identity, given the amount of imported Telesistema
Mexicano content), but it is the station’s locally produced newscasts which most overtly
articulated notions of a U.S. Latino identity. The ethnic identity KMEX advanced in the 1960s
was not yet the Latino panethnicity sociologist G. Cristina Mora asserts took shape during the
seventies. However, in the coverage of U.S. Latino news from an ethnic, Spanish-language
perspective in the station’s noticieros (newscasts) one can see a distinct U.S.-grounded Latino
cultural identity promoted over the airwaves. KMEX’s Spanish-language public sphere conveyed
the notion Latinos were a distinct constituency living in the United States. Moreover, Spanish-
language TV’s community-building content also reinforced the role of Spanish in viewers’ lives.
In promoting Spanish as a language of participation in U.S. social and political life (as well as a
language of economic consumption as we have seen), KMEX strengthened the role of Spanish as
a language of everyday life and cultural identity in the U.S.
The development of KMEX’s news and public service programming during the 1960s
and 1970s demonstrates the early ways in which Spanish-language TV served as a Latino public
sphere. Given how Spanish-language TV represented a mix of U.S. and Latin American cultures
it is apt to recall anthropologist Arlene Dávila’s observation on how TV, radio, print and other
mass communications (influenced by market forces) “mass mediate” notions of citizenship,
identity, and culture. Thus U.S. Spanish-language TV (responding to the need to generate
advertising profits while appealing to Spanish-speaking viewers) mass-mediates culture and

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language to attract viewers and make them active consumers of commercial products and TV
programming.
3

Bearing in mind the mass-mediated nature of the station’s ethnic identity-building, it is
important to recognize KMEX-34’s opening of a public sphere for Latinos through the medium
of Spanish-language television. News Director Rubén Salazar recognized the station’s potential
as a dedicated public space for the articulation of Latino issues as a means of overcoming “the
stubborn individualism of the Mexican American.”
4
KMEX expanded the L.A. Latino public
sphere by serving as an added space for the circulation, analysis, and contestation of Latino
concerns in the region, particularly in light of the lack of attention on Latino issues in
mainstream English-language mass media. While the station never fully embraced the activist
organizers who guided the Chicano movement, it did act as a space for proponents of Chicano
causes to be heard, undergirding KMEX’s role as a public sphere for Latino cultural interchange
in greater Los Angeles. Through its news programming KMEX-34 demonstrated the capacity for
Spanish-language television to create a U.S. Latino identity.

KMEX-34’s Ethnic-Oriented Newscasts in Historical Context
KMEX-34’s ethnic-oriented news programming represents one of the most salient
examples of how U.S. Spanish-language TV has promoted notions of Latino identity, though
much of this identity was more culturally Mexican during the station’s early days prior to the
increased migration of Central Americans to the L.A. area. As the type of programming most
often produced by U.S. Spanish-language TV outlets, newscasts appeared on KMEX since its

3
Dávila, Latinos, Inc., 10-11.
4
Rubén Salazar, “Mexican TV: Latin Americans Eye the American Dream,” L.A. Times (June 5, 1963), Part V,
Page 19, newspaper clipping, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections.

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first day on the air. The September 30, 1962 re-broadcasting of Telesistema Mexicano’s
coverage of President Kennedy’s state visit to Mexico City from earlier that year illustrates the
station’s transnational context as well as KMEX management’s attempts to imitate the practices
of mainstream U.S. television which featured local newscasts as a regular part of their schedules.
Advancing an often Mexican-shaped U.S. Latino identity in the 1960s and 1970s through local
news broadcasts was a product of its cross-border origin and its desire to compete with English-
language stations in metro L.A. by attracting advertisers and Latino viewers.
KMEX-34 management developed local Noticiero 34 evening newscasts as part of the
station’s schedule given in imitation of the common U.S. TV station practice of airing newscasts
during their evening lineup. By the 1960s most U.S. stations, and certainly those affiliated with
one of the big three networks, carried both local and network newscasts as part of their evening
schedule to meet the minimum number of daily broadcasting hours the FCC required of TV
station licensees.
5
TV newscasts were a relatively low-cost way of filling airtime to meet the
FCC’s threshold for daily broadcasting hours. The live Noticiero 34 newscasts, initially airing at
5:45pm before primetime programming and again later at night at 10:30pm before the station’s
sign-off, helped KMEX-34 meet its required time on the airwaves.
6

U.S. TV newscasting has its roots in radio-format news. Prior to the professionalization
of broadcast journalism during World War II, early radio newscasts in the 1920s and 1930s

5
See Federal Communications Commission, “Rule 3.651, Time of Operation, Subpart E – Television Broadcast
Stations,” Federal Register, vol. 20, no. 216 (Nov. 4, 1955), (https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/radio-history-
documents), 9121. In the 1950s and 1960s, TV station licensees were required to broadcast at least 2 hours daily and
at least 12 hours per week during their first 18 months on the air, with total weekly hours incrementally increasing
after that. Besides being a public service, TV newscasts helped broadcasters meet their transmission hour
requirements.
6
KMEX’s parent network SIN debuted Noticiero Nacional SIN, the first national Spanish-language news program
in the U.S., in fall 1981. Federico A. Subervi Velez, “Mass Communication and Hispanics,” in Handbook of
Hispanic Culture: Sociology, ed. Nicolas Kanellos (Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 1994), 337; “Programas de
Television para hoy Domingo,” La Opinión (Sept. 30, 1962), Sect. 3, pg. 5; “Programas de Television para hoy
Viernes,” La Opinión (Oct. 5, 1962), 3

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usually consisted of radio announcers reading stories from newspapers.
7
For their part, some of
the early TV stations in the U.S. before World War II also experimented with broadcast
journalism, such as Don Lee’s W6XAO Channel 1 in Los Angeles whose broadcast of a
newsreel of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake is often regarded as the first documented case of
TV news coverage.
8

However, journalism scholar Mike Conway credits the crew at CBS’s WCBW-2 in New
York with setting the template of television news the emerging industry adopted in the post-war
period. Beginning with its debut on July 1, 1941 (the same day commercial TV broadcasting in
the United States began), WCBW-2 aired 15-minute live newscasts weekdays at 2:30pm and
8pm. The WCBW crew, which included Broadway theater producer Worthington Miner, sought
to utilize TV’s visual medium by experimenting staging and visual techniques while also
developing a conversational form of news writing different from “the long, detailed, obtuse
sentences that were common in print journalism.” WCBW’s newscast reported on the war in
Europe using props and made history covering the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor with a
live broadcast featuring expert interviews and showing viewers a map indicating naval
movements in the Pacific. U.S. TV’s first breaking news event was limited to the few thousand
TV viewers in the New York area.
9
By summer 1948 the big three networks made 15-minute
evening TV newscasts an industry staple amid the prolific expansion of television ownership

7
Steve M. Barkin, American Television News: The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest (Armonk, N.Y.: M.
E. Sharpe, 2003), 22.
8
Pickering, “Eight Years of Television in California”; “Early TV Stations: W6XAO/KTSL/KNXT – Los Angeles,”
Early Television.
9
Mike Conway, “The Birth of CBS-TV News,” Journalism History, vol. 32, no. 3 (2006), 128-137. Conway notes
that WCBW-2’s crosstown rival, NBC’s WNBT-1 (later renamed WNBC-4) also aired newscasts before and after it
began broadcasting as the U.S.’s first commercial TV station on July 1, 1941 (preceding Channel 2 by an hour), but
its newscasts were mere simulcasts of NBC’s regular radio news programs and did not engage in any visual adaption
for the TV format. For its part WCBW’s newscast went on hiatus in 1942 to help the station conserve equipme nt
during the war (also most of its crew were drafter into the war). WCBW later changed its call-sign to WCBS-2.

132

dramatically expanded after World War II. Evening newscasts would not adopt a 30-minute
format until 1963.
10

Local TV newscasts emerged as a genre distinct from the big three networks’ national
newscasts as independent stations struggled to meet the minimum number of daily airtime hours
the FCC required. Independent New York station WPIX-11 lead the way with the June 16, 1946,
debut of its locally focused Telepix Newsreel; KTLA-5 in Los Angeles followed soon after in
early 1947, providing the Southland some of its first regular local TV newscasts. In 1949 rival
independents KTLA-5 and KTTV-11 made history for TV journalism in their coverage of the
April 8-10 attempted rescue of three-year-old Kathy Fiscus who fell into a nine-story-deep well
in San Marino. According to historian William Deverell, what “began as an experiment and a
brainstorm, would turn out to be revolutionary” in the stations’ unheard of long-form coverage of
the Kathy Fiscus rescue. KTLA’s uninterrupted coverage lasted from 6pm on April 9 until 9pm
the following evening – “the longest television broadcast in history” according to reporter Stan
Chambers at the time – until the young girl was pronounced dead. The tragic media spectacle of
the “first reality television show in history” was credited for propelling TV ownership in Los
Angeles. Local TV news was big business in Southern California, particularly for independent
stations.
11

10
Barkin, American Television News, 28-29, 37; Craig M. Allen, News is People: The Rise of Local TV News and
the Fall of News from New York (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001), 5-10. In 1948 all of the big three
networks aired evening newscasts, but the CBS Television News, building on WCBW’s earlier efforts, set the
standard for the medium with its 15-minute live delivery and integration of news footage and animations. The first
network newscasts were limited to the Northeast Corridor until a coaxial cable linked their New York stations with
the West Coast in 1951. The forerunner of today’s CBS Evening News, the CBS-TV News was hosted by radio
announcer Douglas Edwards upon its May 1948 debut.
11
Allen, 8-9; William Deverell, “A Little Girl, a Deep Well and a Big Story,” Alta: The Journal of Alta California
(Jan. 28, 2019), (https://altaonline.com/a-little-girl-a-deep-well-and-a-big-story/). According to Deverell, there were
20,000 TV sets in the L.A. area in 1949 – the number multiplied “tenfold” by the following year. As a sign of the
pull of TV newscasts, at the height of the rescue attempt a hundred-person crowd gathered outside of a store to
watch the live coverage across the window on the TV set– at 2am. Patt Morrison, “Stories that Shaped the Century:
Little Girl's Tragedy Was Catalyst for Live TV News Series,” L.A. Times (Nov. 4, 1999), 8.

133

Despite the importance of its transnational Mexican corporate genealogy, KMEX-34
newscasting bears more in common with the general TV news models established by mainstream
Los Angeles-area stations (and Raoul Cortez’s KCOR/KWEX-41 in San Antonio) than it does
with news on Mexican television.
12
Mexican TV journalism began when staff at XHTV-4
developed the Leyendo Novedades newscast as a way to fill some airtime during a July 26, 1950
on-air test prior to the station’s formal August debut. In contrast to the experiments conducted by
the WCBW-2 staff in New York to make active use of TV’s visual and auditory appeal, Leyendo
Novedades hosts read stories from the Novedades newspaper verbatim without accompanying
news footage. As historian Celeste González de Bustamante notes, Mexican TV newscasts in the
1950s and 1960s ran for 15 minutes and were heavily dependent on content from Mexico City
newspapers as well as sponsorship by multinational corporations as evident in XHTV’s Noticiero
General Motors and XEW-2’s Su Diario Nescafé. Telesistema Mexicano did not invest in the
creation of a dedicated news division until 1969.
13
As in the case of commercial U.S. TV, the
first news programs on commercial Mexican television were initially created to fill airtime and
attract advertisers rather than to inform and educate the public as was the intent of publicly
funded TV broadcasting models.
Interviews with political candidates from opposing parties and debates on voter initiatives
on KMEX-34’s news and public service programming, governed by FCC regulations, represent a
major divergence of the emerging U.S. Spanish-language TV medium from the norms
established on Mexican television for coverage of political news.
14
While newsmen on early U.S.

12
“TV and Radio: KCOR TV Channel 41,” San Antonio Express and News (June 3, 1956), 7B.
13
Celeste González de Bustamante, “Muy Buenas Noches”: Mexico, Television, and the Cold War (Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska, 2013), 39-43.
14
Section 3.657 of Title 47 of the FCC (1955) stated stations were not required to give airtime to “legally qualified
candidates for public office” but if they did they were to “afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates.”
Federal Communications Commission, “Title 47-Telecommunication,” Federal Register, vol. 20, no. 9039 (Dec. 9,
1955), 9123.

134

TV generally maintained an independent position in regards to their political coverage, as
Edward Murrow’s See it Now news magazine on CBS demonstrated in its criticism of Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist red-baiting, Mexican TV overtly and subtly supported the
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The privately-run Mexican TV industry was not
formally censored, but officials pressured Telesistema to report favorably on the government by
threatening it with audits, raising its taxes, or granting TV broadcasting licenses to rival investors
to end its monopoly. Telesistema’s coverage of the government’s repression of student protestors
on October 2, 1968, drew criticism from the PRI, including Luis Echeverría Álvarez, President
of Mexico from 1970-1976. As rumors of TV nationalization swirled amid Echeverría’s repeated
condemnation of Telesistema programming and his proposal for a new government-run TV
network, Telesistema responded by adopting even more favorable coverage for the PRI.
15

Consequently Mexican news anchors’ praise of PRI politicians (and the media blackout of their
political opponents) earned them notoriety as state propagandists.
16

The debut of KMEX-34’s news programs many years earlier (and the station’s U.S.
context) prevented much of this state capitalistic, mass media/government collusion baggage
from influencing Noticiero 34 beyond stories on Mexican news. KMEX instead followed the
norms of U.S. TV journalism. Furthermore, KMEX’s creation of a mass-mediated public sphere

15
González de Bustamante notes that in a one-week survey of XEW-2 coverage of the 1970 general election the Su
Diario Nescafé newscast reported on opposition candidate Efraín González Morfín only three times with short
stories lacking substance beyond stating where he was campaigning on a given day. Stories on Echeverría featured
conversations with the PRI stalwart as well as accompanying footage recorded by the Telesistema press pool which
joined him on his campaign. Echeverría was the first Mexican presidential candidate to actively campaign on
television. González de Bustamante, “Muy Buenas Noches,” 183-196; Felipe Carlos Betancourt Higareda, “The
Development of the Media and the Public Sphere in Mexico,” Mexican Law Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (Jan. 2013): 305-
331.
16
Telesistema’s calculated effort to appease the government coincided with the rise of Jacobo Zabludovsky as
Mexican television’s most visible news anchor in the national 24 Horas newscast, with supporters referring to him
as the “Walter Cronkite of Mexico” while detractors dismissed him as a de facto spokesman for the Mexican
government. Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the U.S., 122-124.

135

was also the result of FCC regulations which required TV station licensees to air programs in the
“public interest.” In the early 1960s the FCC identified public affairs programs, weather reports,
news programs, and “service to minority groups” as ways of meeting public interest broadcasting
obligations.
17
Thus one of the motivations for KMEX developing Spanish-language broadcast
journalism for U.S. television was to fulfill U.S. government regulations.
The 1962 debut of KMEX’s newscasts broke new ground for Latinos in the Southern
California media landscape. Alejandro Nervo, an experienced TV producer and a nephew of
Mexican poet Amado Nervo, was the primary broadcast journalist associated with the first
transmissions of Noticiero 34.
18
Sergio Niño González was another early face on Noticiero 34,
delivering a late night newscast in addition to a nightly 5-minute sports update titled “Notas
Deportivas” after the airing of that evening’s telenovelas.
19
Fernando Escandón alternated
anchoring duties with Niño González for the late-night 11:45pm version of Noticiero 34.
20
Soon
other on-air personalities joined Noticiero 34, including activist Eduardo Quevedo (producer and
host of Hispano America) who discussed community-related news stories in “Notas de la
Comunidad,” and Carmen Romano who offered reports in a regular segment titled “women in

17
Other programming the FCC classified as public interest content included religious programming, “the
development and use of local talent,” sports programs, and entertainment programs. The FCC did not provide
definitions for what constituted these categories nor specific airtime requirements for public interest content.
“Report and Statement of Policy Res: Commission en banc Programming Inquiry,” Federal Communications
Commission Reports, 44 FCC 2303 (July 29, 1960), 2309, 2314; “The Public Interest Standard in Television
Broadcasting,” Current.org (Dec. 18, 1998), (https://current.org/1998/12/the-public-interest-standard-in-television-
broadcasting/).
18
“KMEX-TV,” L.A. Times (May 15, 1963), “KMEX-TV Channel 34 Presentation,” in Box 2, Folder 16, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford; “Fates and Fortunes: The Media,” Broadcasting (October 1, 1962), 84
(http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1962/1962-10-01-BC.pdf).
19
“Programas de Television para hoy Viernes: Canal 34,” La Opinión (March 13, 1964), p. 2, in Folder 2, Box 20,
Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
20
“Programas de Television para hoy Viernes: Canal 34,” La Opinión (March 13, 1964), p. 2, in Folder 2, Box 20,
Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections. KMEX programming literature listed Fernando Escandón
by his birth name Josue Quezada Escandón prior to the 1970s.

136

the news.” By the mid-1960s KMEX publicity materials listed Romano as delivering the main
Noticiero 34 newscast alongside Nervo.
21

Prior to KMEX’s parent network using satellite technology in the 1970s, the different
SIN stations transmitted network-wide programming via shared physical copies of news footage
on film and video tape. In their first years, KMEX and its sister station in San Antonio shared the
same footage copy in a process called “bicycling.” KWEX-41 broadcast news film footage
Telesistema shipped in from Mexico before and then would “bicycle” (or physically ship) the
same footage 1,400 miles west to Los Angeles so that KMEX could rebroadcast it. Cuban
immigrant Gerardo Pallares, KMEX’s programming director, recalled that “sometimes the tape
was so critical that we were waiting by the door for the tape of the day, and it would be 10
minutes before going on the air and the tape hadn’t appeared.” But then “the truck would appear
around the corner and we would be yelling ‘Oh, come on, hurry up!’ And sometimes we didn’t
have time to even time the tape and had to go by the time sheet with the tape.”
22

During Joe Rank’s period of managing Channel 34 from 1964-1971 the station expanded
the scope of its news operation. Intent on making the KMEX newscast competitive with local
English-language TV newscasts, Rank purchased KMEX’s first news van as well as a Rollei
movie camera for field use, immediately allowing the station to cover a greater number of news
stories directly from the source. “Even if it was 30 or 40 people demonstrating in front of City
Hall…we got it! And we would get it back into the lab because we had no mobile videotape in

21
The paucity of surviving documentation concerning KMEX’s early newscasts makes Romano’s specific work for
the daily newscasts difficult to discern. “Programas de Television para hoy Viernes: Canal 34,” La Opinión (March
13, 1964), p. 2, in Folder 2, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo Papers, Stanford Special Collections; KMEX Programming
Guide Week of January 5, 1964, in Folder 16, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
22
Silvio G. Gutierrez, “Gerardo Pallares: Man of Many Hats,” The Hollywood Reporter (Sept. 29, 1987), S18, in
Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.

137

those days. We’d get it back to the lab by 4 o’clock and get it on the air.”
23
Also, Rank gradually
hired more reporters and cameramen for Noticiero 34. The “rip-and-read” practice of reading
headlines from the pages of La Opinión or from English-language wire services, quickly
translated in-house at the station, largely defined early KMEX’s foray into the news landscape,
but the station’s reporters complemented Channel 34’s newscasts with coverage of local issues.
24

The Election of 1964: A Milestone for U.S. Spanish-Language Television
The early Noticiero 34 operation was largely experimental, but KMEX’s coverage of the
local and presidential elections of 1964 exemplifies the ways in which the Spanish-language TV
medium has promoted the U.S. Latino public sphere and identity-building. The Canal 34 news
team’s election coverage in 1964, the first national elections covered by a U.S. Spanish-language
TV station, laid some of the groundwork for future coverage of U.S. presidential campaigns by
SIN, its successor entity Univision, and Telemundo. As a political activist and the station’s
primary community affairs reporter, Eduardo Quevedo, took the lead in guiding KMEX’s
coverage of the election’s various political issues.
One of the most discussed topics Quevedo explored on his public forum show was
Proposition 14, a voter initiative which sought to prevent the state of California from enforcing
anti-discrimination housing laws such as the Rumford Fair Housing Act.
25
Quevedo joined

23
Prior to buying the news team’s station wagon and the portable Rollei movie camera, KMEX’s local newscast was
limited to what could be filmed inside the station’s studio using its in-house equipment. Given the station’s financial
constraints, Rank paid in kind for the new station wagon, giving a car dealer free commercial airtime on the station
in exchange for the inaugural KMEX news van. Joseph Rank oral history interview (pgs 7 -8), by Kathleen Franz,
KMEX Studios Los Angeles, July 13, 2017, Escúchame: the History of Spanish Language Broadcasting in the U.S.
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
24
Rank oral history, 7-8. As journalism scholar Craig Allen notes, “rip-and-read” was a common industry practice
in English-language local TV newscasts in the 1950 and early 1960s. News is People, 14-15.
25
The California Real Estate Association promoted the ballot initiative as a way of preserving property owner and
landlord’s private property rights in the face of the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act which made it illega l to deny
the sale or rental of a property on account of an individual’s race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, marital status, or

138

Congressman Ed Roybal, Governor Edmund Brown, and dozens of activists in opposing
Proposition 14 and produced a three part series of hour-long televised debates informing the
Spanish-speaking public about this issue, beginning on October 11, 1964. Airing weekly on
consecutive Sundays at 4:30pm, the Debate on Proposition 14 series featured invited speakers
against and for the initiative to present their position to the Spanish-speaking community. As
Quevedo said, “Our goal is to bring you the facts without judging them.” Arlene Dávila’s
critique of mass-mediated discourses shaping ideologies and identity comes to mind when
recognizing how the series’ scheduling on Sunday afternoons – a part of the broadcasting day
often called the “graveyard slot” – might have limited the show’s audience size and impact.
26

Nevertheless, KMEX’s mediated presentation of the Prop 14 debate elicited letters from
KMEX viewers expressing their reactions to the station’s coverage of the debate. Raymond
Saavedra of Redondo Beach praised Quevedo’s informative coverage and lamented that the area
Mexican American Chamber of Commerce supported repealing the Rumford Fair Housing Act.
“Antonio López de Santa Anna betrayed the people of Mexico for riches,” Saavedra wrote in
Spanish, “and the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce is likewise betraying the Spanish-
speaking community in California for giving more value to greed and material wealth than to
human dignity.”
27
Ultimately, two-thirds of California voters passed Proposition 14 in November
1964, temporarily reviving the legal practice of racial discrimination in housing.
28
Letters from

physical handicap. Proposition 14’s passage nullified the Rumford Act’s fair housing provisions. Daniel HoSang,
Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley, Calif: University of
California Press, 2010), 53-90; Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the
American Consensus (New York: Nation Books, 2001), 341-342.
26
“Debate on Proposition 14” script (Oct. 11, 1964), Pgs 1,4, in Folder 12, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford; “TV
Schedule,” L.A. Times (Oct. 11, 1964), A-7; “Dayparts (television),” Dictionary of Marketing Communications
(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publica tions, 2004), 56.
27
Raymond T. Saavedra to Quevedo, (undated 1964), Folder 11, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
28
The California Supreme Court struck down Proposition 14 on grounds that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution. Upon appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state court’s decision, bringing a
definitive end to the anti-fair housing proposition’s life in Reitman v. Mulkey (1967).

139

Saavedra and other viewers suggest that KMEX viewers were actively engaging with the news
programing aired by the station.
The public service candidate forum was also significant for the number of political
candidates it brought on the air. Among Quevedo’s guests were many White American
candidates of Democratic, Republican, and Socialist stripes who appealed to the broadest swath
of voters, including Los Angeles’s Mexican American community. In addition to Ed Roybal who
sought reelection to Congress, congressmen such as Democrat George Brown also appeared on
the forums; other GOP and Democratic candidates vying for California’s open U.S. Senate seat
also made time to appear on KMEX.
29
The lack of surviving footage from these programs makes
it difficult to confirm, but it is probable that guests in many of these shows spoke in English or
only a little in Spanish with Quevedo helping translate their message into Spanish (with
Spanglish likely having a significant presence on these shows as well).
Besides inviting individual candidates to share their political positions with Spanish-
speaking voters as well as holding televised forums on Proposition 14’s implications, Quevedo
also guided the station’s coverage of the U.S. presidential race itself. Canal 34 crossed a major
milestone on May 26, 1964, when it broadcast an interview filmed at the KMEX studios between
Quevedo and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, one of the main contenders for the
Republican Party’s presidential nomination that year. The program, conducted entirely in
Spanish between the two men, marked the first time a U.S. presidential candidate was
interviewed on a U.S. Spanish-language television station.
30

29
“One Hour Public Service” Outline, (Oct. 25, 1964), Folder 12, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
30
In the article “Gov. Rockefeller Interview on KMEX,” L.A. Times (May 26, 1964), C-10, it was reported the
interview was “conducted completely in Spanish.” Rockefeller learned Spanish working for Standard Oil of New
Jersey’s Venezuelan subsidiary, Creole Petroleum, before World War II.

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A variety of factors enabled that historic, albeit obscure, moment in Latino and U.S.
political history. The Republican Party was split to its core as two competing factions, a
moderate wing led by Rockefeller and an ardently conservative faction led by Arizona Senator
Barry Goldwater, wrestled for the party’s presidential nomination. By the time of his appearance
on KMEX Rockefeller could only to stop Goldwater if he snapped up enough party convention
delegates by winning the June 1964 California GOP primary.
31
Appealing to as many voters as
possible, including Spanish-speakers, was essential to winning the state, making an appearance
on a fledgling station like KMEX a worthwhile campaign tactic.
Two additional factors facilitated Rockefeller’s appearance on KMEX-34. During World
War II, Rockefeller headed the federal Council on Inter-American Affairs which promoted Pan-
American unity against the Axis by helping build pro-U.S. sentiment through news, film, radio
broadcasting, and advertising. Quevedo served as a member of the Southern California Council
for Inter-American Affairs, bringing him into contact with Rockefeller.
32
The two men
maintained their relationship after the war. Additionally, Frank Fouce Jr., one of KMEX and
SIN’s co-founders and owner of 35% of the station’s stock, was a high-profile member of the
California Republican Party.
33
In addition to Rockefeller’s need to attract voters, the station’s
own political connections enabled it to host a national political leader.
Regrettably, neither footage nor transcripts of the historic program have survived, but a
half-dozen professional photographs of the taping indicate the event was considered significant

31
Although in an initially favorable position against the conservative Arizona senator, scandals in Rockefeller’s
personal life, such as divorcing his wife of 31 years to marry a younger woman who herself divorced her husband
and signed away custody of their four children after having an affair with Rockefeller, damaged the New Yorker’s
momentum. Perlstein, Before the Storm, 194-197; 353-354.
32
“Résumé,” Folder 1, Box 1, Quevedo Papers, Stanford; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 55.
33
Rank Oral History, Kathleen Franz, NMAH, pgs. 15-16; Félix Gutiérrez, “Mexico’s Television Network in the
United States: The Case of Spanish International Network,” in Dordick, H. S. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual
Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 142.

141

by the KMEX staff, with even then-general manager Burt Avedon popping in behind Rockefeller
and Quevedo for pictures. In contrast to the high-budget sets and graphics typical of Univision
and Telemundo’s coverage of U.S. presidential elections in the 21st century, Quevedo and
Rockefeller spoke on a simple table behind name placards, and a pair of small U.S. and Mexican
flags placed in the middle of the table. A jar of pencils and a small globe made up the rest of the
table’s décor while the curtain-like studio cyclorama served as the set’s backdrop.
34

Rockefeller’s Tuesday, May 26, 1964, appearance on KMEX was meant to bolster his
chances in the following week’s California GOP primary election on June 2, but Goldwater
narrowly beat him by three percent at the polls.
35
It is unclear what specific impact the
Rockefeller interview had on the minds of Mexican/Latino American voters though it is
important to recognize the interview aired at 10:30pm when viewers would have been fewer and
wearier rather than earlier during the telenovela-heavy primetime block when more televidentes
could have been reached.
36
However, Rockefeller’s appearance on Canal 34, the first time a
presidential candidate himself went on la televisión hispanohablante to appeal directly for Latino
electoral support, represents the one of the earliest examples of a U.S. presidential campaign
recognizing the value of attracting Latino voters through Spanish-language television.
Later that summer KMEX further advanced the U.S. Latino identity-building project of
Spanish-language television through its coverage of the Republican National Convention held in

34
Photographs, Box 19, Quevedo Papers, Stanford.
35
Nelson Rockefeller Jr.’s birth the very weekend after his father’s KMEX appearance reminded conservative
Republican voters of the New York governor’s scandalous affair, divorce, and remarriage. Sean Braswell, “The
California Primary that Changed the Republican Party,” Ozy (June 6, 2016), (https://www.ozy.com/2016/the-
california-primary-that-changed-the-republican-party/69787); Perlstein, Before the Storm, 352.
36
“Gov. Rockefeller Interview on KMEX,” L.A. Times (May 26, 1964), C-10. The lack of viewer letters sent to
Quevedo as well as lack of coverage of the interview in La Opinión makes it difficult to evaluate how Latino
viewers responded to the Rockefeller interview. Perhaps a more concerted appeal to KMEX viewers airing earlier in
the evening, re-aired later, and maybe being conducted partially in English but still covering Latino issues, might
have been more beneficial for the moderate Republican presidential hopeful.

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the San Francisco Bay Area from July 13-16. The GOP convention at the Cow Palace in Daly
City fortuitously allowed the KMEX news team to cover the event on a limited budget. KMEX’s
coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention marked the first time U.S. Spanish-
language TV covered a major political party convention with its own reporters. In providing
viewers coverage and analysis of one of the most prominent rituals of twentieth century U.S.
presidential campaigning KMEX reinforced the notion of Latinos participating in the U.S.
political process as Spanish-speaking members of the larger body politic.
KMEX-34’s coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention was a last-minute
initiative that reflects Arlene Dávila’s observation on how identity in contemporary U.S. life is a
result of “mass-mediated” practices reflecting the hierarchies of ideology and consumerism.
Despite interviewing presidential hopeful Rockefeller and the numerous candidates for local
office around Los Angeles, station management did not feel there was enough viewer interest in
the Republican convention to warrant budgeting for a news crew to cover it. Eduardo Quevedo,
ever the community activist, pushed hard for the station to fund coverage of the convention.
General Manager Burt Avedon did not green-light Quevedo’s request to cover the convention
until a viewer survey “proved without a shadow of a doubt” KMEX’s viewers “want to know all
they can about what both political parties are doing and what their leaders propose to do.”
37

KMEX’s initial reluctance on covering the convention, followed by the quick redirection
due to a viewer survey, vividly demonstrates how and what TV media presents viewers-
consumers is a mass-mediated commodity. The contradiction between the station management’s
appraisal of viewer apathy and the beyond the “shadow of a doubt” enthusiasm reported by a
viewer survey suggests that KMEX televidentes were somewhere in the middle as far as their

37
Burt Avedon to Bill Hendry, Head of RNC Credentials Committee (July 10, 1964), Folder 11, Box 2, Quevedo
Papers, Stanford. Additional information on the survey, including its sample size and methodology, is not available.

143

reception of the station’s electoral coverage. It is not clear why KMEX management believed
viewers would not be interested in the GOP convention. Research conducted during the 1964
election determined Mexican American voter turn-out in the City of Los Angeles was at 50
percent, signaling a sizable potential audience for KMEX electoral coverage. Perhaps station
management believed the fact that 85 percent of Mexican American voters nationally went for
Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960 meant viewers would be less likely to tune into
the Republican National Convention.
38
In any event, the station’s changing approach to covering
the convention (influenced by the findings of its survey) demonstrates how ideas, discourses, and
identities are mass-mediated by TV and other mass communications outlets.
The haphazard character of the first U.S. Spanish-language TV coverage of a political
party’s convention is clear through its frantic, last-minute preparations. Avedon approved for
Quevedo and Ignacio López (a KMEX contributor and the editor of San Bernardino’s El
Espectador newspaper) to travel to the Bay Area only three days before the convention opened.
The KMEX team had to deal with the fact that they did not have press passes to enter the Cow
Palace. Avedon and Quevedo scrambled to acquire these credentials, consulting with the Los
Angeles Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, and finally the Republican
National Convention’s own head of credentials. When the last-minute preparations came
together, Quevedo and López represented KMEX as well as SIN stations KWEX-41 and XEWT-

38
Although not widely recognized at the time, Mexican American voters in the 1960 general election helped
establish the notion of the “Latino vote” through their active support for JFK through Viva Kennedy clubs in New
York and the U.S. Southwest. Viva Kennedy clubs’ efforts in Texas helped tip that state’s electoral college votes in
Kennedy’s favor, while the California -based clubs sponsored by the Mexican American Political Association
(MAPA) helped narrow Richard Nixon’s lead in his own home-state to less than 36,000 votes. In 1964 Democrats
clinched 90% of the national Mexican American vote. See Louis Desipio, “The Pressures of Perpetual Promise:
Latinos and Politics, 1960–2003,” in The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960, ed. David G.
Gutiérrez (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 427 and Table 4 on 449; Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and
Ralph Guzman, The Mexican American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority (New York: The Free Press,
1970), 564.

144

12 in Tijuana with its cross-border viewing audience. Azcárraga’s Telesistema Mexicano
network also ran the KMEX coverage for viewers across Mexico.
39

Quevedo had an extensive list of Republican political figures he interviewed on behalf of
KMEX, including former California Senator William Knowland and former Vice President
Richard Nixon. Although KMEX was unable to interview Goldwater, the team interviewed two
of his media representatives. Other individuals on Quevedo’s list were not interested in speaking
to the obscure Spanish-language TV station from Los Angeles. According to Quevedo “there
were several SB’s who told us to go to hell; their names were duly forgotten.” Nevertheless,
KMEX managed to interview twenty-three people at the convention. As last-minute as its
organization was, KMEX-34’s reporting on the 1964 RNC heralded the ethnic-focused election
coverage U.S. Spanish-language television would provide Latina and Latino viewers after the
1970s, especially during U.S. presidential elections.
40

While it would be two more decades before U.S. Spanish-language television was better
recognized by mainstream English-language political commentators for its role in U.S. civic life,
KMEX’s coverage of the different campaigns and ballot initiatives associated with the election
of 1964 demonstrated the early emphasis the station placed on presenting its viewers relevant
electoral news. The limitations of KMEX-34’s stated commitment to ethnic consciousness-
building through its programming are apparent when one considers how late the station’s
interview with Rockefeller was aired or how haphazardly and last-minute KMEX’s coverage of
the 1964 Republican National Convention was. However, what is truly salient from KMEX’s

39
Avedon to L.A. Police Department Public Information Division (July 8, 1964), and Avedon to Sheriff Peter
Pitchess (July 8, 1964), and Avedon to Bill Hendry, Head of RNC Credentials Committee (July 10, 1964), Folder
11, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford. As with its late 1960s José Feliciano Show, KMEX demonstrated it could
produce Mexico-bound programming within the transborder Azcárraga media project.
40
Quevedo and López Letter to Avedon (July 17, 1964), Folder 11, Box 2, Quevedo Papers, Stanford. Neither
KMEX nor KWEX covered the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, that August and both
stations’ coverage of the November 3, 1964 general election seemed to have been based on news wire services.

145

early election news coverage is its institutionalizing the notion that Spanish-language TV has a
significant role in covering U.S. elections. Beyond just being a language of everyday life, KMEX
strengthened the role of Spanish as a language of information and access to the U.S. political
process for non-English-speaking Latinos. Covering U.S. news in Spanish from an ethnic
orientation expanded Southern California Latinos’ public sphere by allowing mass-mediated
Latino perspectives to be heard at a time when English-language TV all but completely excluded
Latino experiences.
41

Historia de Exito: Creating and Celebrating Ethnic Identity on KMEX
Besides the increased political participation KMEX hoped to foster by improving its
news reporting, the station promoted U.S. Latino identity by highlighting the success stories of
local Mexican American role models. General Manager Joe Rank conceived of Historia de Exito
(“Success Story”) as a public service program which could support SIN’s commitment to foster
“the gradual integration of these people into the American community.”
42
Celebrations of ethnic
pride and solidarity around middle to upper-income Mexican American individuals were aimed
to create a Latino identity based on integration into U.S. middle-class life. Rank hired Uruguayan
immigrant Carlos Saenz as the writer, director, and editor of the 13-episode series with narrations
by Francisco “Paco” Crow of ¿Cómo es Posible? fame.
43
Although each of its episodes was less

41
Eduardo Quevedo left a profound impact on KMEX through his dedicated work on Latino civic engagement
through public service-oriented programming. The Canal 34 personality served as a state chairman of the Mexican
American Political Associations (MAPA) during the middle of the decade in which time he helped publish an
English-language newspaper for the “Spanish-speaking people” focusing on political activism and civic
engagement. The long-time borderlands activist died in 1967. “MAPA Newspaper to Serve Entire Southwestern
States,” The Voice of the Spanish-Speaking People (Nov. 11, 1965), 1, in Folder 2, Box 20, Eduardo Quevedo
Papers, Stanford Special Collections.
42
“Olé Away,” Newsweek (June 17, 1963), 88.
43
Rank oral history; UCLA NAPA, Historia de Exito, DVD# 15272, News and Public Affairs Collection, Film and
Television Archive, University of California at Los Angeles (hereafter “NAPA, UCLA FTVA”).

146

than 10 minutes, the series earned KMEX its first Emmy Award in 1967.
44
As a public service
program, Historia de Exito further stands out for demonstrating the mass-mediated identity
discourses KMEX promoted prior to the height of the Chicano movement’s various redefinitions
of identity in metropolitan Los Angeles at the end of the 1960s.
An examination of the surviving episodes of Historia de Exito reveals how the show’s
producers used the success stories of mainly Mexican American media stars, businessmen, and
community leaders to promote ethnic consciousness and integration into the U.S. body politic
while still navigating around issues of gender, family, and racial discrimination. Given the
overwhelmingly ethnic Mexican composition of the L.A. Latino audience in the 1960s, Historia
de Exito defined success as pride in one’s Mexican heritage as way of achieving the American
Dream. The episode on Florencia Bisenta de Casillas-Martínez Cardona illustrates this adroitly.
Better known as Vikki Carr, Casillas-Martínez Cardona was born in El Paso as the daughter of
Mexican American immigrants but took up an Anglo stage name in order to make it into the
entertainment business, becoming a musical sensation from the 1960s to 1990s.
45
Though
celebratory in its tone, the episode on Carr cautiously mentioned how her white classmates at
Mission San Gabriel Elementary School harassed her for being Mexican. However, the show
(true to its purpose as a vehicle to foster ethnic pride and integration) asserted the young singer
was “enteramente mexicana” (“entirely Mexican”). Saenz wrote “this fascinating young woman

44
Rank oral history. Historia de Exito represented KMEX’s first recognition from the Academy of Television Arts
and Sciences for a Los Angeles Emmy Award (an honor given to greater L.A. area-produced programming which is
different from the Emmy Awards that are given out by the same organization).
45
Florencia Bisenta de Casillas-Martinez Cardona went on to receive much critical acclaim, including two Grammy
Awards for Best Mexican American Performance (Simplemente Mujer in 1986 and Recuerdo a Javier Solis in
1995). Casillas-Martinez also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame under her Anglicized stage name.

147

feels special pride for her Mexican heritage. This power in her heart guides her life.” Despite the
bullying, young Carr developed pride in her culture.
46

Additionally, Historia de Exito emphasized Vikki Carr’s devotion to her family and her
artistic work ethic, such as its praise of Carr’s concert for U.S. servicemen in 110°F South
Vietnamese weather mere weeks after her wedding, revealing much about the program’s
ideological underpinnings. “Why make this decision to visit Vietnam just days after getting
married? She’s Mexican, but the United States was the nation in which she was born, and which
put her on the path that transformed her from Florencia Bisenta to Vikki Carr.”
47
KMEX
intended to generate a positive ethnic identity through shared the cultural pride Historia de Exito
disseminated, but the contradictions in Carr’s cross-cultural journeys – characterizing the anti-
Mexican harassment Carr experienced as a transformation – are difficult to ignore.
Another surviving episode of Historia de Exito promoted Latino integration into U.S.
society by celebrating the work of Julio Gonzáles, one of the earliest Mexican American
community relations officers in the LAPD. Gonzáles’s episode opened with footage of him
giving advice to a Mexican American child in the gardens of the LAPD Police Academy as a
voiceover by Paco Crow affirmed that the lawman’s life was one of “understanding, love of
work, and faith within a life of peace.”
48
The episode appealed to KMEX’s Mexican-majority
viewers emphasizing Gonzáles’s ethnic background as a “son of Mexico, born in the United

46
“Historia de Exito: Vikki Carr,” KMEX (June 23, 1967), DVD# 15272, NAPA, UCLA FTVA. Saenz wrote in
Spanish “esta fascinante joven mujer siente singular orgullo por su herencia mexicana. Este poder de su corazón es
la guía de su vida.” According to the KMEX program, young Florencia was encouraged to rem ain proud of her
culture through the efforts of her advocates at her school such as Father Montoya and Claretian Sister Colombia.
47
“¿Porqué toma esta decisión pocos días después de haberse casado? Es mexicana, pero Estados Unidos es la
nación que la vio nacer y puso frente a ella el camino que la transformó de Florencia Bisenta a Vikki Carr.” Quoted
from “Historia de Exito: Vikki Carr,” KMEX (June 23, 1967), DVD# 15272, NAPA, UCLA FTVA.
48
“Comprensión, amor al trabajo y fe dentro de una vida de paz, conquistada con sacrificios del oficial de policía
Julio Gonzales hijo de México, nacido en los Estados Unidos en 1915.” Quoted from “Historia de Exito: Julio
Gonzales,” KMEX (no date), DVD# 15272, NAPA, UCLA FTVA.

148

States” by explaining how his parents and nine siblings fled the violence of the Mexican
Revolution in Chihuahua to Arizona and then L.A., followed by an overview of young Julio’s
experiences as a basketball player for Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.
The presentation of Gonzáles’s work through the LAPD (one of the most visceral
symbols of White American social control and power in midcentury Los Angeles) was further
meant to encourage ethnic Mexican viewers’ integration into U.S. life as Mexican Americans.
Besides his dedication to public safety, Gonzáles used his time as a policeman to mentor
Mexican American youth around L.A., such as convincing the LAPD to let the youngsters swim
at the police academy in order to keep them away from bad influences. Chief William Parker
honored Gonzáles’s bridge-building skills by assigning him to the department’s public
information division, a capacity which led to Gonzáles having regular Spanish-language
programs on KMEX such as Consejos Para su Seguridad (“Tips for your Safety”).
49
Besides
translating Parker’s police manual into Spanish, Gonzáles also regularly gave talks at Roosevelt
High to discourage youth from entering the criminal justice system. “Gonzáles does a splendid
job as the youngsters learn to appreciate the positive aspects of life.
50

As with KMEX’s 1964 election coverage, it is difficult to discern how Southern
California Latinos responded to Historia de Exito. The program’s Emmy Award suggests at least
the local L.A. area TV industry valued the show, but the show’s short 15-minute runtime might
indicate the station saw its audience as limited. Also, the massive student walkouts from
Roosevelt High School in 1968 – the setting of documented racist abuse of students – serve as a

49
Myrna Oliver, “Julio Gonzales, 86; Helped LAPD Reach Out to Latinos,” L.A. Times (Dec. 14, 2003),
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/dec/14/local/me-gonzales14. Parker praised Gonzales’s work, describing him as “a
man of high standing, devotion, and competence who has earned the honor and respect of th ose who have worked
along him.” Quoted in “Historia de Exito: Julio Gonzales,” KMEX, DVD# 15272, NAPA, UCLA FTVA.
50
“Gonzales hace un espléndido trabajo – los jóvenes aprenden a valorizar los aspectos positivos de la vida. Y nada
lo detiene ya – es parte viva de la escuela Roosevelt.” My translation, quoted from “Historia de Exito: Julio
Gonzales,” KMEX, DVD# 15272, NAPA, UCLA FTVA.

149

counterpoint to the Historia de Exito claims that Mexican American teens there learned to
“appreciate the positive aspects of life” from Gonzáles as a member of the LAPD, a law
enforcement agency under increasing fire for anti-Mexican police brutality. Historia de Exito
was not meant to challenge the social and racial dynamics that marginalized Mexicans/Latinos as
a whole in Southern California (and which were hinted at in Vicki Carr’s episode). Rather the
public service show supported the generally accommodationist/integrationist dynamic of
midcentury Mexican American-White American relations. Many later public service programs
on Spanish-language TV highlighting notable Latinas and Latinos followed this trend of
downplaying the systemic anti-Latino discrimination they faced as just another hurdle to
overcome. The late 1960s height of the Chicano movement, however, profoundly complicated
the discourses of Latino identity-building promoted by KMEX-34’s public sphere.

Broadcasting Identity and Ethnic Consciousness during the Chicano Movement
By the 1970s KMEX-34’s news operation experienced a noticeable growth in ratings. An
April 1970 ratings survey determined the daily Noticiero 34 newscast at 6:30pm drew more
Latino viewers than newscasts on independent stations KTLA-5, KTTV-11, and KCOP-13 while
almost beating the local newscasts on network-affiliated KNBC-4 and KABC-7 among Latinos.
General Manager Joe Rank proclaimed the Noticiero 34 stories were of “importance to the Latin
community.” Moreover, “50 percent is local news, purely, all of it relatable to the lives and the
social and economic surge going on amongst the Latins.” Rank’s remarks to Variety demonstrate
different aspects of Spanish-language TV’s mass-mediating of identity. Although KMEX’s
viewers were still overwhelmingly ethnically Mexican, the Spanish-language TV industry was
beginning to take on a national scope. In 1968 Azcárraga Vidaurreta and his U.S. business
partners began distributing programming on WXTV-41 for New York’s Puerto Rican

150

community; by 1970 it was a fully owned-and-operated station of the Spanish International
Network. Revenue from KMEX enabled the propagation of SIN in the East Coast. The identity-
building project of the U.S. Spanish-language TV industry, present in a bicultural Mexican-U.S.
context through KMEX Los Angeles and KWEX San Antonio, increasingly took on a panethnic
character in the 1970s.
51

Rank’s comments about the relevance of KMEX’s news reporting in the lives of its
ethnic Mexican viewers amid the “social and economic surge” which accompanied the Chicano
cultural and political activism of the 1960s-1970s are significant in demonstrating how the
Spanish-language TV station envisioned its relationship with Southern California Latinos. “We
are exclusively serving a minority group. The fact that we exist is a public service.”
52
The slight
growth of the Latino population in Los Angeles County – KMEX-34’s primary geographic base
and the five-county media market’s heart – to 13 percent by the 1970 U.S. Census further
undergirded Rank’s claims about the economic “surge” sweeping Southern California’s
predominantly ethnic Mexican constituency (Figure 3.1).
53

51
Tony Scott, “KMEX-TV Reaches Audience of 1,500,000 Spanish-Speaking Residents of 5 Counties,” Daily
Variety (April 24, 1970), 19, in Folder 164, Box 5, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections; Also of note, the
nightly Spanish-language newscast was the first Los Angeles-area newscast to switch from a film to videotape
system for its broadcast. “A 25-Year Commitment to Spanish-Language Programming,” The Hollywood Reporter,
September 29, 1987, S-4, in Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
52
Tony Scott, “KMEX-TV Reaches Audience of 1,500,000 Spanish-Speaking Residents of 5 Counties,” Daily
Variety (April 24, 1970), 19, in Folder 164, Box 5, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
53
“Table 1 – General and Social Characteristics of Persons of Spanish Surname: 1970,” in Characteristics of the
Spanish Surname Population by Census Tract, for SMSA’s in California: 1970 , U.S. Bureau of the Census
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1974): 121 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1974/dec/pc -
s1-57-61.html); “California: Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990,” compiled and edited by
Richard Forstall, Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census (1995),
(https://www.census.gov/population/cencounts/ca190090.txt).

151

In the age of the Chicano movement – in reality more a series of simultaneous labor,
student, political, and cultural mobilizations united by activists’ shared Mexican ethnicity and
grievances rather than a single monolithic organization – the potential for ethnic advocacy on a
station like KMEX-34 took on significant value.
54
Could Chicanas and Chicanos use Spanish-
language TV to fight anti-Mexican racism? As in its shaping of a U.S.-based Latino identity in
the 1960s, ultimately KMEX advanced a mass-mediated form of Latino identity in the 1970s
filtered through the conservative political leanings of the station’s owners and management.
Although KMEX was more conventional than activist in its coverage of the Chicano
movement and news in general during the 1970s, journalist Rubén Salazar’s brief tenure as
KMEX news director demonstrated the potential for Spanish-language TV to differentiate itself

54
George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-
1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 5-9; Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and
Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 7-8; David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and
Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995), 184-185; Marc Simon Rodríguez, Rethinking the Chicano Movement (London: Taylor & Francis
Group, 2014), 1-22; Rubén Salazar, “Who is a Chicano? And What is it Chicanos Want?” L.A. Times (Feb. 6, 1970),
B-7, original manuscript in folder 63, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.

152

from fellow commercial stations by expanding Latinos’ public sphere to give greater
dissemination to Chicano activist voices. The 42-year-old newsman worked at KMEX less than 9
months before his brutal killing during the massive August 29, 1970, anti-Vietnam War
demonstration known as the Chicano Moratorium, but his time at the station raised KMEX’s
credibility and illustrates how U.S. Spanish-language TV could be a means of creating identity
through news programs’ ethnic conscious-building.
Joe Rank described his recruiting of Salazar as “taking a shot in the dark,” but the
station’s prestige among advertisers and the local TV industry would benefit from having a
prominent Mexican American newsman and former Los Angeles Times Mexico City bureau chief
as the station’s news director.
55
Salazar relished at the opportunity to engage the Mexican
Americans through what he called “the prime communicator in the Southland’s Latin
community.”
56
Similar to Quevedo, and KMEX sportscaster Daniel Villanueva, Salazar grew up
throughout the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and was familiar with the region’s clash and
convergence of cultures.
57
Salazar was a frequent critic of the mass media’s reporting on
Mexican/Latino issues. “The Mexican American beat in the past was nonexistent.” Prior to the
appearance of the Chicano movement, “Mexican Americans were something that vaguely were
there but nothing which warranted comprehensive coverage – unless it concerned such, in my
opinion, badly reported stories as the Pachuco race riots in Los Angeles in the early 40’s, or
more recently, the Bracero program’s effect on Mexican Americans […] Mexican Americans

55
Joseph Rank oral history interview by Kathleen Franz.
56
Rubén Salazar, “Best Kept Secret in L.A. Television,” L.A. Times (May 8, 1970), G-33.
57
Salazar was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in 1928, but the family soon moved across the border to El Paso
where he attended public schools, eventually studying journalism at Texas Western College. While at Texas
Western (todays’ University of Texas at El Paso), Rubén wrote for the school’s newspaper, The Prospector. Over
the following years Salazar’s career took him from the El Paso Herald-Post to the Santa Rosa (California) Press
Democrat and, beginning in 1959, the Los Angeles Times. A Mexican national by birth, Salazar became a U.S.
citizen in 1947. Gustavo Reveles Acosta, “Ruben Salazar Killing Left Impact on Hispanics, Journalism,” El Paso
Times (Aug. 29, 2010), (https://archive.is/20130110221358/http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_15928350).

153

traditionally kept their place so why should the big, important news media take notice of them?”
Anglo newsmen were further jaundiced by their belief that Mexican American assimilation into
U.S. society would solve their grievances the same way the “Irish, Polish, and Italian problems
were resolved.”
58

Besides his interest in engaging the Latino community through Spanish-language TV,
Salazar joined KMEX in great part due to where his career stood at the time. Salazar had only
been the L.A. Times’s Mexico City bureau chief for two years when its editors suddenly recalled
him to California in 1968 to cover the “new Mexican-American uproar here” – the growing
Chicano movement. In Salazar’s eyes returning to Los Angeles was a step down from the foreign
news desk stories he was writing as well as from the family’s gated Mexico City home and maid
service. Pointing to his 129 stories from Mexico City – including the violent 1968 government
repression of students at Tlatelolco – Salazar angrily asked his editors “How long is it going to
take for me to prove myself on the Times?”
59
Although resentful of the implication that as a
Mexican American he needed to report on Mexican American issues in the U.S. (rather than
continue his foreign correspondent work), Salazar and his family returned to Southern California.
The KMEX/SIN job offer paid less than the Times, but Salazar was intrigued about the
ethnic-oriented broadcast journalism he could accomplish by producing reporting directly for
L.A. area Latinos in Spanish rather than through the mass-mediated filter of a general audience

58
Rubén Salazar, “The Mexican-American Newsbeat – Past Practices and New Concepts,” in Southwest Texas
Conference on Mass Media and Mexican-Americans (Community Relations Service, U.S. Dept. of Justice, St.
Mary’s University, San Antonio Texas, January 18, 1969), 33, Folder 28, Box 1, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.
59
Salazar and L.A. Times Foreign Editor Bob Gibson quoted in Elena Kadvany, “From Mexico City to Los Angeles:
A Professional ‘Crisis’” USC Annenberg Ruben Salazar Project (April 17, 2012),
(http://rubensalazarproject.com/2012/04/17/from-mexico-city-to-los-angeles/). For some of Salazar’s foreign
correspondence work for the L.A. Times see “Students Peril Mexico Image Before Olympics,” (Aug. 18, 1968), K8;
“Guns Blaze at Student Protest in Mexico City,” (Aug. 29, 1968), 4; “Mexican Crisis Echoes U.S. Debate on
Police,” (Sept. 9, 1968), 27; “Mexico’s Ruling Party Held Shaken by Riots,” (Sept. 29, 1968), 18; “Bloodiest
Mexico City Clash,” (Oct. 3, 1968), 1, 12; “Panama Coup Embarrassing to U.S. Effort,” (Oct. 20, 1968), E22 -E23.

154

English-language newspaper. As Salazar told KCBS Channel 2’s Bob Navarro a few months
later, “I wanted to try my hand at communicating with the Mexican American community
directly and in their language.”
60
After speaking with his bosses at the Times, Salazar kept his
weekly column on Fridays while he worked fulltime as KMEX’s news director the rest of the
week, beginning February 1, 1970.
61
Spanish-language television was a chance for Salazar
engage the Latino community and to reinvigorate his career from a return to L.A. he initially saw
as a major professional setback. Engaging in broadcast journalism at KMEX was Salazar’s
chance to reach Spanish-speaking Latinos who did not consume English-language media like the
L.A. Times and mainstream English-format newscasts. Spanish-language TV was an opportunity
to engage in ethnic-oriented journalism.
Salazar lost no time in defining the editorial vision he saw for KMEX-34 as an
instrument of building an ethnic community. In a memo, Salazar wrote that the “Spanish-
speaking community” could be activated through the “force of relevant information” to “become
not only an important power in itself but also a more meaningful contributor to American society
as a whole.” Echoing sentiments long asserted by individuals such as station co-founder Rene
Anselmo, Salazar proclaimed KMEX was “the only medium consciously and conscientiously
communicating with the Spanish-speaking community on its own terms.” Lest the existence of

60
Salazar’s exclusive contract at KMEX (through SIN) was for a three-year period with an annual salary of $7,000
(or $46,213.70 in 2018 dollars), with raises scheduled for subsequent years. Salazar Employment Contract with
SIBC/SIN (Jan. 2, 1970), Folder RS.5.0006 and “Tele Review: The Siesta is Over,” Daily Variety (May 25, 1970),
7, in Folder 162, Box 5, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections; NAHJVideos, “Laura Lucio Reporting on Rubén
Salazar” YouTube (Aug. 16, 2010), (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxLv9bx-IM); “CPI Inflation
Calculator,” Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm).
61
Salazar Employment Contract with SIBC/SIN (Jan. 2, 1970), Folder RS.5.0006, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections. Many of Salazar’s long-time readers wrote to him to express their excitement at his hiring as KMEX’s
news director. “We have always read a nd enjoyed your excellent, informative articles in the Times,” one Anglo
couple wrote, adding that they hoped he would continue writing and regretted Salazar would not be in front of the
cameras delivering the news himself. The couple wished him well “in your new venture at KMEX!!!” Quotes from
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Woodward letter to Salazar (May 25, 1970), Folder 18, Box 1, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.

155

Spanish-language radio stations and newspapers like La Opinión were pointed out, Salazar
claimed that unlike those outlets Noticiero 34 was the only news source which provided in-depth
coverage of the 1968 Roosevelt High School walkouts and the May 1970 killing of two Mexican
nationals by LAPD officers. “We say this without fear of contradiction because we’ve got the
film to prove it.”
62

Salazar greatly admired the “excellent” work done on Noticiero 34 in the years before he
joined KMEX, but he believed that the newscast needed improvement to better engage with the
Latino public. In addition to making the nightly newscast more “formal and concise,” Salazar
believed Noticiero 34 needed “supplemental programming” which went beyond relaying the
day’s principal news stories. KMEX could better explore issues it covered in its newscasts – such
as bilingual education, the Chicano movement (and resistance to it by “Mexican-American
conservatives”), Chicano culture, immigration, police relations, and “César Chávez’s crusade” –
through station-produced documentary features.
63
Under Salazar KMEX’s monthly news budget
totaled $9,046, with the team budgeting $2,240 for 16,000 feet of news film each month; the
five-person news team and newswire subscription expenses took up the majority of the news
budget.
64
The station needed more funding for these ventures, but Salazar asserted KMEX had
the “talent and showmanship required.”
65

One can vividly sense Salazar’s excitement at the idea of using KMEX as a mass-
mediated public sphere from which to engage the larger Latino public politically. Chicano-
oriented informational content produced by KMEX “could be the most potent educational

62
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.
63
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.
64
“News: Monthly Budget,” Folder 96, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
65
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.

156

weapon in our Spanish-speaking community which could be shared not only in Southern
California but throughout the whole Southwest.”
66
Writing in reply, Joe Rank agreed the station
had the power to create ethnic identity. “Chicanos’ views of themselves,” Rank replied, “could
best be changed on Spanish language television.” Chicano advocacy through Spanish-language
TV could be mobilized to “work against the establishment.”
67

Unfortunately, the lack of surviving footage from this period prevents an analysis of the
specific ways in which Salazar’s content differed from Noticiero 34’s earlier content in the
1960s. While some of the footage Salazar’s cameramen took of the August 29, 1970, Chicano
Moratorium was reportedly seized by law enforcement officials investigating the killing, most of
the newscasts and other programs Salazar produced at KMEX were later discarded as storage
space at the station ran out.
68

However, extant evidence gives context to journalist Frank del Olmo’s claim that many
Latinos felt “KMEX news has never been as good as it was in Salazar’s day.”
69
An example was
KMEX’s collaboration with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in covering the ordination of Father
Patricio Flores as the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, the first Mexican
American to be promoted to such a post within the U.S. Catholic Church. Salazar used tape of
the ordination, which included interviews with Father Flores as well as César Chávez, for the

66
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Box 3, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.
67
Rank closed his memo to Salazar saying “Although the above view is self-serving, I really believe it is valid.” Joe
Rank to Ruben Salazar Memo, August 17, 1970, Folder 88, Box 3, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
68
KMEX General Manager Daniel Villanueva cleared out much of the news f ilm and video footage that had
accumulated at the station since its founding. Sergio Olmos, a later KMEX news producer, recounted saving some
footage of the Chicano Moratorium from being thrown into a dumpster in the early 1990s when the station was
donating and throwing away old films and tapes. Sergio Olmos KMEX memo to Guillermo Ahumada, “RE: Status
of News Related Files from 1961 to Present” (June 1, 1993), in Folder 11, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
69
Frank del Olmo, “Salazar: A Pioneer, Not a Martyr,” L.A. Times (Aug. 27, 1995), M-5.

157

Noticiero 34 newscast to underscore the event’s significance.
70
Salazar’s interview with activist
lawyer Oscar “Zeta” Acosta – the legal counsel for the “East L.A. 13” who organized the 1968
East L.A. student walkouts – further demonstrated the unique exposure Spanish-language TV
could give ethnic-oriented Latino issues in its mass-mediated public sphere.
71

Among Salazar’s long-term plans for KMEX’s exploration of Chicano issues was a
“projected series on the Mexican American” which was to have been developed by a committee
led by Salazar and would have explored at least twenty different topics with the help of experts
active in the Chicano movement. The poet Alurista (author of the “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán”)
would have led a segment on “Aztlan – Man and Land”; historian Rudy Acuña would have led a
segment on the “Myth of the Spanish in the Southwest, Historical to 1824”; Ernesto Galarza
would have spoken about “Farm Labor in the Southwest”; Juan Gómez-Quiñones of UCLA and
Joe Razo of La Raza newspaper would have spoken on “contemporary barrio organizations”;
LAUSD Board Member Julian Nava would have spoken about “Education and the Mexican”;
and César Chávez would have discussed the importance of community organizations.
72

Work on the series ended amid the chaos surrounding Salazar’s passing, leaving it
unclear if the programs were to be broadcast live or produced in the style of documentaries (with
the post-production effort that would entail). Perhaps the series might have faced the same

70
Joe Rank Memo to Roberto Cruz (April 22, 1970), Folder 97, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
Patricio Flores’s ordination as bishop was an important moment in Mexican American religious history due to the
fact that, despite the overwhelming proportion of Catholics in the Southwest being Mexican/Latino, the church in
the U.S. had often not ministered to Latino Catholics with cultural respect. Father Flores was appointed Archbishop
of the Archdiocese of San Antonio in 1979, beginning a long tenure as that see’s leader, often working in tandem
with local Mexican American groups. Mario T. García, Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic
History (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010).
71
Oscar “Zeta” Acosta and Ilan Stevens, ed, Oscar “Zeta” Acosta: The Uncollected Works (Arte Público Press,
Houston, TX, 1996), xxi.
72
In addition to these voices, activists Anna Gómez and Patricia Borjón would have discussed “Las Chicanas-Las
Adelitas”, Bert Corona would have led a segment on politics, and the late Eduardo Quevedo’s son Ed (along with
Católicos por la Causa leader Richard Cruz) would have led a segment on religion. “Projected Series on the Mexican
American,” Project Outline (July 21, 1970), Folder 124, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.

158

scheduling challenges Eduardo Quevedo’s public service shows did being scheduled in different
graveyard slots after primetime or on weekend afternoons. It is also unclear if space would have
been given for non-Spanish-speaking Chicanos to express their views in English (or in
Spanglish). Nevertheless, the televised megaphone given to the proposed series’ Chicano activist
guests illustrates the opportunity offered by Spanish-language TV to educate viewers and shape
their ethnic identity.
KMEX-34’s coverage of Mexican American discrimination during the summer of 1970
highlights some of the ways in which Spanish-language TV covered issues ignored or
downplayed by the mainstream English-language mass media while also showing how station
management could undermine Latino advocacy efforts. In the months before the August 1970
Chicano Moratorium anti-war protest, community activists noted that at least six individuals had
died in the East Los Angeles Sheriff’s Station by July 1970, with law enforcement officials
typically citing suicide or murder at the hands of another cellmate as the causes of death. Many
Chicano activists accused the Sheriff’s Department of brutally killing the inmates themselves.
73

Additionally the ongoing criminal case against teacher Sal Castro and twelve others involved
with the 1968 East L.A. school walkouts further contributed to the festering frustration within
Chicano Los Angeles.
74

Salazar channeled many community members’ sentiments in his high-profile criticism of
police brutality, such as in KMEX’s coverage of the LAPD’s killing of two Mexican nationals in
early that summer.
75
On July 16, LAPD officers conducted an operation to arrest a murder

73
Barrio Defense Committee Letter, July 13, 1970, Folder 101, Box 4, Ruben Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections.
74
Rubén Salazar, “A Beautiful Sight: The System working the Way it Should,” L.A. Times (July 24, 1970), C-7;
original column manuscript in Folder 121, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
75
The LAPD were also accused of anti-Mexican police brutality, such as when policemen violently arrested a
Mexican American couple on a busy freeway over suspicion of their driving under the influence. Despite
cooperating with the lawmen, Henry Ochoa and his wife were both arrested after they were viciously clubbed and

159

suspect wanted in the Bay Area. The officers tracked the suspect to a downtown L.A. Skid Row
apartment building where – in a fast-paced, confusing case of mistaken identity – the officers
shot and killed cousins Guillermo and Beltran Sánchez while also threatening the lives of other
residents in the building. The Sánchez cousins were unable to communicate with the police
before the shooting because they did not speak English.
76

As condemnation of the LAPD grew for its role in the Sánchez cousins’ deaths, KMEX
identified survivors of the deadly shootout. Salazar felt the interviews were “very good” in
publicizing the police’s use of force and included them in a Noticiero 34 newscast.
77
The
televised interviews with survivors of the Sánchez killings immediately provoked the LAPD’s
ire. The day after the newscast, two police officers visited Salazar at the KMEX studios to
“express their concern about the showing of the interviews.” The officers told Salazar that they
were concerned about how the broadcast could negatively “impact” the police department’s
image. “Besides,” Salazar recalled them saying, “this kind of information could be dangerous in
the minds of barrio people.”
78

Salazar’s sense of being spied on by the LAPD increased over the summer as KMEX
covered activists’ efforts to organize the anti-Vietnam War Chicano Moratorium. Although
supported by KMEX management (which allowed him to cover the Moratorium on Noticiero 34

handcuffed on their wrists and ankles. While his wife was soon released, the policemen continued clubbing and
kicking Ochoa until he lost consciousness. He spent a week in the hospital as a result of his injuries. Barrio Defense
Committee Letter, July 13, 1970, Folder 101, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
76
The Sanchez cousin’s killings raised such community anger that Congressman Edward Roybal called for a federal
investigation of the latest case of police homicide, saying “The Mexican American community’s faith in and respect
for their law enforcement agencies wa s totally shattered that night […] no longer is it advisable to leave this grave
crisis in the hands of local authorities.” Column manuscript, Folder 121, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections; “Seven Officers Charged in Slaying of Mexicans,” The Argus (Fremont, CA), July 22, 1970, p. 14. The
seven lawmen accused of manslaughter included two San Leandro police officers from Northern California and five
LAPD officers, among them a Spanish-surnamed patrolman, Hector R. Zepeda.
77
Column manuscript, Folder 121, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.
78
Column manuscript, Folder 121, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC Special Collections.

160

before its August 29 date), Salazar told his friend and activist Bert Corona “I don’t feel quite
assured that the station officials are really leveling with me and with the moratorium committee
when they say they support our aims for a peaceful, nonviolent demonstration.” Salazar confided
that he thought someone was going through his office desk at KMEX and also felt the police
would disrupt the Chicano Moratorium.
79

Beyond the sense of distrust Salazar expressed, KMEX management’s intervention in
obligating Salazar to meet with the chief of the LAPD demonstrates the contradictions of the
station’s commitment to advocating for the L.A. area Latino community. A column critical of the
LAPD brought Salazar into confrontation with the police and station management when Chief
Edward Davis’s office called KMEX requesting a meeting with Salazar and General Manager
Joe Rank at police headquarters in Parker Center. Salazar told Rank he was not interested, who
in turn told the station receptionist to call the police chief’s office back to decline the meeting.
80

KMEX and SIN co-founder/co-owner Frank Fouce Jr., tipped off by the TV station’s
receptionist, called Rank to tell him and Salazar “You’re going to that meeting.” Fouce, as may
be remembered, was a “staunch Republican” who served in the party’s state organization and
supported the LAPD’s desire to speak with Salazar. Sitting at a narrow table surrounded by
policemen, Chief Davis accused Salazar of lying in his article and demanded a retraction. “Chief,
I’m not retracting it,” Salazar answered. “I have it on tape.”
81

79
Mario T. García, Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona (Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1995), 278-279. The lack of surviving Noticiero 34 recordings from the summer of 1970 prevents
an analysis of how KMEX reported on – and perhaps promoted – the Chicano Moratorium.
80
Rank Oral History, Kathleen Franz, NMAH. It is not clear which specific columns infuriated the LAPD, but
Salazar touched on police brutality and abuses of power in his March 13 (“Latin Newsmen, Police Chief Eat…but
Fail to Meet”) and April 10, 1970, (“Police-Community Rift”) columns in the L.A. Times. See Garcia, Border
Correspondent.
81
Joe Rank Oral History, Kathy Franz, NMAH. Column manuscript, Folder 121, Box 4, Salazar Papers, USC
Special Collections. Rank’s forced attendance at the meeting suggests Salazar might have also criticized the LAPD
in a Noticiero 34 segment in addition to a column in the L.A. Times.

161

Salazar remained steadfast in using KMEX as a tool with which to raise the ethnic
consciousness of the Latino community, but incidents such as this made him vigilant against the
station’s management and demonstrate the cross-purposes of the elite White American owners of
U.S. Spanish-language TV. Remarks by KMEX station manager Daniel Villanueva to Salazar
further exhibit the station’s unwillingness to criticize broader systemic U.S. racism too much.
Villanueva said KMEX “in every one of its broadcasts” should emphasize “that the whole march
should be a specific one […] to demonstrate the disproportionate number of Spanish surname
casualties in Viet Nam and nothing more.”
82
KMEX-34 had more independence than TV
journalists in Mexico, but as a private business it too mass-mediated its critiques of power – in
this case racist forces oppressing Mexican Americans – so as to avoid alienating advertising
revenue and viewers. The limits of KMEX and U.S. Spanish-language TV’s ethnic advocacy
must be recognized when considering how their public sphere served as a means of creating a
U.S. Latino identity.

KMEX during the Chicano Moratorium and its Aftermath
When the KMEX news crew trekked the streets of East Los Angeles during the August
29, 1970, Chicano Moratorium, they encountered a young crowd of 20,000-30,000 Chicanas and
Chicanos politically mobilized by the Vietnam War. Chicano communities in Los Angeles and
throughout the U.S.-Mexican border region constituted a greater proportion of participants in the
war as well as 20 percent of the casualties.
83
Coupled with its rising protests against
discrimination in local schools, government services, and public accommodations, the Chicano

82
Sheriff’s Department Transcript of Cassette Tape Recording of KMEX Press Interview (Sept. 1, 1970),
Villanueva Folder, Box 3, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Salazar Investigation Files, USC Special Collec tions.
83
“Tele-Review: The Siesta is Over,” Daily Variety (May 25, 1970), 7, Folder 162, Box 5, Salazar Papers, USC.

162

Moratorium represented as much a broad critique of the entire societal status quo as it did a
protest specifically against the Vietnam War. Salazar (wearing a button saying “Chicano
Moratorium. 8,000 Dead. Ya Basta!”) and cameramen Guillermo Restrepo and Octavio “Chapo”
Gómez filmed the march as part of KMEX’s larger coverage of the Moratorium.
84
Although
KMEX reporting on the Moratorium before August 29 is not extant, on-air comments by
Villanueva shortly afterwards and remarks attributed to Salazar indicate the station promoted the
mass demonstration for some time before it took place. “We have really been covering it here. I
hope the gente (people) really turn out for it. We have to show the Anglos what we can do.”
85

Most of the footage the crew collected at the Moratorium has been lost due to poor
archiving practices as well as the seizure of some of it by law enforcement agencies, but a few
minutes of raw, surviving footage filmed by Gómez demonstrate vast crowds of young Chicanas
and Chicanos marching in solidarity against the Vietnam War.
86
Unlike Restrepo’s videotaped
footage, Gómez’s film reels of the Chicano Moratorium survived because he parted from Salazar
and Restrepo after the main march ended.
87
In one scene, Gómez followed a group of United
Farm Workers from Blythe, California, as they marched down Whittier Boulevard and filmed a
protestor singing a corrido about the UFW labor struggle.

84
Loreno Oropeza, ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 145; Héctor Tobar, “Finally, transparency in the Ruben Salazar
case,” L.A. Times (Aug. 5, 2011), (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/05/local/la -me-0805-tobar-20110805).
Ironically unlike English-language stations such as KTLA-5 which were able to cover the Moratorium live, KMEX-
34 would not be able to broadcast the footage filmed by Restrepo and Gómez until after they returned to the station
with their videotapes and processed Rollei camera film.
85
Salazar reportedly made this comment to his friend Frank del Olmo the night before the Moratorium. Del Olmo
became one of the Times’ leading columnists later in the 1970s. See “Rubén Salazar: Los Angeles’s Misunderstood
Martyr,” L.A. Times (Aug. 24, 1980), F-1, F-2.
86
Sergio Olmos KMEX memo to Guillermo Ahumada, “RE: Status of News Related Files from 1961 to Present”
(June 1, 1993), in Folder 11, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
87
Some Chicano activists have suggested Restrepo’s videotape footage was seized by law enforcement immediately
after Salazar was killed, in addition to Salazar’s research notes on the Moratorium, including tips he received on its
surveillance – see Ernest B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on
Dissent (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 159. Octavio Gómez’s Rollei film footage was eventually
donated to the University of Southern California – see Box 3, KMEX Film Reels, USC Special Collections.

163

The surviving footage also shows Salazar (from behind) speaking with an unidentified
Brown Beret leader on the Moratorium’s importance. Although the two men’s conversation is
difficult to follow due to the film’s distorted audio, the Brown Beret activist seemed to express
himself in Spanglish.
88
Salazar’s short interview with the Brown Beret demonstrates the
potential for U.S. Spanish-language TV to relay the grievances held by Chicano activists at a
time when Mexican Americans were mostly shut out of the English-language media. Informing
KMEX’s monolingual Spanish-speaking Mexican and Latin American immigrant viewers about
the Chicano movement was essential aspect of the station’s community identity formation work
in the 1970s – although including more English-speaking Chicano activists may have broadened
the impact of KMEX’s ethnic-oriented public sphere.
The student-organized protest was mostly peaceful until the end of its three-mile march
across East L.A. from Belvedere Park to its end point at Laguna Park. A confusing series of
events at the march’s end involving allegations that Moratorium participants entered a liquor
store en masse and were leaving without payment led to an escalation of police activity. The
excessive show of force culminated with L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies rushing Laguna Park
and attacking the demonstrators. Violence spread and a riot ensued, leading to the arrest of
nearly 152 people by the police and the deaths of two people.
89

Salazar and Restrepo saw the violence, likely filming some of it, but avoided entering the
fray. By 5pm Salazar told Restrepo that he needed to use the restroom and that they should get a
drink. The men entered the Silver Dollar Bar on Whittier Boulevard to rest briefly. As Salazar sat
on a bar stool waiting for his drink, Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Wilson fired a tear gas canister into
the bar, allegedly attempting to force out a gunman who had been reported entering the bar. The

88
“KMEX Rolls #2-#8” DVD, Box 3, KMEX Film Reels, USC Special Collections.
89
Oropeza, ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!, 160-163, 170-171.

164

tear gas canister hit Salazar directly in the head, killing him instantly. Panicking, Restrepo
stumbled into the back alley where he encountered a group of men pointing shotguns at him. Not
seeing Salazar, Restrepo told them his boss was still inside. “What do we care about your
director?” one said, before they forced him to run away.
90

Restrepo found a payphone and called the KMEX office asking management what he
should do. A technician from the station called Joe Rank at his Malibu home informing him
Salazar had been shot and that he should turn on KTLA-5 for live coverage. Shocked, Rank sped
to the TV station and told the technician to have Restrepo rush to safety there. At the station,
Rank met a shaken Restrepo, still wearing his blood-spattered shirt. Rank comforted him but
feared for his safety and put him “in hiding for a few days.” The Sheriff Department’s intense
interest to interview Restrepo was such that Station Manager Daniel Villanueva called the
agency asking it to stop searching for station personnel who might have witnessed Salazar’s
death, offering to schedule a formal meeting for them with lawyers present instead.
91
With
Restrepo sequestered, Villanueva called the Sheriff’s Department ten times for word on Salazar,
but repeatedly replied that they would look into it. Rank, Villanueva and the rest of KMEX only
learned of Rubén’s death around 9pm when another TV station carried the story. Rank became
despondent and asked Villanueva to drive down to the Salazar home in Anaheim and let Sally,
Rubén’s wife, know the terrible news.
92

90
Guillermo “William” Restrepo quoted in Los 30 del 34: Un Sueñ o Hecho Realidad. Directed by Gerardo Pallares,
narrated by Fernando Escandón. Univision KMEX Channel 34 (Sept. 27, 1992), VHS# VA11157 T, UCLA FTVA.
My translation.
91
Over the next few days Rank himself evaded the police and had his wife tell the Sheriff’s Department he was not
home whenever they called. Rank Oral History, Kathleen Franz, NMAH; Asst. Chief H.R. Garbe Memo to Asst.
Sheriff James F. Downey (Aug. 30, 1970), Box 3, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Salazar Investigation Files,
USC Special Collections.
92
Rank Oral History, Kathleen Franz, NMAH; Sheriff’s Department Transcript of Cassette Tape Recording of
KMEX Press Interview (Aug. 31, 1970), Villanueva Folder, Box 3, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Salazar
Investigation Files, USC Special Collections.

165

Many Chicano activists and community members felt Salazar was deliberately killed by
law enforcement agencies which were angry at his loud criticism of their police brutality; the
initial September 1970 inquest and coroner’s report did little to assuage such sentiments. At the
inquest, the Sheriff’s Department stonewalled requests for its training manual to be presented as
evidence which might have implicated it for use of excessive force while the District Attorney
found the available evidence insufficient to process charges against Wilson. The exclusion of
evidence and the inquest’s general protectiveness of the Sheriff’s Department led Villanueva to
remark “If there wasn’t a conspiracy it is an incredible set of circumstances.”
93

Although the shock of Salazar’s killing severely shook the small KMEX family, the
station reported authoritatively on the violence and held repeated press conferences in the days
immediately after the Moratorium. Daniel Villanueva took the lead in KMEX’s coverage of the
violence. In a lengthy and emotional press conference on August 31 – just two days after the ill-
fated Chicano Moratorium – Villanueva addressed the flurry of questions English-language
journalists had on Salazar’s passing. Villanueva stressed that a probe was needed to determine
the circumstances of the “death of a man dedicated to the cause of betterment and whose voice
cried out that we were at the bottom of the totem pole in regard to housing, education, and have
been for several years.”
94
The former Rams kicker emphasized the need for a careful federal

93
Mario T. Garcia, Border Correspondent, 3-5. Ironically, District Attorney Evelle Younger had received much
political support from appearances on the late Eduardo Quevedo’s community affairs shows on KMEX years earlier
and helped facilitate KMEX’s last-minute coverage of the 1964 Republican National Convention. A report in 2011
by the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review, though critical of the Sheriffs’ use of force during the
antiwar march, affirmed there was no evidence the KMEX newsman was deliberately targeted. Héctor Tobar,
“Finally, transparency in the Rubén Salazar case,” L.A. Times (Aug. 5, 2011),
(http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/05/local/la -me-0805-tobar-20110805); Vigil, The Crusade for Justice, 159. For
more on the long-standing history of internal corruption – including assassination plots – carried out by L.A. area
police departments see Steven J. Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and
America (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), and Max Felker-Kantor, Policing Los Angeles: Race,
Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).
94
Sheriff’s Department Transcript of Cassette Tape Recording of KMEX Press Interview (Aug. 31, 1970),
Villanueva Folder, Box 3, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Salazar Investigation Files, USC Special Collections.

166

investigation, saying it would diffuse many of the intense shock affecting the Chicano
community. At the conference Villanueva also corrected other reporters, including one who
began a question saying most of KMEX’s viewers were Latin-speaking Mexicans until
Villanueva interrupted him to explain that Mexican people speak Spanish.
95
Villanueva’s
redirection of the reporter’s question demonstrates the truth of Salazar’s critique of English-
language mass media not understanding Mexican/Latino people in its reporting.
KMEX-34’s coverage of Salazar’s death earned it critical recognition in the form of a
George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1971, the first Spanish-language
TV station to receive the award. One of the most highly coveted broadcasting recognitions, the
University of Georgia’s College of Journalism and Mass Communication unanimously awarded
KMEX the Peabody Award for “public service in its highest sense” for its restrained Spanish-
language reporting on Salazar’s death. The award stated “through the efforts of station manager
Danny Villanueva, both on and off the air, a threatened riot of major proportions was averted and
all the tension defused.”
96

Canal 34’s Peabody win signaled a greater willingness by the TV industry to recognize
the value of Spanish-language TV broadcasting. Although clearly proud of the Peabody honor
and its implications for U.S. Spanish-language TV, Villanueva acknowledged the award as a
bittersweet milestone. “For the first time,” Villanueva later said, “we were able to demonstrate to

95
Sheriff’s Department Transcript of Cassette Tape Recording of KMEX Press Interview (Aug. 31, 1970),
Villanueva Folder, Box 3, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Salazar Investigation Files, USC Special Collections.
96
Peabody Award winners are selected by from a pool of self-submitted TV and radio broadcasts and adjudicated by
mixed student-faculty committees at the University of Georgia which then present finalists to a 17 -member board of
jurors (composed of critics, scholars, and media industry types) which then select multiple awardees. By the 2010s
the Peabody jurors also accept online programming submissions and present 30 awards among 60 finalists. The
University of Georgia no longer has the footage KMEX submitted of its Chicano Moratorium/Salazar newsca sts.
“’Selling of Pentagon’ Wins Special Peabody,” Broadcasting (April 19, 1971), 21-22.

167

the community” that Spanish-language television “is an important and significant factor in the
world of journalism.”
97

The positive reception Salazar’s journalistic contributions to Canal 34 received –
validated as they were by KMEX’s Peabody Award – influenced other stations in the growing
Spanish International Network to raise their news reporting standards and invest in covering
political and social issues affecting U.S. Latinos. At WXTV Channel 41 in New York, Puerto
Rican actress-turned-journalist Gilda Mirós produced a documentary in February 1972 which
revealed the experiences of Puerto Ricans fighting in the Vietnam War. Mirós later produced
another special on the conditions of Latino inmates at the Riker’s Island jail complex.
98
The
impact of KMEX’s development of Spanish-language TV journalism in the U.S. was already
being felt beyond Southern California and presaged the station’s growing influence in the
national U.S. Spanish TV project’s promotion of a U.S.-based Latino identity as a nation within
a nation.

Ethnic Identity Creation on KMEX Goes National
Rubén Salazar’s short time as KMEX news editor greatly complicates an evaluation of
the impact of his contributions at the station, but when examined from the perspective of the
development of Spanish-language news broadcasting in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s it is
clear Salazar’s work fits into the larger trend of the station’s advancing of a Latino ethnic
identity defined by its U.S. context. Indeed, station management publicly emphasized the ethnic
orientation of its “advocacy journalism” after the Salazar tragedy. After becoming KMEX

97
Daniel Villanueva quoted in Los 30 del 34 (my translation).
98
“Rikers Island: Hispanics in Prison,” (1971), Item 4, Box 13, Subseries 1.1, Series 1, Spanish Language
Television Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

168

General Manager in June 1971, Daniel Villanueva repeatedly told the local press and broadcast
trade publications that Canal 34 was a “cross between an educational and a commercial station”
in its appeal to Latinos in metropolitan L.A. Characterizing KMEX’s newscasts as a “social
service” no other media outlet would do given the dearth of Latinos’ mass media choices,
Villanueva affirmed KMEX had “a tremendous social obligation” to the Spanish-speaking
community.”
99
Although L.A. area hispanohablantes did in fact have other Spanish-language
media choices – and though not all Latinos in Southern California, particularly the younger U.S.-
born generations, spoke Spanish – Villanueva promoted KMEX as a “unifying vehicle” for the
Latino community.
100
KMEX was in the business of creating ethnic U.S. Latino identity.
Building on trends set in motion since the station’s 1962 debut by individuals like
Quevedo and Salazar, KMEX’s active promotion of ethnic identity among Southern California
Mexican Americans in the 1970s (a dynamic sociologist Cristina Mora reminds us took on an
increasing panethnic Latino dynamic that decade) demonstrates the ideological underpinnings of
Spanish-language television in the United States. Leisure entertainment programming like sports
and imported Mexican telenovelas and films continued to represent the majority of KMEX’s
broadcast schedule, but the station’s conscious efforts to create a U.S.-based Latino identity
illustrate how U.S. Spanish-language TV was neither just Mexican TV north of the border nor

99
Daniel Villanueva quoted in Maury Green, “Spanish Network: Villanueva – From Dream to Reality,” L.A. Times
(Aug. 4, 1972), F-18. KMEX-34 was metropolitan Los Angeles’s only fulltime Spanish-format TV station, but La
Opinión and radio stations KALI-AM and KWKW-AM commanded sizable Latino audiences as well.
100
Ahora: Puente Entre Dos Culturas, International Communication Agency (1978), Video Recordings, Record
Group 306, National Archives and Records Administration. Villanueva’s performance as station manager during the
Salazar crisis led to his promotion as general manager after Joe Rank stepped down in 1971. By 1972, Villanueva
also co-owned 5.2 percent of the station. The other primary KMEX shareholders in 1972 were local radio
personality Ernesto Cervera (2.25 percent), Louis Sweeney (2.25 percent), the L.A.-based Spanish-language
Metropolitan Theaters Corp. (3 percent), KWEX’s Emilio Nicolas (4.46 percent), Mexico -based advertising
executive Edward Noble (11 percent), SIN President Rene Anselmo (16 percent), Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta at
his legally-capped 20 percent, and L.A. Spanish-language theater owner Frank Fouce Jr. (31 percent). Nineteen
other individuals held the remaining stock (each with less than 1 percent). “KMEX-TV,” Television Factbook:
Stations, no. 42 (Washington, D.C.: Television Digest Inc., 1972-1973), 81-B.

169

just another form of niche television in a crowded U.S. television market. Spanish-language TV
in the U.S. through the public sphere it expanded was itself an instigator of a cross-cultural
ethnic identity shaped by the context of social hierarchies in the United States.
The rebroadcasting of KMEX-produced news programs in the expanding Spanish
International Network throughout the 1970s – including the aforementioned WXTV-41 for New
York-area Puerto Ricans in 1970, WLTV-23 for Cuban Americans in 1971, as well as Fresno
KFTV-21 (1972) and San Francisco KDTV-14 (1975) for mostly Mexican American populations
– further underscores the significance of the ethnic identity discourses KMEX’s programs
promoted. SIN viewers in California, and as Mora emphasizes SIN’s Puerto Rican and Cuban-
dominant markets, did not passively absorb the network’s KMEX-produced news programs
(especially when the programs were specifically Mexican) but the promotion of what Villanueva
called “the Latins’ self-improvement” in its exploration of Mexican American issues helped
shape the larger Spanish-language TV medium’s articulations of U.S. Latino identity.
101

Whatever the intraethnic differences between ethnic Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, the
increasingly national U.S. Spanish-language TV project of the 1970s began unifying the groups
into an amorphous Latino whole through the reinforcement of Spanish as a language of
information in the everyday lives of Latinos in the U.S.
KMEX’s Tribuna Pública, a half-hour public affairs program aired over SIN stations
nationwide, exemplifies the station’s promotion of Latino ethnic identity through programs
intended for the “the Latins’ self-improvement.” Created by Villanueva and recently hired
Mexican American reporter Pete Moraga, Tribuna Pública (Public Forum) was a 30
(occasionally 60) minute program which discussed social and political issues pertinent to

101
Daniel Villanueva, “Spanish Language TV is Available,” L.A. Times (April 18, 1970), A-4

170

Mexicans and other Latinos in L.A.
102
Beginning with its first broadcast on Sunday, October 10,
1971, Tribuna Pública aired at midday on weekends (after being taped earlier in the week) and
facilitated discussions on issues as varied as health care, immigration, and politics.
103
After airing
over Canal 34, Tribuna Pública was also broadcast across the other SIN stations.
104

The wide variety of community and political leaders the KMEX news team invited to
Tribuna Pública in its early years reflected the station’s ongoing efforts to document some of the
different initiatives of the Chicano movement. For example, an October 1972 program on the
United Farmworkers featured an appearance by César Chávez.
105
Other tapings of Tribuna
Publica examined public education – with Rev. Vahac Mardirosian (Hispanic Urban Center) and
teacher Dolores Dorantes encouraging more Mexican American parental involvement in parent-
teacher associations – while another episode covered the proposed demolition of tenements in
East Los Angeles which became the Maravilla Housing Project.
106
Tribuna Pública’s co-creator
Pete Moraga, KMEX news director by 1973, hoped the show could inspire SIN to develop a
larger televised national news magazine on the network.
107

Tribuna Pública, focused on issues most directly affecting Mexican Americans, but also
covered topics of relevance for the broader community such as a September 1973 appearance on

102
Moraga was an experienced bilingual journalist having worked at the Voice of America as well as in Spanish -
language radio in his native Arizona. Moraga’s early work at KMEX included covering the 1971 San Fernando
earthquake during which he shared information with frightened viewers on how to find assistance in the tremor’s
aftermath. By 1973 Villanueva promoted Moraga to news director. Myrna Oliver, “Pete Moraga, 77; Bilingual L.A.
Newsman Boosted Latinos’ Image,” L.A. Times (Sept. 29, 2003), (http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/29/local/me-
moraga29).
103
Villanueva and Moraga alternated hosting duties for the locally-produced show. “Sunday Television Guide,” L.A.
Times (October 10, 1971), S-5.
104
Maury Green, “Spanish Network: Villanueva – From Dream to Reality,” L.A. Times (Aug. 4, 1972), F-18.
105
“Weekend TV” L.A. Times (Oct. 21, 1972), A-3.
106
Paul Henniger, “Weekend TV” L.A. Times (Jan. 27, 1973), B-3; Paul Henniger, “Weekend TV,” L.A. Times
(March 17, 1973), B-3; Paul Henniger, “Weekend TV,” L.A. Times (Aug. 11, 1973), A-2.
107
By the 1980s the show facilitated discussions on the rights of persons with disabilities and homosexuality amid
the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Silvio G. Gutierrez, “’Noticiero 34’: Good News for the Hispanic Community,” The
Hollywood Reporter (Sept. 29, 1987), S-15, in Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.

171

the show by Governor Ronald Reagan. Reagan used his discussion with Moraga to raise Latino
support for his proposed state income tax reduction measure on that year’s November ballot. The
governor’s appearance on Tribuna Pública is an indicator of the growing weight that many
political leaders gave KMEX-34 by the 1970s.
108
However, U.S. Spanish-language TV’s mass-
mediated character again comes into play when one considers how the conservative politics of
KMEX’s owners enabled Reagan’s appearance on the station. Republican Party stalwart Frank
Fouce Jr.’s support of Reagan likely facilitated his interview just as it did Rockefeller’s in 1964.
Additionally, Villanueva publicly endorsed Reagan’s 1970 gubernatorial reelection bid and
served as vice chairman of the Advisory Committee for Reagan. Villanueva declared, “I just
believe the governor represents the brighter hope for betterment of conditions that exist within
the largest minority group in the state of California – the Spanish-speaking people.”
109

The appearance of the Governor of California in a KMEX program was important in
affirming the TV station’s credibility as a news source for the Latino community, but KMEX
management’s private relationship with Reagan and the Republican Party (which was usually
antagonistic to the United Farm Workers and other Chicano community organizers) undermines
the credibility of the station’s commitment to ethnic-oriented “advocacy journalism.” As Rubén
Salazar wrote in 1970 about President Nixon and Governor Reagan, rising tensions in the
Chicano community were “not being helped by our political and law-and-order leaders who are
trying to discredit militants in the barrios as subversive or criminal.”
110
Amid the social
hierarchies which shaped Spanish-language TV’s coverage of the news and its articulation of

108
Paul Henniger, “Weekend TV,” L.A. Times (Sept. 22, 1973), A3; Ronald Reagan, “Reflections on the Failure of
Proposition #1,” National Review (Dec. 7, 1973), (https://www.nationalreview.com/2004/06/reflections-failure-
proposition-1-governor-ronald-reagan/); Governor’s Daily Schedules (1973), pg. 6, Gubernatorial Papers, Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library.
109
“Reagan cites his record of minority group appointments,” L.A. Times (Oct. 13, 1970), 3.
110
Rubén Salazar, “Don’t make the ‘Bato Loco’ go the way of the Zoot Suiter,” L.A. Times (June 19, 1970), C-11.

172

U.S. Latino identity were considerations of the station’s need to avoid alienating advertisers with
overly-militant ethnic advocacy while also maintaining access to political newsmakers. The
tendency for KMEX – and by extension the U.S. Spanish-language TV industry it helped
establish – was to attribute racism to individual bad actors rather than to condemn systemic
racism in U.S. society as a whole.
Besides the mass-mediated Latino identity KMEX’s Tribuna Pública promoted, one must
also consider how the weekly news program landed on viewers. Moraga made clear in a 2003
interview that Tribuna Pública was meant to raise Latinos’ understanding of social and political
issues occurring in the broader community, however the program’s scheduling hurt its potential
to reach a large audience.
111
As was the case with Eduardo Quevedo’s public affairs shows,
Tribuna Pública aired on Sunday afternoons – a daytime weekend time slot often referred to as
the graveyard slot because of its generally low viewership. The potential for a greater viewer
impact could have been strengthened by scheduling the show for just before, just after, or even
during weekday primetime hours. The airing of Tribuna Pública nationwide across SIN is a
strong indicator of KMEX’s importance within the network – not to mention the program’s
inherent qualities – but it is unlikely many of its California-specific and ethnic Mexican-specific
episodes would’ve drawn significant attention from Puerto Rican or Cuban viewers in the East
Coast SIN stations. Ethnic Mexican viewers of SIN stations in Fresno, San Francisco, or the
northern Mexican border towns might also have struggled to relate to episodes focusing mainly
on L.A. area issues. Ultimately KMEX’s weekly public service show was not framed in the
Latino panethnic identity-building rhetoric SIN began promoting more effectively by the 1980s.

111
Pete Moraga interview by Maggie Rivas Rodríguez (Interview ID 279, Jan. 4. 2003), Voces Oral History Project
Archive, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at
Austin.

173

The elimination of the station’s news director position after Moraga left KMEX in 1978, along
with the increased pressures that decision put on the station’s news reporters and production
personnel, further problematizes Tribuna Pública’s and KMEX-34’s commitment to creating a
U.S. Latino cultural identity through mass-mediated Spanish-language TV news and public
affairs content.
112

The Promise of the Televised Public Sphere: The United Farm Workers on KMEX-34
Examining early KMEX’s programming to understand how it articulated notions of
identity is profoundly limited by the loss of broadcasting footage over the past half century, but a
surviving special program on César Chávez and the United Farm Workers sheds light on the
ways in which Spanish-language television’s public sphere could serve the interests of Latino
viewers. Although neither the first nor the only appearance of UFW organizers on KMEX
according to TV listings from earlier in the decade, the Saturday, September 6, 1975 broadcast of
Decisión Campesina con César Chávez (Farmworker Decision with César Chávez) is one the
earliest extant examples of a complete Mexican/Chicano-oriented public affairs broadcast on
KMEX. This surviving program allows us to engage in an analysis of the discursive and aesthetic
qualities of informational programming on early U.S. Spanish-language TV.
113

112
Villanueva eliminated the KMEX news director position in favor of a less autonomous position titled
“coordinadora del noticiero” (newscast coordinator) for Estela López, a KABC-7 reporter hired by the station. In
coordinating KMEX reporters’ daily tasks as well as researching and determining the content of daily newscasts,
López effectively carried out all of the responsibilities of a news director but without the prestige or commensurate
pay. The news department’s small size placed great burdens on reporters and production crew to have enough news
stories for the three daily weekday newscasts. Repeats of stories from the 5:30pm newscast were common during the
10:30pm newscast. Arturo Ramón González, “Case Study of KMEX-TV,” (M.A. Thesis, California State University
Northridge, 1978), 115-117, 120, 136-139.
113
The extant footage of KMEX’s special program on the UFW was preserved by Teatro Campesino, a Chicano
theater company which created plays to support the UFW’s unionization efforts among migrant farmworkers. The
University of California, Santa Barbara has made the KMEX program and other Teatro Campesino audiovisual
media available online. Decisión Campesina, KMEX-34 (broadcast Sept. 6, 1975), Disk V1149, Video Collection
1, Series V, El Teatro Campesino Archives, California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) 5, Department of

174

Harkening to the special news programs Salazar envisioned for the station years earlier,
Decisión Campesina con César Chávez featured an hour-long discussion with UFW President
Chávez moderated by hosts Daniel Villanueva and Alberto Aguilar. The UFW leader spoke at
length about the results of the union’s recent five-year strike against California grape-growers
and the need for Spanish-speaking farmworkers to vote in favor of unionizing with the UFW in
elections the union was promoting across the state’s different agricultural areas that September.
Changes in California labor law enacted in June 1975 as a result of UFW organizing obligated
farm growers to allow workers to unionize under a union of their choice through elections
supervised by the state’s new Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Farm growers responded to
calls for unionization elections by working with the Teamsters Union to prevent the Mexican
American-led UFW from gaining more power to bargain for better wages and work conditions.
Despite the law, growers prevented UFW representatives from accessing farmworkers to explain
the benefits of unionizing and joining the UFW rather than the rival Teamsters.
114

In light of the physical barriers imposed by growers, KMEX programs like Decisión
Campesina represented an opportunity for Chicano community organizations like the UFW to
use Spanish-language TV to organize Latinos into greater collective action – in this case by
broadcasting the UFW’s appeals to farmworker viewer it did not have access to.
115
KMEX

Special Collections, University Library, University of California, Santa Barbara
(https://archive.org/details/cusb_000181).
114
Farmworker unionization elections occurred throughout the state that fall as the result of the June 1975 passage
of the UFW-supported California Agricultural Labor Relations Act which created the Agricultural Labor Relations
Board (ALRB) that oversaw the supervision of the farmworker votes. Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval, The
Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1998), and
Matt García, From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 147-154. See also Harry Bernstein, “Chávez Threatens Sit-In if
Denied Access to Workers,” L.A. Times (Aug. 18, 1975), B-3; Frank del Olmo, “Vigilantes Bar 9 UFWA Organizers
from Ranch,” L.A. Times (Sept 2, 1975), B-3; “Se inician las elecciones para sindicalización de los campos,” La
Opinión (Sept. 6, 1975), 9.
115
Decisión Campesina, KMEX-34 (broadcast Sept. 6, 1975), Disk V1149, Video Collection 1, Series V, El Teatro
Campesino Archives, CEMA 5, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of California,
Santa Barbara (https://archive.org/details/cusb_000181).

175

producers helped Chávez bolster his message to viewers unaware of the union’s efforts by
incorporating the UFW’s Teatro Campesino (Farmworker Theater) musicians and stage actors
into the program. KMEX taped the Teatro Campesino performers singing union-inspired
corridos and delivering short plays which explained to farmworker viewers what was at stake in
the UFW’s campaign to unionize field workers.
116

Footage from Decisión Campesina reveals much about the program’s participants as well
as the technical quality of KMEX news/public affairs productions. The Spanish spoken by U.S.-
born Mexican Americans Chávez and Villanueva (as well as the U.S.-raised Aguilar) contrasted
significantly with the more flowing diction and cadence of the Latin American-born Spanish
speakers who dominated the channel’s Telesistema programming. Though lacking the refined
elocution of Latin American TV presenters, Chávez, Villanueva, and undoubtedly many guests
and hosts on KMEX before them such as U.S.-born Eduardo Quevedo, signal how U.S. Spanish-
language TV had an identity of its own as a combination of U.S. and Mexican/Latin American
cultures and experiences.
117

From a technical standpoint, specials like Decisión Campesina reveal how varying the
production values of KMEX programming could be. Only two TV cameras seem to have been
used in the program, resulting in certain awkward camera angles. Additionally, rough editing
created jarring transitions between some of the Teatro Campesino’s performances and the
interview with Chávez, with some of the performers literally running away from the camera in
vain attempts to exit the screen. However, a blue screen at the edge of the small set allowed for

116
Decisión Campesina, KMEX-34 (broadcast Sept. 6, 1975), Disk V1149, Video Collection 1, Series V, El Teatro
Campesino Archives, CEMA 5, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of California,
Santa Barbara (https://archive.org/details/cusb_000181).
117
Decisión Campesina, KMEX-34 (broadcast Sept. 6, 1975), Disk V1149, Video Collection 1, Series V, El Teatro
Campesino Archives, CEMA 5, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of California,
Santa Barbara (https://archive.org/details/cusb_000181).

176

KMEX to project pictures of UFW marches behind the men to depict more of the union’s
organizing efforts.
Technical limitations aside, Decisión Campesina and similar KMEX programming
represent the cultural and political opportunities of ethnic-oriented U.S. Spanish-language TV.
The special was broadcast nationally across SIN stations, including Fresno KFTV-21 located in
the geographic heart of the UFW’s unionization efforts. Given how corporate agricultural
interests restricted UFW organizers’ physical access to prospective supporters across different
work sites, the possibility of reaching rural farmworkers via TVs placed in public venues like
bars or restaurants or in farmworker homes/camps tuned into KMEX or KFTV offered the union
a critical entryway into the minds of farmworkers who consumed U.S. Spanish-language TV.
With an estimated 10-15 percent of migrant farmworkers unable to read, the use of UFW
imagery and Teatro Campesino’s plays on Decisión Campesina were meant to help viewers
recognize the union’s eagle symbol when casting their ballots (the UFW convinced the
Agricultural Labor Relations Board to allow union symbols on ballots).
118

Although the exact viewer impact of Decisión Campesina is difficult to assess, its
broadcasting on Spanish-language TV stations across California may have played a role in
helping the UFW win many of its elections in the weeks after the show’s September 6 airdate.
By late October 1975 the UFW won 136 (56 percent) of elections statewide, strengthening its
position in the San Joaquin Valley labor landscape and making new inroads into places like San
Diego County. Interestingly, areas where there were no SIN affiliates airing KMEX’s public
affairs programming – such as the Salinas Valley and the Modesto area – represented the main

118
Harry Bernstein, “Farm Unions Win Access to Grower’s Land,” L.A. Times (Aug. 30, 1975), B-1.

177

areas where the UFW lost elections to the Teamsters.
119
Such observations should be tempered
with the many other factors influencing the unionizing votes, including Decisión Campesina’s
reduced audience during a Saturday afternoon graveyard time slot rather than during a weeknight
hour on primetime. However, the increased positive media coverage KMEX provided the UFW
via its public affairs coverage and its rebroadcasting through its sister stations demonstrates the
potential for Spanish-language TV to promote U.S. Latino identity in a televised public sphere.
English-language mass media covered the UFW and other Chicano organizing, but the ethnic-
oriented framing of Spanish-language TV more directly formed notions of cultural identity by
promoting ethnic political solidarity.

Conclusion
The development of news/public affairs programming on KMEX-34 in the 1960s and
1970s is significant for its implications in the ethnic identity-building project of U.S. Spanish-
language television. Although a tradition of Spanish-language TV newscasting existed in
Mexico, KMEX propelled the development of TV news broadcasting in Spanish following U.S.
television broadcasting practices rather than the often-compromised model of TV news on
commercial Mexican television. KMEX included news and public affairs programming in its
schedule to meet various FCC public interest obligations and airtime thresholds, but the
expansion of informative programming at the station brought the station significant credibility.

119
The Modesto-based E & J Gallo Winery was one of the UFW’s most ardent opponents. Larry Stammer, “UFWA
Wins One Vote, Defeat at Gallo Indicated,” L.A. Times (Sept. 11, 1975), 3; Harry Bernstein, “UFW Leads in Farm
Balloting and Opinion Poll,” L.A. Times (Oct. 30, 1975), D-1. Sadly, the 1975 California Agricultural Labor
Relations Act which enabled the UFW to launch its campaign to organize farmworkers that fall is currently under
review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Legal observers expect the conservative-leaning court to curtail many of that
law’s organizing rights, David G. Savage, “U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to California law that allows
union organizers on farms,” L.A. Times (March 18, 2021), (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-03-
18/supreme-court-to-hear-challenge-to-california-law-that-allows-union-organizers-on-farms).

178

Interviewing establishment political figures like Governors Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald
Reagan as well as numerous candidates for public office affirmed the station’s place in the
metropolitan Los Angeles media landscape. The hiring of Mexican American journalists Rubén
Salazar and Pete Moraga as KMEX news directors allowed the station to increase Latinos’ public
sphere via the television medium.
In covering topics as varied as police brutality, Chicano activist organizations, the 1964
Republican presidential primary, and the UFW’s Teatro Campesino among others through the
Spanish language KMEX-34 promoted U.S. Latino identity by emphasizing ethnic solidarity and
participation in American civic and political institutions. The rebroadcasting of KMEX’s
informational programming content across SIN stations throughout California and across the
U.S. signaled the growing audience for KMEX identity-building discourses and the increasing
presence of Spanish-language TV in the cultural life of Mexican Americans and other Latinos.
It is difficult to satisfactorily quantify the extent to which KMEX became “the most
potent educational weapon” in Spanish-speaking Los Angeles, but the expansion of the station’s
ethnic-oriented informational programming must be considered in the context of the mass-
mediated presentation of its news/public affairs broadcasts.
120
The routine scheduling of news
programming dedicated to special topics – such as the station’s exclusive Spanish-language
interview with presidential candidate Rockefeller or the UFW’s promotion of farmworkers
unionization – during graveyard time slots late after primetime or on weekend afternoons
undermined the station’s commitment to instigating “the Latins’ self-improvement.” Primetime
was for telenovelas and advertising revenue, not social causes. KMEX’s advocacy journalism
promoted ethnic identity but did so in a mass-mediated manner shaped by the station’s profit-

120
Office communication from Salazar to KMEX staff, undated, Folder 61, Briefcase Box 3, Rubén Salazar Papers
(USC Special Collections).

179

seeking considerations as well as a desire to not alienate the U.S. political establishment, a social
class that enjoyed the warm personal support of the station’s owners.
The ratings success of Noticiero 34 throughout the 1970s contributed to the larger U.S.
Spanish-language TV project as KMEX’s profits funded the Spanish International Network’s
expansion throughout California and into TV markets serving other Latinos such as Puerto
Ricans and Cubans. Spanish TV in the U.S. was becoming national in scope and, as Cristina
Mora has written, increasingly panethnic in its presentation. As SIN expanded so too did the
Latino population of greater Los Angeles and with it the possibilities for additional offerings of
Spanish-language television.

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Chapter 4: “The market is more than ripe for a second station”: KVEA-52
and the Expansion of the Southern California Latino Public Sphere

“Hispanics are the ultimate winners because they get a better product with better choices.”
1

– KVEA General Manager and Vice-President Frank Cruz, 1988.

At the onset of the 1980s SIN’s dominance of Spanish-language TV in the U.S. seemed
unquestioned. KMEX-34’s de facto monopoly as Southern California’s only fulltime Spanish-
format TV station gave it increasing profitability through its large audience base – which in 1980
numbered an estimated 2.75 million Latinas and Latinos in the five-county Los Angeles TV
market – and enabled SIN’s expansion across the United States.
2
At the start of the decade
economic and political turmoil in Mexico and Central America dramatically increased Latin
American immigration to the U.S., initiating a profound and continuous demographic and social
transformation of Southern California and across the nation.
In Los Angeles County alone, the Latino population grew by 62 percent by the 1990
census while neighboring Orange County’s over half-million Latino residents made the
jurisdiction the sixth-largest concentration of Latinos nationwide. Similar demographic trends in
San Bernardino, Riverside, and Ventura counties propelled the growth of the Los Angeles media
market’s Latino population to a total of more than 4.7 million by 1990.
3
The demographic

1
Frank Cruz, quoted in Eliot Tiegel, “Hispanic culture thrives like mesquite in Western U.S.,” Television/Radio
Age, vol. 35, no. 26 (July 25, 1988), A26, American Radio History.
2
“Hispanic Population Growth and Dispersion Across U.S. Counties, 1980-2014,” Pew Research Center (Sept. 6,
2016), (https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/hispanic-population-by-county/). As of the 1980 U.S.
Census the number of Latinos in the L.A. TV market were: Los Angeles (2,066,098), Orange (286,544), San
Bernardino (165,864), Riverside (124,427), and Ventura counties (113,014).
3
“Population Trends” graph in “Los Angeles County: The Census Story,” L.A. Times (May 6, 1991), B-1; “Hispanic
Population Growth and Dispersion Across U.S. Counties, 1980-2014,” Pew Research Center (Sept. 6, 2016),
(https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/hispanic-population-by-county/). According the 1990 Census
and the Pew Research Center the number of Latinos in the L.A. TV market were: Los Angeles (3,351,242), Orange
(564,828), San Bernardino (378,582), Riverside (307,514), and Ventura counties (176,952).

181

expansion of the Southern California Latino community during the 1980s created fertile ground
for the introduction of a new ethnic-oriented Spanish-language TV station (Figure 4.1).
4

KVEA Channel 52’s November 1985 premiere is historically significant in part because
it made metropolitan Los Angeles the first major U.S. region with two fulltime Spanish TV
stations but more importantly for how it represents the expansion of U.S. Spanish-language TV’s
ethnic identity-building project as the Latino population began growing exponentially. KVEA-52
became a site for racial identity formation as the station appealed to audiences by competing
with KMEX-34 in delivering newscasts which in so doing increased coverage of Latino issues in
the L.A. area. In addition to airing its own newscasts, KVEA expanded the Latino public sphere
by developing Spanish-language talk shows like Cara a Cara (“Face to Face”) which offered
viewers a chance to explore specific topics related to Latino life in the United States. Through

4
Ali Modarres, The Racial and Ethnic Structure of Los Angeles County: A Geographic Guide (Los Angeles:
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs, California State University, Los Angeles, 1994), 2.

182

the unifying power of Latino viewers’ shared Spanish language heritage, KVEA created a new
mass-mediated public space for probing the meaning of U.S. Latino identity.
Southern California Latinos, the majority of whom were ethnic Mexican but including a
rapidly increasing Central American constituency, responded well to KVEA’s program offerings,
helping the station quickly gain ground against KMEX-34 from viewers dissatisfied with its
content. However, nearly half of KVEA’s audience drew away by the end of the 1980s as the
station was absorbed into the new Telemundo Network, a project dominated by East Coast White
American investors and Cuban American middle management. Ratings dropped as the network’s
programming and management/personnel hiring choices diminished KVEA’s original tailored
focus on its majority Mexican audience. Ethnic Mexicans and Central Americans’ poor reaction
to KVEA Telemundo’s new Cuban-centered programming shows the limits of Spanish-language
TV’s identity-building influence and reminds us of John Fiske’s assertion that TV by itself “does
not ‘cause’ identifiable effects in individuals” and that viewers often contest and negotiate what
they see on television.
5
In fact, viewer rejection of KVEA’s deemphasizing of the Southern
California Latino experience culminated in demonstrations and a brief takeover of the Glendale-
based station. U.S. Spanish-language TV’s success in different markets thus required industry
management and executives to meet viewers’ expectations rather than to simply impose
programming and identity-building rhetoric from above.
As the primary founding station of the Telemundo Network, the nation’s second Spanish-
language television network, KVEA-52 advanced notions of a U.S.-based Latino ethnic and
cultural identity through the unifying power of the Spanish language. KVEA’s exploration of
Latino issues increasingly highlighted the concerns of specific Latino nationalities but used a

5
Fiske quoted in Henry Jenkins, “Why Fiske Still Matters,” in Television Culture, xviii.

183

common heritage in the Spanish language to promote a shared ethnic solidarity which
transcended nationality. This identity-building project also furthered the notion of Spanish being
a living and public language in U.S. Latino life. But as with the case of cross-town rival KMEX-
34, the new KVEA-52 mediated its ethnic advocacy and identity-building with advertiser and
investor-oriented considerations that did not always go hand-in-hand with the social and political
advancement of Latinos in greater Los Angeles – a grievance some viewers made loudly known.
In a public sphere it helped expand, KVEA presented viewers a mass-mediated U.S. Latino
identity which stressed their shared stake in the cultural and political life of Southern California
and the larger United States.

The Expanding Latino TV Market in 1980s Southern California
KVEA-52 debuted at a time when the larger U.S. media landscape increasingly lumped
together ethnic Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and people of other Latin American
nationalities into a more cohesive singular entity alternatively referred to as Latinos in California
but more often as “Hispanics” in the rest of the country. Sociologist Cristina Mora reminds us
that Spanish- and English-language media’s usage of Hispanic/Latino identifiers was undertaken
in great part to convince advertising agencies and their corporate clients that a sizable ethnic
customer base existed in the U.S. which could best be reached via commercials and advertising
appeals in Spanish. Typically employing rhetoric which emphasized that Hispanics/Latinos were
an expanding and untapped market, corporations like Telemundo and SIN/Univision effectively
created an imagined community of an economically powerful panethnic constituency which
united Mexicans, Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and the diaspora of the broader
Spanish-speaking world. The various corporate entities and advertisers united the different

184

groups under their shared Spanish-language heritage, affirming the language as an ethnic
identifier and a tool with which to best reach Hispanics/Latinos. As Mora notes advertising
agencies and Spanish-language TV worked alongside U.S. government and political activist
efforts to compartmentalize Latinos into a single imagined ethnic constituency like how African
Americans were seen by U.S. politicians and marketers. Although the panethnic Latino identity-
building rhetoric was present at KMEX-34 in the 1960s and 1970s – often framing viewers as
“Latins” – the panethnic discourses of the 1980s were more consistent and calculated to
maximize appeals to a diversifying constituency that increasingly represented a greater
proportion of the U.S. population.
6
In the mass-mediated world of U.S. Spanish-language TV,
creating Latino identity was as much about raising ethnic consciousness as it was about
facilitating financial profits.
Indeed, as one Carter administration official proclaimed in U.S. News & World Report,
“The ‘80s will be the decade for Hispanics.”
7
Although social commentators decried the concept
of the “decade of the Hispanic” as “contrived and artificial,” the message behind the framing
clearly guided the way KVEA appealed to viewers and advertisers.
8
In a full-page spread in
Billboard magazine meant to attract national advertisers, Canal 52 announced that upon its debut
it would “reach 3.4 million Hispanics,” notable because the L.A. area airwaves represented “20
percent of the National Hispanic population.”
9

6
Mora, Making Hispanics, 126-129.
7
Maria Elena Torano, a Cuban American appointee in the Carter administration, told U.S. News & World Report,
“The blacks had the decade of the ‘60s,” adding “women had the ‘70s. The ‘80s will be the decade for Hispanics.”
See Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United States, 115-119. Journalist Frank del Olmo noted that
Torano’s proclamation was further encouraged by Coors Brewing Company which used the “decade of the
Hispanic” phrase in its marketing campaigns – see “Latino ‘Decade’ Moves Into '90s,” L.A. Times: Nuestro Tiempo
(Dec. 14, 1989), 1.
8
Frank del Olmo, “Latino ‘Decade’ Moves Into '90s,” L.A. Times: Nuestro Tiempo (Dec. 14, 1989), 1.
9
KVEA Canal 52 advertisement, Billboard vol. 97, no. 5 (Dec.14, 1985), M-15, accessed via American Radio
History (americnaradiohistory.com).

185

Returning to the demographic phenomena occurring in the L.A. metro area, one can see
why the “decade of the Hispanic” would be as appealing as it was for the White American
financiers who brought KVEA-52 on the air. The growth of the Southern California Latino
community resulted in it expanding to 31 percent of the total population of the five-county Los
Angeles area media market according to the Arbitron ratings service.
10
In Los Angeles County
alone, the highest concentration of Latinos in the nation, the Latino community grew 62 percent
during the “decade of the Hispanic.”
11
Immigration from Central America contributed
significantly to the overall Latino community’s prolific growth, with the Guatemalan and
Salvadoran populations representing a fivefold increase in 1990 from their numbers a decade
earlier. Although Mexicans still overwhelmingly dominated metro L.A.’s Latino population,
comprising nearly 81 percent, the region also had the highest concentration of Central Americans
in the U.S. (see Figure 4.2)
12

10
“Major Hispanic Groups in the Top-10 ADI’s,” Broadcasting, vol. 119, no. 24 (Dec. 10, 1990), 72.
11
“Population Trends” graph in “Los Angeles County: The Census Story,” L.A. Times (May 6, 1991), B-1.
12
David E. Lopez, Eric Popkin, and Edward Telles, “Central Americans: At the Bottom, Struggling to Get Ahead,”
Ethnic Los Angeles, eds. Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996),
280-282; “Major Hispanic Groups in the Top-10 ADI’s,” Broadcasting, vol. 119, no. 24 (Dec. 10, 1990), 72.

186

Figure 4.2 – Composition of Latino Population of Los Angeles County, 1990
13

Mexican 2,518,210 81%
Puerto Rican 41,006 1.3%
Cuban 47,603 1.5%
Guatemalan 125,091 4%
Honduran 22,959 0.7%
Nicaraguan 33,846 1.1%
Salvadoran 253,086 8.1%
All Others from Latin
America
70,040 2.3%
TOTAL: 3,111,841

The increased presence of Central American immigrants in greater Los Angeles began
leaving marks on KVEA and other area Spanish-language media outlets. For example, KVEA-
52’s multi-day coverage of devastating earthquakes in San Salvador in October 1986
underscored the ways in which KVEA pushed Spanish-language TV in Southern California to go
beyond the ethnic Mexican community in covering the concerns of the larger imagined Latino
population. KVEA’s earthquake coverage was crucial for Salvadoran American televidentes,
particularly its airing of “video telegrams” physically sent from sansalvadoreños for broadcast
over Canal 52 to let their family in the U.S. know that they were safe.
14
The L.A. Times noted,
“Less than a generation ago, the Salvadoran tragedy might not have raised much interest among
Southern California broadcasters. But a burgeoning Hispanic population, coupled with an

13
Modarres, “Table 6.1: Racial and Ethnic Groups in Los Angeles County,” The Racial and Ethnic Structure of Los
Angeles County, 45.
14
Dennis McDougal and Victor Valle, “Salvadoran Quake-A Coming of Age for Local Media,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18,
1986), D-1.

187

emphasis on local – as opposed to network – news gathering, has made natural disasters south of
the border a priority, even among English-language stations.”
15
A September 1989 Noticiero 52
newscast even featured a live phone interview with former Salvadoran president José Napoleón
Duarte’s personal doctor when news arrived that the controversial leader was dying.
16
The
greater representation of Central Americans on KVEA corresponded with Spanish-language
TV’s expanding U.S. Latino identity-building project.
A marketing research study commissioned by KMEX for potential advertisers in 1984
offers an added layer to the demographic and TV viewing habits of the Southern California
Latino community the two stations appealed to.
17
According to the study, 86 percent of the adult
Hispanic population in Los Angeles ages 21-54 spoke Spanish. Furthermore, 86 percent of the
respondents claimed to be either Mexican-born or of Mexican ancestry, followed by Salvadorans
(5 percent), Cubans (2 percent), Guatemalans (2 percent) and other Latin American groups. The
study’s respondents in particular were overwhelmingly born outside of the U.S. (82 percent),
primarily in Mexico (79 percent).
18

Unsurprisingly given these statistics, is the fact that Spanish-language TV was the clear
choice for Latina respondents’ TV viewing habits. Sixty-eight percent of female respondents
watched Spanish-language TV (KMEX) on a regular basis alongside English-language TV

15
McDougal and Valle, “Salvadoran Quake-A Coming of Age for Local Media,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18, 1986), D-1.
16
Dr. Jose Luis Saca interviewed by Fernando Escandón, Noticiero 52, KVEA Channel 52 (Sept. 21, 1989),
Cassette 25353, News and Public Affairs Collection (NAPA), Film and Television Archive (FTVA), University of
California, Los Angeles (hereafter NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA).
17
The study conducted 500 interviews (primarily through telephone) of Latina female heads-of-household ages 21-
54 with a television set in their home. KMEX’s researchers chose female heads-of-household in particular because
of “extensive research showing that Hispanic females are significantly better informed about the media and
consumer habits of the other members of the households.” The study methodology also demonstrates that 56 percent
of respondents lived in Central/East L.A., with the remainder living in the San Fernando (6 percent) or San Gabriel
(16 percent) Valleys, the southern (4 percent) and southeastern (8 percent) parts of L.A. County and Orange County
(10 percent) as well. Market Development Inc., Spanish Los Angeles: A Los Angeles Household Media and Product
Usage Study, produced for KMEX-TV 34, Spanish International Communications Corporation (September 1984), 1,
29.
18
Ibid., Spanish Los Angeles, 5.

188

stations. The respondents’ husbands, in general, watched KMEX much less regularly, spending a
greater percentage of their TV-viewing time on English-language channels. According to
programming preferences data one of the biggest draws for Latina viewers were KMEX’s
nightly Mexican telenovela serials.
19
The men, reportedly more interested in movies and sports,
preferred the programming offered by English-language stations.
20
Significantly, both sexes
reported an appreciation for Spanish-language news on TV, an indication that, FCC obligations
aside, a significant audience existed for ethnic-oriented news programming.
21

In addition to gathering information on adults’ socioeconomic characteristics, KMEX’s
market research also provided the language and media use habits of Latino children (ages 5-17)
in mid-1980s metropolitan Los Angeles. According to the study, 71 percent of the children spoke
varying levels of Spanish (ranging from “some Spanish” to “only Spanish”), and 52 percent of
them were bilingual. The youth spent an average of 33 hours per week consuming TV and radio
media, with two-thirds of those hours devoted to the small screen. Interestingly, very little of
those 33 hours were spent on Spanish-language television or radio.
22

Across the board – regardless of whether the survey respondents’ children were English-
dominant, Spanish-dominant, or bilingual, and regardless of where they were born – young
Latinos in greater Los Angeles were simply not consuming Spanish-language broadcast media.
L.A. area Latino children born outside of the U.S. tuned into English-language TV channels 67
percent of the time. Even Spanish-dominant children watched U.S. TV channels 64 percent of
the time. Furthermore – completely across the survey’s language, income, and birthplace

19
Ibid., Spanish Los Angeles, 14-15, 17.
20
Ibid., Spanish Los Angeles, 18.
21
Spanish Los Angeles, 14-15, 17-18.
22
Ibid., Spanish Los Angeles, 4, 10.

189

categories – 69 percent of all the children watched English-language television all the time.
23

These language and media use statistics raise numerous questions about the dominant English-
language mass media and popular culture’s role in shaping the consumption habits and cultural
identity formation of among Latino youth, including the long-term viability of Spanish-language
TV in the U.S.
While the potential lack of interest of Latino youth in Spanish-language broadcast media
was concerning for the long-term, marketing research taken by KVEA, KMEX, and other
agencies demonstrated there was demand for more – not less – Spanish-language television in
metro L.A. and across the United States. The Latino community’s economic power created
fertile ground for the expansion of Spanish media and its cultural and ethnic identity-building
project. “Financially,” KVEA general manager Paul Niedermeyer announced just before the
station’s launch “the market is more than ripe for a second station.”
24

Developing KVEA-52: Metropolitan Los Angeles’s Second Spanish TV Station
The Mexican programming and financial roots of KCOR/KWEX-41 San Antonio and
KMEX-34 Los Angeles left a significant cultural Mexican imprint in early Spanish-language
television in the U.S., but the active steps taken by White American financiers in founding
KVEA-52 set the station’s founding on a different trajectory. In contrast to Emilio Azcárraga
Vidaurreta’s role leading the transnational KMEX/SIN investment as a loose extension of the
state capitalist-formed Mexican TV network Telesistema, KVEA-52 and the then-unnamed TV
network project it was to build were the result of Wall Street venture capitalists’ interest in

23
Ibid., Spanish Los Angeles, 13, 16. Children preferred cartoons on KCOP Channel 13 (58 percent) or KTLA
Channel 5 (37 percent) rather than the content on KMEX (11 percent) or the part-time Spanish-language station
KSCI Channel 18 (3 percent).
24
Lee Margulies, “Channel 52 Getting a Spanish Accent,” L.A. Times (Nov. 22, 1985), H-28.

190

profiting from Latinos during the “decade of the Hispanic.” Although both KMEX/SIN and
KVEA/Telemundo sought to attract Latinos through Spanish-language programming, the two
projects diverged in that none of the main actors behind KVEA/Telemundo’s initial founding
were Latinos but rather White American investors in pursuit of an audience they themselves
were not a part of. Despite the medium’s ethnic orientation, KVEA’s founding is emblematic of
the growing trend in the 1980s of non-Spanish-speaking White American investors in
dominating the U.S. Spanish-language TV industry.
Indeed, prior to its Spanish-language formatting as KVEA, Channel 52 was the site of
multiple failed attempts by White American investors unaligned with the big three networks at
claiming part of the greater Los Angeles TV market. Channel 52 first went on the airwaves in
1966 as independent station KMTW, owned by a radio broadcasting group seeking to enter the
Los Angeles TV market through an FCC license assigned to the city of Corona in Riverside
County. Kaiser Broadcasting, a TV corporation industrialist Henry J. Kaiser was developing,
purchased the station’s license in 1968, changing its call sign to KBSC (Kaiser Broadcasting
Southern California) and built a studio in Glendale.
25
Unsuccessful in developing KBSC as the
basis of a new TV network, Kaiser left the broadcasting business in 1976, selling the station to
Oak Broadcasting. In the crowded English-language L.A. TV market, which already included
other independent stations like KTLA-5, there was little room for Channel 52 to grow. With
investment from Chartwell Communications, a media group led by future Univision owner

25
Although licensed to a community nearly 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, Channel 52’s Mount Wilson
Broadcast Group partners hoped to penetrate the L.A. TV market from their transmitter antenna on the eponymous
Mount Wilson. Kaiser Broadcasting hoped to use what was the Los Angeles metro area’s third UHF station to boost
its prospects as an alternative to the big three ABC, CBS, and NBC networks. Kaiser Broadcast ing’s ownership of
KBSC-52 (still licensed in Corona) lasted until 1976 when Kaiser exited the TV industry, selling the Corona station
to TV manufacturer Oak Broadcasting.

191

Jerrold Perenchio, Oak Broadcasting transitioned KBSC-52’s format to an encrypted
subscription TV format airing sporting events and pay-per-view movies as “ONTV.”
26

Besides ONTV’s subscription programming, Channel 52 began airing a few hours of
Spanish-language programming during its daytime schedule.
27
By September 1980 Spanish-
language programs ran on KBSC-52 daily from 8:30am until 7pm when the pay-per-view
schedule began. KBSC’s scheduling of Spanish-language programs outside of the station’s
subscription hours was done solely to bolster its daytime schedule. Indeed, when the FCC
deregulated subscription TV in 1982, Perenchio and his associates expanded the ONTV
subscription service to 24 hours a day by eliminating KBSC’s Spanish-language programming.
28

Ultimately, Channel 52 struggled under all of the regimes which managed it before its
1985 switch to a Spanish-language format. In addition to the advertising challenges KBSC’s
UHF channel assignation entailed, the expansion of cable TV weakened ONTV’s single station-
based subscription business model as consumers began preferring other TV options.
29

Channel 52 became a prime target for a group of New York-based White American
investors interested in buying a licensed TV station from which to exploit the L.A. market. Oak
Industries, KBSC’s owners, reported nine consecutive quarters of business losses by the time
Reliance Capital Group – an insurance and investment group led by investors Joseph Wallach,

26
Lee Margulies, “Just the Ticket for Pay TV,” L.A. Times (March 29, 1977), E-1, E-7; David Crook and Lee
Margulies, “ON TV Plans 24-Hour-a-Day Programming,” L.A. Times (Aug. 27, 1982), G-2.
27
Puerto Rican-produced telenovelas like La Sombra de Belinda, dubbed U.S. movies, and daily station raffles
defined Channel 52’s early Spanish-language fare. “Se Habla Español in Television,” L.A. Times (Dec. 14, 1980), S-
4.
28
Prior to the mid-1980s, cable television infrastructure was not readily available in most of Southern California.
Prior to the FCC’s Reagan-era deregulation of subscription TV, services like ONTV which used terrestrial broadcast
television channels (rather than cable infrastructure like HBO and Showtime) were obligated to broadcast 28 hours
of free, unencrypted signals from their station, allowing anyone within range of the station to watch it. Spanish-
language programming on KBSC-52 ended in October 1982. David Crook and Lee Margulies, “ON TV Plans 24 -
Hour-a-Day Programming,” L.A. Times (Aug. 27, 1982), G-2.
29
Although by law all new TV sets manufactured in the U.S. had to have UHF channel reception beginning in 1965,
many advertisers still stayed away from UHF-band stations due to many viewers still not having televisions with
UHF reception.

192

Saul “the terror of Wall Street” Steinberg, and Henry Silverman – purchased Channel 52 for $30
million in cash on February 6, 1985 pending the FCC’s approval. The Reliance investors formed
Estrella Communications as the holding company which would directly own the station.
30

Joe Wallach, a former executive with Brazil’s Globo TV, led the Reliance-Estrella
purchase of Channel 52 because he saw it as the fortuitous first step in developing a new
Spanish-language network in the U.S. The appearance of a new network in Wallach’s view was
inevitable and he wanted to be at the forefront of its creation. As with SIN and its KMEX base in
L.A., Wallach’s prospective new network would have to be built in the important Southern
California market.
31
Wallach’s motivation was shaped by his twenty-years at Brazil’s Globo
Television Network beginning in 1965 when he arrived as a representative on behalf of Globo’s
U.S. investors. Under Wallach’s tenure, including as executive director from 1970-1985, Globo
TV became the fourth-largest television network in the world.
Reliance Group’s Steinberg and Silverman held high expectations that Wallach would
deliver a similarly prolific performance with Channel 52 and their larger Spanish-language TV
network project. Wallach said, “This is the biggest Spanish market by far in the U.S.,” adding

30
Frederick M. Muir, “Oak Plans to Sell KBSC to Investors for $30 Million,” L.A. Times (February 7, 1985), F-2;
“Reliance buys WNJU-TV for $70 million,” Broadcasting (Nov, 3, 1986), 40. Barron’s finance journal dubbed Saul
Steinberg “the boy wonder financier” for his cunning business tactics running a computer leasing company (Leasco)
which quickly grew in strength. At age 29, Steinberg earned the reputation of a corporate raider when Leasco bought
Reliance Insurance (a 150-year-old firm 10 times Leasco’s size); he gained further notoriety in 1984 when he
threatened a hostile takeover of the then-struggling Walt Disney Company after buying enough Disney shares and
selling them back at higher prices in the practice of “greenmailing.” Steinberg’s Disney escapade netted him $60
million in profits. Stephen Miller, “Pioneering Corporate Raider Helped Originate Greenmail” Wall Street Journal
(Dec. 11, 2012). In addition to calling him the “terror of Wall Street,” KVEA-52 co-founder Paul Niedermeyer
characterized Steinberg as “a pompous SOB” whose “empire eventually fell in spectacular fashion” in “Auto -
Biography: 1986 Mercedes 300E and The Birth Of Telemundo – Dreams Fulfilled, Dreams Dashed,” Curbside
Classic (June 5, 2013), (http://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/auto-biography-1986-mercedes-300e-and-
the-birth-of-telemundo-dreams-fulfilled-dreams-dashed/).
31
According to Niedermeyer, the former Globo TV executive saw an opportunity to enter the Spanish -language TV
market by buying part-time Spanish-language KSCI Channel 18 in Long Beach, but its owner, Maharishi Maresh
Yogi, wanted twice the station’s market value when approached about selling it. Maharishi ultimately sold his
station for $40 million in 1986 and broadcast in up to 14 different languages for the next 30 years. Niedermeyer,
“1986 Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo.”

193

that he was confident Channel 52’s full-time Spanish format would be supported in Los Angeles
with 37 percent of its population being “Hispanic.”
32
Silverman supported Wallach because the
capital involved in bringing Spanish-language KVEA-52 on the air was cheap compared to the
project’s eventual profits. “I figured that if the second-rated Anglo station is worth more than
$500 million, and there as many, if not more, Hispanics in L.A. than Anglos, then I could have
the number two or maybe the number one Spanish station someday.”
33
In contrast to KMEX’s
numerous direct appeals to ethnic Mexican viewers (signaled overtly in the station’s call sign),
KVEA in the so-called “decade of the Hispanic” targeted a larger U.S. Latino audience.

KVEA’s Premiere and First Days
The FCC approved the Reliance-Estrella purchase of Channel 52 in September 1985,
leading to a dash to transition the channel to an all-Spanish-language format. Wallach spent
$500,000 in advertising the station in print and billboards in Los Angeles and Orange Counties
before its November 1985 premiere, including successfully applying to the FCC to change
KBSC’s call sign to KVEA (Que vea, or “to see” in Spanish). Billboard advertisements for
KVEA beamingly exclaimed “¡Qué bien se ve!”
34
In using such slogans for the station’s
marketing the KVEA investors clearly appealed to a broader Latino public.

32
Joe Wallach represented Time-Life’s investors during his initial arrival at Globo TV in 1966, but ended up staying
in Brazil until 1984, even naturalizing himself as a Brazilian citizen in 1971. Wallach lacked the capital to buy
KBSC outright. John Sinclair, Latin American Television: A Global View (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 67; “Se Habla,” Broadcasting (Nov. 11, 1985), 68; Angilee Shah, “Network-Builder Describes Role in
Brazil’s TV Globo,” UCLA Latin American Institute (May 15, 2007),
(http://www.international.ucla.edu/lai/article/69880#.W6vxWvlRfIV)
33
Silverman quoted in John F. Berry, “The New Order at Blair,” Channels, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 1987), 55, American
Radio History. Silverman’s $500 million figure referred to the 1985 sale of KTLA Channel 5 to Tribune Company.
34
Félix Gutiérrez, “Spanish Media in L.A. on Upswing,” L.A. Times (June 1, 1986), 3; “Call Letters,” Broadcasting
(Sept. 23, 1985), 68; “KVEA-52 El Canal de Los Angeles: Programación Inaugural el Domingo 24 de Noviembre”
advertisement, La Opinión (Nov. 24, 1985), Sect. 3 – Pg. 3.

194

Besides changing its call sign to a Spanish phrase, the White American KVEA investors
sought to raise the station’s credibility with Latinos, particularly media observers, by hiring
Frank Cruz, a Tucson-born Mexican American weekend news anchor with KNBC Channel 4, to
join the station as vice president of public affairs. Cruz was one of early KVEA’s most
prominent figures, appearing in almost every industry news story about the station after his
hiring shortly before KVEA’s debut.
35
Although the station reflected broader industry trends
emphasizing the existence of a larger panethnic Latino audience when it marketed itself, Cruz’s
visibility as a Mexican American executive at the station was a calculated part of KVEA’s White
American investors’ efforts to draw in ethnic Mexican viewers from the Mexican-dominant
Southern California Latino population.
KVEA Canal 52 premiered on Sunday, November 24, 1985, as Southern California’s
second full-time Spanish-language TV station, reaching viewers in Los Angeles, Orange,
Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties and parts of San Diego and Kern counties.
36

35
Cruz recently published a memoir of his early days in Tucson, Arizona’s westside and busy career spanning
teaching high school and college at California State University Long Beach, to anchoring the news at KNBC
Channel 4 in L.A., co-founding KVEA, and chairing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Later in life Cruz
served on the USC Board of Trustees, nearly 40 years after earning a master’s degree in history from SC. Frank
Cruz and Rita Joiner Soza, Straight Out of Barrio Hollywood: The Adventures of Telemundo Co-Founder Frank H.
Cruz, Chicano History Professor, TV Anchorman, Network Executive, and Public Broadcasting Leader (Denver,
CO: Outskirts Press, 2019), 69, 131, 135-136.
36
KVEA’s launch day schedule provides a glimpse into the type of programm ing which would define the channel’s
early history. Following the opening celebrations, the weekly-scheduled Raices (a show about Mexican culture)
aired for 90 minutes, followed by La Inimaginable Imaginación, a children’s show. At 5pm adults were treated to a
half-hour of Especial de Especiales special featuring “the best and most well-known Spanish-language singers” such
as José-José and Guillermo Dávila. El Show de Walter, a Puerto Rican-produced astrology program hosted by
Walter Mercado gave viewers guidance on “love, health, and finances” before El Escuadrón de la Muerte, a
Mexican action film. KVEA’s opening day also featured a special broadcast of regular weekday shows, such as
Venezuelan telenovela La Dueña. The night ended with Teatro Universal, a weekly program of televised plays from
Latin America, that evening featuring the play “Tiempo de Morir” co-written by Gabriel García Marquez and Carlos
Fuentes. “KVEA-52 El Canal de Los Angeles: Programacion Inaugural el Domingo 24 de Noviembre”
advertisement, La Opinión (Nov. 24, 1985), Sect. 3 – Pg. 3; “Canal 52 inició su programación de TV en español,”
La Opinión (Nov. 25, 1985), 11; “KVEA,” Television and Cable Factbook-Stations Volume, no. 56 (Washington,
D.C.: Television Digest Inc., 1988), A-121; Cruz, Straight out of Barrio Hollywood, 135-136.

195

At 1pm the station formally switched to its full-time Spanish format during a dedication
ceremony hosted by its news director Enrique Gratas, beginning with a blessing delivered by
Archbishop Roger Mahoney of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles who blessed the
channel as “El Canal de Los Angeles.” Flanked by L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, California
Governor George “Duke” Deukmejian gave the ceremony a civic touch by serving as the
station’s “padrino” (godfather) and cutting a ribbon marking KVEA-52’s grand opening. Gratas
then read a telegram sent by President Ronald Reagan which wished KVEA much success before
airing taped congratulations from Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid, thereby giving the
station an early transnational reputation. A televised flamenco mass which “mixed joy, colorful
dances, and flamenco music with our ecclesiastical liturgy” ended the inaugural program.
37

37
“KVEA-52 El Canal de Los Angeles: Programación Inaugural el Domingo 24 de Noviembre” advertisement, La
Opinión (Nov. 24, 1985), Sect. 3 – Pg. 3; “Canal 52 inició su programación de TV en español,” La Opinión (Nov.
25, 1985), 1, 11.

196

Figure 4.3 – KVEA-52 launch week programming schedule. This schedule accompanied
a special section of La Opinión. Nov. 25, 1985 issue, section 2, page 4.

Lacking the built-in access to a vast programming base KMEX-34 had with Mexican
network Televisa (Telesistema’s successor after 1973) served as a challenge as well as an
advantage for KVEA-52. Wallach secured broadcasting rights to numerous Spanish-dubbed U.S.
films and TV series while also importing telenovelas from Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, and other
South American sources to help the station appeal to a broad range of viewers wanting Spanish-
language programming different from KMEX’s Mexican fare.
38
KVEA competed with KMEX

38
“Se Habla,” Broadcasting (Nov. 11, 1985), 68

197

primetime telenovelas by offering “alternative, counter-programming” with Spanish dubs of
different U.S. films and TV series. “It's giving the viewer a choice,” Wallach said.
39

As part of its expansion of the variety of Spanish-language entertainment choices
available to the millions of hispanohablantes in the region, KVEA appealed to a demographic
KMEX’s schedule mostly ignored – Latino children and young adults.
40
KVEA aired Latin
American dubs of Japanese anime series Gladiadores del Espacio and Mazinger Z to provide
dedicated entertainment for youth coming home from school between 3:30pm and 4:30pm.
41

However, as early as February 1986 afternoon movies replaced afterschool cartoons on KVEA’s
schedule.

The anime cartoons apparently failed to win over young Latino viewers (despite
Mazinger Z later being a major hit in Mexico), raising questions about Latino youths’ potential
language loss, cultural assimilation, and the influence of mainstream U.S. mass popular culture
on their viewing tastes.
42
After its failure establishing a foothold with young Latino viewers, the
station’s scheduling and advertising publicity indicate KVEA’s owners focused mainly on
serving the viewing interests of adult Latinas and Latinos.
43

Finally, Canal 52 also included daily locally produced news programming as part of its
early schedule. Airing at 11pm after the evening’s retinue of telenovelas, VEA Noticias served as

39
Examples of KVEA-52’s dubbed U.S. programming include Dr. Zhivago and Medical Center. Félix Gutiérrez,
“Spanish Media in L.A. on Upswing,” L.A. Times (June 1, 1986), 3.
40
Lee Margulies, “Channel 52 Getting a Spanish Accent,” L.A. Times (Nov. 22, 1985), H-28.
41
Gladiadores del Espacio (better known as Galactic Gale Baxingar) and Mazinger Z were anime series about
robots which originally aired in Japan in the early 1980s and whose time slots on KVEA-52 represented their very
first Spanish-language runs anywhere. The two shows aired on weekdays over KVEA-52 beginning with the
station’s first week on the air (“Programación Semanal,” La Opinión, Nov. 24, 1985, Sect. 3 – Pg. 4), but were last
mentioned in La Opinión’s January 26, 1986 Teleguía section.
42
Mazinger Z, for example, was highly successful when it aired on Televisa’s Canal 5 beginning on March 31,
1986, but apparently did not draw in enough Spanish-speaking viewers in Southern California. Sergio Hidalgo, “Al
servicio de la comunidad geek: cómo Canal 5 marcó a toda una generación” Código Espagueti (May 10, 2017),
(https://codigoespagueti.com/noticias/cultura/canal-5-generacion-geek/); Armando Rodríguez, “’Mazinger Z’
cumple 45, ¡justo en tu infancia!” Televisa: Canal 5 (Dec. 4, 2017), (https://www.televisa.com/canal5/
noticias/1026943/mazinger-z-cumple-45-justo-tu-infancia). See Thomas Lamarre, Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of
Television, Animation, and Game Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
43
Market Development Inc., Spanish Los Angeles, 13-15.

198

KVEA’s first nightly local newscast, anchored by seasoned KMEX veteran Enrique Gratas, who
left a news director position at SIN’s owned-and-operated WXTV-41 station in New York to
help launch Canal 52. The Argentine-born newsman – promoted by KVEA’s owners as a
“globally-recognized commentator known for his professionalism in broadcast journalism” –
brought credibility to the young station’s news operation. Satellite feeds allowed Gratas to report
on national and international stories during the initially 15-minute-long VEA Noticias newscasts.
Also, VEA Noticias appealed to sports fans by hiring another experienced Spanish-language
broadcasting celebrity, Jaime Jarrín – the L.A. Dodgers’ Spanish-language announcer – as its
sports director, delivering a daily commentary piece on baseball, basketball, and other sporting
events for the newscast’s sports segment.
44

KVEA made notable inroads with the Southern California Latino community within a
relatively short time. By 1987, Canal 52 had grown to take as much as a 40 percent share of the
L.A. Spanish-language television market, although their rivals at Canal 34 disputed their gains
claiming they only picked up 28 percent of the market. Regardless of which figure was more
exact, both represented a noteworthy leap from the two percent share of the market KVEA held
when it first went on the air. “We’ve come a hell of a long way,” Frank Cruz affirmed, adding
KVEA-52 had “only begun to scratch the surface.”
45

A great deal of Canal 52’s success in building its viewer base came from the new choice
it offered in the Southern Californian TV market given KMEX-34’s near monopoly on Spanish-

44
“KVEA-52 El Canal de Los Angeles: Programación Inaugural el Domingo 24 de Noviembre” advertisement, La
Opinión (Nov. 24, 1985), Sect. 3 – Pg. 4-5. Jaime Jarrín, La voz de los Dodgers, had previously delivered sports
commentary on KBSC Channel 52’s Primera Edición newscast prior to the station’s reformatting into KVEA. Jarrín
remained with VEA Noticias until its September 1989 rebranding as Noticiero 52. “El Comentario Deportivo de
Jaime Jarrín,” VEA Noticias, KVEA Channel 52 (Sept. 1, 1989), Cassette 25055, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
45
Jaime Jarrín also collaborated with KVEA in producing a weekend half -hour show in Spanish on the week’s L.A.
Dodger games. “A 25-Year Commitment to Spanish-Language Programming,” The Hollywood Reporter, September
29, 1987, S-6, in Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian; Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the United
States, 124. Victor Valle, “KVEA Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (February 25, 1987), G-10.

199

language TV in the region. Other Spanish-language mass media outlets, such as La Opinión,
recognized KVEA’s contribution in ending “the stagnation of mediocrity” in metro L.A. Spanish
TV by introducing an element of competition.
46
By the end of 1986 KVEA generated about $9
million in gross revenue.
47

Despite KVEA probably capturing nearly a third of the L.A. area’s Spanish-speaking
viewers, KMEX asserted its overall viewership was unhurt by the new station. Canal 34 General
Manager Daniel Villanueva signaled he welcomed KVEA’s arrival. “It’s an absolute
confirmation of the viability of the market.”
48
SIN executives similarly dismissed KVEA and its
potential expanding of the national Spanish-language TV project as nothing but a “quick trade”
for Steinberg and Silverman.
49
Not everyone at KMEX/SIN was as dismissive about Canal 52.
Pete Moraga, back as KMEX’s news director in the mid-1980s, noted “there is no question that
when KVEA came in, part of the audience went there. So we cannot get complacent.”
Interestingly, while KVEA reduced KMEX’s share of the Latino audience, the new station’s
presence increased the overall number of people in Southern California watching Spanish-
language television. In their competition the two L.A.-area stations promoted the vitality of the
Spanish language as a public language of U.S. life and Spanish-format TV as a Latino public
sphere.
50

46
Hugo Quintana, “A cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA: Algunas de cal y otras de arena,” La Opinión (Nov. 26,
1989), Teleguía, 8-9.
47
Victor Valle, “KVEA Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (February 25, 1987), G-10. KVEA’s $9
million in gross revenue stood in contrast to well-established KMEX-34’s $42 million gross revenue; see Greg
Critser, “New Players,” Channels, vol. 7, no. 1 (January 1987), 30, American Radio History.
48
“A 25-Year Commitment to Spanish-Language Programming,” The Hollywood Reporter (Sept. 29, 1987), S-3, in
Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
49
Henry Silverman quoted in Steven Beschloss, “The Missing Pot of Gold,” Channels, vol. 10, no. 10 (July 16,
1990), 34, American Radio History.
50
“’Noticiero 34’: Good News for the Hispanic Community,” The Hollywood Reporter, (Sept. 29, 1987), S-16, in
Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian; Victor Valle, “A Strong Choice for Latino Viewers,” L.A. Times (Feb. 25,
1987), G-10.

200

Advertising and Financial Struggles
KVEA-52’s strong viewership growth was instrumental in making the Telemundo
network financially viable, but a variety of factors prevented that from making the station more
profitable, including the reticence of national advertisers. To help KVEA attract national
advertising accounts, Estrella Communications and the Reliance investors affiliated it with a
consortium of other independent Spanish-language TV stations across the U.S. known as
“NetSpan.” The 22-station NetSpan consortium, though not a formal TV network, was intended
to make national advertisers more comfortable running commercials on the disparate Spanish TV
stations, given the lack of widely-accepted and accurate ratings surveys of U.S. Latino audiences
in the 1980s.
51
Similar to Spanish-language TV’s identity-building rhetoric which was meant to
create a larger Latino market from the mass of disparate constituencies of ethnic Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central Americans in the U.S., the coalescing of different
independent TV stations into the loose NetSpan consortium was meant to show advertisers the
Spanish-language television market was worth specialized ethnic-oriented advertising
investment.
Corporations from which NetSpan enlisted advertising accounts by late 1985 included
Coca-Cola, Eastern Airlines, Ford Motors, Sears, and AT&T, but they represented notable
exceptions to the national advertising industry’s reluctance to invest too heavily on Latino

51
Wilkinson, 87-88; John Sinclair, Latin American Television: A Global View (New York: Oxford, 2002), 101-102.
The NetSpan advertising sales and programming service KVEA-52 joined upon its debut had been founded in
January 1984 by the owners of WNJU-47 (a Linden, New Jersey-based station which was the first New York area
TV channel with Spanish-language programming) and WBBS-60 (Chicago). Unlike the 22 other stations affiliated
with NetSpan in 1985, KVEA-52 was the only one which broadcast a full-time Spanish schedule. The NetSpan
stations occasionally shared programming but were not a formal TV network. Nationally, 22 stations in markets
with large Latino populations made up NetSpan by September 1985. Many (if not most) NetSpan affiliates, such as
KOLD-13 in Tucson, Arizona, were actually English-format stations interested in some programming for their
Spanish-speaking viewers. NetSpan advertisement, Broadcasting (Sept. 10, 1985), 19.

201

customers.
52
According to an anecdote Silverman shared with a trade journal, some advertising
clients declined accounts with KVEA because they told him they didn’t want Latinos in their
stores, suggesting that racial prejudice – in addition to incomplete Latino consumer data –
influenced some advertisers’ unwillingness to invest in Spanish-language media.
53

KVEA-52 also struggled to recruit smaller local businesses to run ads on it due to Canal
34’s historic monopoly on Los Angeles Spanish-language TV. KMEX’s Villanueva repeatedly
claimed to welcome competition, but KVEA General Manager Paul Niedermeyer claimed their
crosstown rival “put a lot of pressure on local advertisers to not add us to their buys” by
threatening to raise ad rates for longtime advertisers who placed commercials on KVEA.
Meanwhile SIN’s ad representatives in New York also steered national ad agencies away from
Canal 52. “They had never had a real competitor before, and they acted like it.”
54
KVEA
competed with its more established Spanish-language TV rival through its smaller ad rates,
commensurate with its smaller audience in its first years on the air.
55

Nevertheless, management actively sought to attract viewers by conducting direct
outreach into the Latino community. Frequent televised raffles held in conjunction with Latino-

52
“Yes, NetSpan!” advertisement, Broadcasting (Nov. 4, 1985), 11, American Radio History; Victor Valle, “KVEA
Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (February 25, 1987), G-10
53
Silverman claimed one business told him “I don’t want your people in my stores” while another executive
responded to his point that one of every two children born in Los Angeles was Hispanic by replying “Isn’t that
appalling?” Silverman quoted in John F. Berry, “The New Order at Blair,” Channels, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 1987), 55,
and in Steven Beschloss, “The Missing Pot of Gold,” Channels, vol. 10, no. 10 (July 16, 1990), 31-32, American
Radio History. Part of national advertisers’ hesitation to invest in Spanish-language TV was the incomplete way in
which ratings services determined Latinos’ TV viewing habits. The lack of reliable viewer data made Telemundo
and SIN/Univision advertising pitches difficult to verify. Martha M. Hamilton, “New Dispute Erupts Over Sale of
Spanish-Language TV Stations,” Washington Post (Sept. 21, 1986), D-3.
54
Daniel Villanueva, quoted in Valle, “KVEA Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (February 25, 1987),
G-10, and also quoted in “A 25-Year Commitment to Spanish-Language Programming,” The Hollywood Reporter,
September 29, 1987, S-3, in Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian; Niedermeyer, “1986 Mercedes 300E And
The Birth Of Telemundo.”
55
“KMEX: Reaching the Nation’s Largest Hispanic Market,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 29, 1987, S-8, in
Folder 23, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian. Despite KMEX’s long-established logistical advantages with local and
national advertising accounts, “ad management was so sloppy” at the venerable Canal 34 that one agency was able
to fund a full quarter’s worth of commercials on KVEA “entirely out of lost billings.” Greg Critser, “The Feud that
Toppled a TV Empire,” Channels of Communications, vol. 7, no. 1 (January 1987), 31, American Radio History.

202

oriented supermarkets helped increase KVEA’s visibility.
56
Publicity campaigns also included
hosting community events such as its own Cinco de Mayo celebrations and other events where
KVEA promoted itself and its advertisers through merchandising. KVEA’s publicity events often
included a large inflatable TV-shaped balloon with its screen decorated with KVEA’s logo and
slogan – “El Canal de Los Ángeles.”
57

In another example, KVEA used its official TV sponsorship of the March 1988 L.A.
Marathon to raise Latino interest in the event as well as to promote itself. “¡Corra al Maratón de
Diversión del Canal 52! Disfrute como nunca el Maratón de Los Angeles recorriendo con la
familia kilómetros de alegría.” (“Run to the Marathon of Fun at Channel 52! Enjoy the Los
Angeles Marathon like never before running kilometers of fun with the whole family”). Canal 52
invited viewers to visit specific areas along the marathon route to enjoy entertainment and collect
merchandise from advertisers, including Kodak as well as Proctor and Gamble. Besides
promising live mariachi performances, Mexican food, and 5,000 Telemundo 52-branded bags
filled with surprise gifts, the station specifically promoted the event with images of Latinos
running in the marathon.
58
Although subtle, the emphasis on Latino marathoners was meant to
promote Latino involvement in L.A. life by conveying that the famous marathon was for them,
too.
KVEA gained significant ground within the greater L.A. Latino community as the
“market’s number two Spanish-language station” rather quickly, bringing growing pains along

56
Ed Rosenthal, “The TV sales pitch changes,” Television/Radio Age, vol. 36, no. 8 (Nov. 14, 1988), A-49,
American Radio History.
57
A February 1988 KVEA-sponsored event on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A., for example, featured mariachi
music, free balloons for children, a $1,500 raffle and distribution of free copies of the Spanish version of Pacific
Bell’s Yellow Pages. KVEA commercial for February 25, 1988 Whittier Boulevard street party (aired February 24,
1988), Cassette 21885, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA; Kirsten Beck, “L.A. Goes Hispanic,” Channels (June
1989), 22.
58
KVEA L.A. Marathon commercial (February 24, 1988), Cassette 21885, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

203

the way.
59
As early as 1986, despite its healthy viewership growth, KVEA ran nearly double its
budgeted expenditures. General Manager Niedermeyer believed a new station entering the
heavily KMEX-dominated Spanish-speaking metro L.A. market should follow the example of
successful independent English-language stations around the country that avoided the heavy
costs of directly competing with the major networks by “counterprogramming” and holding off
on costly local news productions until their station could monetize it. “My business plan called
for slow but steady growth, carving out a profitable second-place niche,” Niedermeyer recalled,
emphasizing that “being number two can be very profitable, done right.”
60

Canal 52 and the Birth of Telemundo
Despite continuing financial losses, KVEA’s steady viewership growth reaffirmed the
interest of its Wall Street investors to utilize the station as the first step in building the U.S.’s
second Spanish-language TV network, Telemundo. Canal 52 co-founder Niedermeyer recalled
that Steinberg and Silverman – neither of whom had a reading knowledge of Spanish – were
skeptical when Joe Wallach first approached them requesting their investment to help purchase
KBSC-52 when it was put on sale in early 1985. “Reliance had zero prior experience or
knowledge of the U.S. Hispanic media market. It was a stretch for them to get comfortable with
the idea of investing in KVEA, and it was anything but a sure deal for a while.”
61
The venture

59
Kirsten Beck, “L.A. Goes Hispanic,” Channels (June 1989), 22, American Radio History.
60
Although his gradual-growth approach was rejected, Niedermeyer notes that Telemundo and KVEA have
remained in second place behind Univision and KMEX for most of their history. “Realistically, there was no way
KVEA (or Telemundo) could ever hope to beat Univision, and that has turned out to be the case ever since, despite
the endlessly revolving door of new executives and programming ideas Telemundo has tried in the past 25 years to
date. Telemundo is still firmly stuck in second place today, even with all of the resources of NBC.” Wallach’s vision
“was also stressful” because as general manager Niedermeyer was the one who had to constantly justify KVEA’s
increasing capital outlay and personnel costs to Steinberg and Silverman at Reliance Group. Niedermeyer, “1986
Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo.”
61
Niedermeyer, “1986 Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo.”

204

capitalists’ skepticism in Wallach’s proposed new network faded when KVEA’s audience grew
and likely were further encouraged by recognition the station earned during its first year, such as
winning Emmy Awards for its VEA Noticias newscast. Less than a year after its 1985 debut,
KVEA’s White American owners pushed forward with an aggressive campaign to develop their
own Spanish-language TV network.
Reliance’s hostile takeover of John Blair and Company, a mass media marketing firm
which had barely begun to expand into Spanish TV, reflects the aggressive top-level interest
competing White American-led corporations had in using Spanish-language TV as a way of
garnering rich profits from the U.S. Latino community.
62
In August 1983 Blair entered the
Spanish-language TV market by buying San Juan, Puerto Rico-based WKAQ “Telemundo Canal
2” and its sizable production facilities for the high sum of $55 million. WKAQ-2, it may be
recalled was the very first Spanish-language TV station in the United States upon its debut on
March 28, 1954.
63
Blair purchased a second Spanish TV station in December 1984 through its
$18 million purchase of what later became the Miami, Florida, flagship of the future Telemundo
network, WSCV-51.
64
Looking towards further expansions which could later coalesce into a new
Spanish-language network, the company created BlairSpan in March 1986 to manage and
distribute the original telenovelas and programs produced at WKAQ’s Telemundo studios.

62
The John Blair Company long specialized in mail orders, but in the early 1980s expanded into broad cast
ownership by purchasing smaller radio and TV stations across the country. John Sinclair, Latin American
Television: A Global View, 101-102.
63
WKAQ’s 1954 debut preceded the July 1955 debut of Raoul Cortez’s KCOR Channel 41 in San Antonio (the
station more often recognized as the first Spanish-language TV station in the U.S.). “Approved sale notice”,
Broadcasting (Aug. 29, 1983), 111; “John Blair says transfer cleared for TV license of Puerto Rican station,” Wall
Street Journal (Aug. 19, 1983), 7.
64
Miami Channel 51 (which had a part-time Spanish-language format at the time) initially had WKID as its call
sign. To appeal to Cuban American televidentes, Blair changed Channel 51’s call sign to WSCV (“doble -u ese se
ve” or “that one you can see” in Spanish). WKID was owned by pre-KVEA (KSBC) owners Oak Industries and also
had a subscription TV service schedule. “Blair Completes Purchase of Station for $17.9 Million,” Wall Street
Journal (Dec. 10, 1984), 4.

205

Similar to NetSpan, BlairSpan was an advertising sales representative and program distribution
firm rather than a TV network, with clients of BlairSpan’s advertisers and programming
including KVEA and the other NetSpan stations.
65

Steinberg and Silverman prevented BlairSpan from becoming a new Spanish-language
TV network when Reliance Group acquired the John Blair Company through a corporate
takeover in summer 1986.
66
After months of complicated negotiations, Steinberg and
Silverman’s latest corporate raid put them in full control of Blair and its most prized assets –
WKAQ “Telemundo Canal 2” in San Juan and Miami WSCV-51 – for $365.5 million in cash.
67

In November 1986, the Steinberg-Silverman duo did it again, buying outright the New York
area’s part-time Spanish-language NetSpan affiliate WNJU-47 for the “princely sum” of $70
million from its owners Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio.
68

Though lacking formal comprehension of Spanish (let alone firsthand perspective of
Latino life in the U.S.), Reliance Group’s White American financiers assembled the foundation
of a new national Spanish-language TV network in little over a year after they debuted KVEA in
Southern California. With direct control of KVEA-52, NetSpan’s WNJU-47 and BlairSpan’s
WSCV-51 and WKAQ-2, Reliance Group merged the various assets to create the Telemundo
Network in December 1986, taking WKAQ’s historic “Telemundo” branding as the new

65
“Syndication and Marketplace,” Broadcasting (Dec. 16, 1985), 86; “New TV Ad Reps,” Hispanic Business, vol.
8, no. 5 (May 1986), 38.
66
“Moving and Shaking at John Blair and Co.,” Broadcasting (Nov. 26, 1986), 68-69. Reliance Group bought Blair
for $500 million, Victor Valle, “Competition Heats Up in Latino TV,” L.A. Times (Dec. 8, 1986), E-1.
67
William Power, “Steinberg’s Reliance Capital wins ruling that will allow it to complete Blair bid,” Wall Street
Journal (Aug. 18, 1986), 12.
68
According to Niedermeyer, the price Steinberg and Silverman paid to establish a New York area base for their
Spanish network project was “way above what it was worth on a cash-flow multiple, and in a Hispanic market much
smaller than L.A.” “1986 Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo.”

206

corporation’s identity. On January 12, 1987, Telemundo aired as a network for the first time
beginning with a half-hour national evening newscast.
69

Despite the financial problems it faced, KVEA’s presence in the Southern Californian
airwaves helped generate momentum for the creation of Telemundo and more significantly the
expansion of the national Spanish-language TV project. As network CEO Henry Silverman
explained, “We will have to expand with affiliates, but you can’t really have a Spanish-language
network without New York and Los Angeles, and possibly Miami – now we have all three.”
70

KVEA’s cultivation of its audience and market base propelled its White American investors to
buy the other assets which would form Telemundo upon its January 1987 debut. The Southern
California Latino community was again essential for the development of the national U.S.
Spanish-language TV industry.

Informing and Attracting Televidentes: Locally Produced News and Public Affairs
Programming on Canal 52
KVEA’s news-gathering operations played a critical role in attracting viewers as well as
building the station’s professional reputation among televidentes and the larger L.A. mass media
industry. Newscasts and public affairs programming defined the extent of KVEA’s regular
locally produced programs.
71
While Mexican films and Latin American telenovelas made up the
majority of KVEA’s schedule, the station’s locally-produced newscasts and public affairs

69
“Telemundo TV Network to Air Nationally Tonight,” Wall Street Journal (Jan. 12, 1987), 8; Federico Subervi-
Velez, Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Sociology (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1994), 343.
70
Silverman also said at the time that Reliance would not purchase anymore stations at that time, but would instead
seek to expand by forming affiliations with locally-owned stations in Texas, Chicago, and other areas with
significant Spanish-speaking communities. Looking ahead, Silverman said the biggest challenge for Reliance’s new
network would be “to bring in more traditionally Anglo advertisers to Spanish stations.” Quoted in “Reliance buys
WNJU-TV for $70 million,” Broadcasting (Nov. 3, 1986), 40.
71
Lee Margulies, “Channel 52 Getting a Spanish Accent,” L.A. Times (Nov. 22, 1985), H-28.

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productions played a significant role in building Canal 52’s popularity and its authority as an
established and reputable media outlet serving Spanish-speaking Latinos.
According to the station’s promoters, KVEA’s news programming was meant to advocate
for Southern California Latinas and Latinos. Station Vice President Frank Cruz asserted the
Latino community, especially recent immigrants, needed “to be enlightened as to what is
occurring in this society as it affects them. That’s the kind of thing we’ll hopefully do with our
news.”
72
Enrique Gratas, KVEA’s first news director, affirmed that it was crucial for news
reporting on Canal 52 to engage with the Spanish-speaking community’s desire “to be part of the
political and social atmosphere” of U.S. society.
73

However as has repeatedly been the case with Spanish-language TV in the U.S., creating
a newscast for the station had less altruistic motivations than informing and education Latinos,
such as meeting FCC requirements that KVEA serve the public interest. As may be remembered,
broadcasting news and public affairs content helped stations meet the FCC’s public interest
obligations. In addition, KVEA’s broadcasting of its own newscasts and public affairs programs
followed the trends in the larger U.S. television industry where local newscasts served as a
means of increasing those stations’ viewership and advertising revenue.
74

Generating profits while informing and education viewers is not mutually exclusive, but
it is apt to recognize how the government regulations and profit motivation which shaped
KVEA-52’s news programming factored in the mass-mediating of the U.S. Latino identity the

72
Frank Cruz quoted in Steve Beale, “Turmoil and Growth: New Ownership Transforms Spanish -Language TV,”
Hispanic Business, vol. 8, no. 11 (December 1986), 52.
73
Victor Valle, “Three Area TV Channels Court Latino Viewers,” L.A. Times (May 7, 1986), O-1.
74
“Report and Statement of Policy Res: Commission en banc Programming Inquiry,” Federal Communications
Commission Reports, 44 FCC 2303 (July 29, 1960); see also Craig Allen, News Is People: The Rise of Local TV
News and the Fall of News from New York (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001); James T. Hamilton, All the
News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press,
2006); Denis McQuail, Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest (New York: Sage, 1999).

208

station conveyed through its locally produced programs. News programming appeared on KVEA
beginning with its first week on the air, with VEA Noticias and VEA L.A. (a community affairs-
oriented news magazine show) as the station’s first news programs during Monday-Friday
schedule.
75
Gratas, one of KVEA’s first news anchors, recognized that KVEA was asking the
community to “change, but if we don't give them new choices about programming, we are
making a big mistake.”
76

Many of the new station’s early hires were female reporters such as Cuban exile María
Laria. Laria, who had previously worked with Gratas in Los Angeles as a host on the SIN cable-
TV service Galavision, joined her former mentor as an anchor on VEA Noticias. Laria supported
the station management’s interest in developing a daytime talk show, becoming the producer and
host of Cara a Cara upon its 1988 debut, making her one of the first Latinas in the U.S. TV
industry to host and produce her own program.
77
As another example, Pilar Garibotto, a Peruvian
American immigrant, joined the station in June 1989 and gained fame for her reporting during
the Loma Prieta earthquake that October.
78
Other early Latina reporter hires at KVEA included

75
The community affairs-oriented VEA L.A. initially began as a late night 15-minute newscast at 11:00pm and
focused on local, U.S., and international news.
76
Valle, “Three Area TV Channels Court Latino Viewers,” L.A. Times (May 7, 1986), O-1; Paul Henninger,
“Viewing Sports,” L.A. Times (August 18, 1979), B-3; “Enrique Gratas Left Telemundo To Join Univision,”
Contacto Magazine (no date), (https://www.contactomagazine.com/gratas.htm). While at KMEX-34, Gratas was the
host of the station’s sports magazine, Tele-Revista Deportiva as well as one of the inaugural co-hosts of KMEX’s
Mundo Latino, the first nationally-televised Spanish-language morning infotainment show in the U.S. Beginning in
1981 Gratas gained additional news department directing experience at SIN’s critical New York area WXTV-41. An
experienced newsman, Gratas’s presence at Canal 52 during its launch helped the new station build rapport with
Latino viewers; Gratas later became one of Telemundo’s most visible faces in the early 1990s. Veronica Villafañe,
“TV veteran Enrique Gratas dies after illness” Media Moves (Oct. 8, 2015),
(https://www.mediamoves.com/2015/10/tv-veteran-enrique-gratas-dies-after-illness.html).
77
Olga Connor, “Maria Laria, de pianista a ‘Cara a Cara’, y a ‘Arrebatada,’” El Nuevo Herald (Miami, May 31,
2016), (https://www.elnuevoherald.com/entretenimiento/television/article80394067.html); María Argelia Vizcaíno,
“María Larias” [sic], Diccionario de Talentos Artísticos Musicales Cubanos Fuera de Cuba (2008),
(http://www.mariaargeliavizcaino.com/m-DiccionarioTalentosCubanos_L.html). Cara a Cara featured several
female producers and production staff, including Rita Herscovi as producer and reporter Norma Roque as a research
assistant, Cara a Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (May 3, 1989), Cassette 22993, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
78
“’Terremoto: No Hay Tiempo Que Perder,’ reportaje de Pilar Garibotto, por el 52,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989),
Teleguía 14.

209

Virginia Jiménez, Sandra Luz Gallegos, Ofelia de la Torre, and Uruguayan-born USC journalism
student Andrea Kutyas.
79

The hiring of these and other women at KVEA reflected trends in Spanish-language TV
journalism which integrated women into newscasts to make those programs more appealing. The
early 1970s expansion of TV news broadcasting in Mexico created many opportunities for
female journalists. In 1970 slightly less than half of the nine-member reporting team for
Telesistema’s nightly 24 Horas news show were women and a year later Mexico City XHTM-8
featured Lolita Ayala as the co-anchor of the independent station’s evening newscast – the first
case of a woman anchoring a Mexican television news program. Scholars have noted the
feminist movements of the 1960s increased the entry of women into numerous professions,
including journalism, but a big part of the appeal for TV executives hiring women as TV
reporters and anchors was also the mother-like relationship the female news presenters could
establish with their viewers.
80
In the eyes of ratings- and advertising-oriented TV station
managers, making the nightly news appealing for viewers with motherly and relatable reporters
was good for ratings.
As Gratas, Laria, and Garibotto’s hiring makes clear, early KVEA-52’s news
programming – meant to appeal to the larger L.A. Latino public – was conducted primarily by
Latin American-born journalists with a strong fluency in Spanish, although the presence of
veteran Mexican American newsman Bob Navarro was a notable exception to that tendency.
Navarro moved west to Southern California from El Paso to advance his journalism career,
working at all three of the big U.S. networks at different times and becoming one of the region’s

79
Station Vice President Cruz had a productive relationship with USC journalism Professor Félix Gut iérrez that
allowed him to identify young talent to work at the station. Cruz, Straight Out of Barrio Hollywood, 138-140.
80
González de Bustamante, “Muy Buenas Noches,” 200-201; Linda Egan, “Feminine Perspectives on Journalism:
Conversations with Eight Mexican Women,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 22 (1993), 175-188.

210

most prominent Chicano broadcast journalists during the 1970s and 1980s. While at KCBS-2,
Navarro developed a series of English-language interviews with notable members of the Chicano
community titled The Siesta is Over which featured an interview with KMEX news director
Rubén Salazar in May 1970 in which the two men discussed, among other things, the role of
Spanish-language media in raising ethnic political consciousness. Rising to the news director
position, Navarro worked to inform and politicize Latinos through VEA Noticias and special
election-time news programs.
81

VEA Noticias/Noticiero 52
An examination of early KVEA’s news and public affairs programs VEA Noticias (and its
successor Noticiero 52) reveals much about how Canal 52 management aspired to inform and
advocate for the Southern California Latino community. Though lacking the financial resources
of the big three networks, KVEA sought to visually resemble the quality of mainstream English-
language newscasts in Los Angeles. Televidentes tuning into the first iteration of the local news
on Canal 52 saw a news set that in many ways resembled those seen on English-language TV
stations while having subtle differences appealing to Latino viewers.
The big three networks’ local newsrooms tended to have sets showing either a large
newsroom with dozens of TV monitors and staff behind their news anchors or showcased design
elements depicting the L.A. area’s urban landscapes and mountainsides.
82
The VEA Noticias set
had a more enclosed appearance with a grey four-person anchors’ desk in front of a background

81
“Bob Navarro nuevo director de noticias del Canal 52 KVEA,” La Opinión (Aug. 14, 1988), Teleguía 2; “Tele
Review: The Siesta is Over,” Daily Variety (May 25, 1970), 7, in Folder 162, Box 5, Salazar Papers, USC Special
Collections
82
Channel 2 Action News on KCBS Channel 2 had an expansive news office as a background, (February 27, 1988),
Cassette 16376, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA. Eye Witness News on KABC Channel 7 featured a set with a
color scheme reflecting the time of day and used animations for its weather forecasts at the time (February 27,
1988), Cassette 16378.

211

featuring the early Telemundo logo, a sphere with curving lines. A dark green-silhouetted
stepped-pyramid shape flanked the Telemundo logo on both sides, with a neon-pink backdrop
behind it. The set’s upper border had a Mesoamerican-appearing pattern that, combined with
these other elements, gave VEA Noticias a slight Mexican/Central American visual aesthetic. In
another subtle appeal to Latino viewers, KVEA’s weather forecasts reported on conditions for
“Plaza Olvera” (the historic Spanish-Mexican Los Angeles Plaza) rather than referencing it as
the “Civic Center” identifier used by the English-language media for Downtown L.A.
83

Examining KVEA’s news stories for their content demonstrates how the station served as
an ethnic-oriented public sphere for Latinos in Southern California. One early notable example
of this was the unique way VEA Noticias covered the October 10, 1986 earthquake which
devastated the El Salvadoran capital city. The same day as the quake, KVEA dispatched a crew
of reporters and cameramen led by Salvadoran American reporter Ray Díaz, becoming the first
U.S.-based television station to report directly from the site of the disaster.
The interactions the KVEA news team had with ethnic Salvadorans in Los Angeles and
Central America vividly illustrates the ways in which the station as well as the broader U.S.
Spanish-language TV medium created televised Latino public spaces. Firstly, VEA Noticias’s
airing served as an important source of information for the Los Angeles area Salvadoran
American community to receive immediate up-to-date information about the disaster given both
the downed communications infrastructure in El Salvador that impeded more direct contact as
well as English-language TV’s relatively limited coverage. Lacking the satellite infrastructure to
facilitate their communication with KVEA, Díaz and his crew filmed news footage and got it

83
VEA Noticias, KVEA Channel 52 (August 30, 1989), Cassette 25005, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA. For an
exploration of the Los Angeles Plaza/Plaza Olvera’s importance within the region’s history, see William D. Estrada,
The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).

212

onto the L.A. airwaves by physically sending the footage in the carry-on luggage of travelers
boarding flights leaving San Salvador. Upon landing in Los Angeles, KVEA representatives paid
the incidental couriers for their help.
84

However, KVEA’s coverage went beyond simply airing Díaz’s footage – the station aired
“video telegrams” produced by Díaz’s team of Salvadorans informing their family in the U.S.
they were safe. Díaz went on the air on several of the capital’s radio stations inviting
sansalvadoreños to visit him and his crew at their hotel to be recorded. The overwhelming
response saw hundreds converge at the KVEA crew’s hotel. The video telegrams were sent back
and broadcast over KVEA the same evening as the earthquake.
85
KVEA broadened the video
telegrams’ audience by partnering with La Opinión in publishing short transcripts of the
messages. The publishing of different KVEA telegrams for nine days is an indication of the
Latino audience’s positive reception of the coverage and an affirmation of the relevance of
Latinos, particularly Salvadorans in this instance, having an expanded public sphere via Spanish-
language television.
86

KVEA-52’s earthquake coverage brought increased industry attention to its news
programming and attracted new viewers.
87
Shortly afterwards, KVEA increased promotion of its
newscast through “teaser spots” airing during the day informing viewers of scheduled stories
covered in that evening’s VEA Noticias. One identification promo spot which aired throughout

84
Cruz, Straight Out of Hollywood, 143-144.
85
McDougal and Valle, “Salvadoran Quake,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18, 1986), D-1.
86
La Opinión published the messages KVEA collected in “Mensajes de San Salvador a residentes de L.A.” (Oct. 14,
1986), 7; “Solidaridad con San Salvador,” 5 and “Mensajes desde el El Salvador para familiares en L.A.,” 8 (Oct.
15); “Mensajes desde el El Salvador para familiares en L.A.,” (Oct. 16), 8-9;”Anuncios de cartas para familiares y
amigos,” (Oct. 17), 5; “Mensajes y cartas de El Salvador,” (Oct. 18), 5; ”Anuncios de cartas para familiares y
amigos,” (Oct. 19), 6; ”Cartas de El Salvador para familiares y amigos,” (Oct. 20), 8; ”Cartas de El Salvador para
familiares y amigos,” (Oct. 21), 8; “De El Salvador para el mundo exterior,” (Oct. 22), 8;”Siguen llegando cartas de
El Salvador,” (Oct. 23), 9.
87
McDougal and Valle, “Salvadoran Quake,” L.A. Times (Oct. 18, 1986), D-1

213

the day in the late 1980s told televidentes KVEA-52 was “a veteran of the news. Compare it,
remember it,” the announcer said, emphatically stating “ANÓTELO” (“write it down”).
88

The station’s coverage of the 1988 U.S. presidential election was another instance of
KVEA creating a Spanish-language public sphere for Latinos to inform themselves on the
function of the U.S. political system while also learning about the candidates’ policies as they
specifically affected Latinos. Enrique Gratas anchored Telemundo’s coverage of the Democratic
and Republican National Conventions that summer as a five-member crew of KVEA reporters
and cameramen collected footage for VEA Noticias and the network’s national Noticiero
Telemundo/CNN newscast. The KVEA team’s Latino-oriented reporting complemented the
coverage CNN provided Telemundo for its national newscast airing over the ten other
Telemundo affiliates existing at the time.
89
In addition, news producer Díaz also prepared stories
focusing on the California ballot propositions, as well as interviewing candidates Michael
Dukakis and George H.W. Bush for KVEA’s half-hour news special Destino a la Casa Blanca
(Journey to the White House).
90

News director Bob Navarro emphasized the U.S. Latino public sphere aspect of KVEA’s
election reporting, affirming the station provided viewers with a “localized version of what’s
happening, especially with the Spanish-speaking caucus.”
91
The veteran newsman affirmed that

88
Another version of the ID bumper stated, ““You are watching 52. Remember it. Write it down.” Kristen Beck,
“L.A. Goes Hispanic,” Channels, 22, 26; “KVEA-52 Station ID Bumper,” KVEA Channel 52 (aired 12pm, April
18, 1989), Cassette 22798, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
89
Noticiero Telemundo/CNN was the network’s national news program from 1988-1993. CEO Silverman partnered
with CNN to enable the emerging Telemundo network to report on U.S. and world news using the Cable News
Network’s resources. Victor Valle, “Live and Beefed-Up Spanish-Language Coverage Planned,” L.A. Times (June
28, 1988), H-1; “CNN and Telemundo Group End Broadcast Partnership,” Wall Street Journal (May 21, 1993), A-4.
90
Robert Navarro interview by Federico Subervi-Vélez, February 16, 1989, Audio Cassette, Box 8, Federico
Subervi Collection, Nettie Lee Benson Latin America n Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of
Texas at Austin. For more on U.S. Spanish-language television’s coverage of the 1988 presidential elections, see
Patricia Constantakis-Valdés, “Univision and Telemundo on the Campaign Trail: 1988,” in The Mass Media and
Latino Politics: Studies of U.S. Media Content, Campaign Strategies and Survey Research: 1984 -2004, ed. Federico
Subervi-Vélez, (New York: Routledge Press, 2009), pgs. 131-153.
91
Steve Weinstein, “Local Stations Gear Up for GOP Convention,” L.A. Times (Aug. 11, 1988), G-10.

214

when there are issues directly pertaining to it, “the Hispanic community gets very involved,”
dismissing the argument that “Hispanics don’t want serious news.”
92
Furthermore, it was
“crucial” for KVEA to report on the election from a Latino perspective. “The Hispanic
community is little enough looked after as it is. We have to find out where we stand in this
election.”
93
Navarro and the KVEA team were utilizing the televised public sphere provided by
the station to create a U.S. Latino identity shaped by its active participation in the U.S. political
process through the Spanish language.
KVEA and U.S. Spanish-language TV’s roles as a site of racial identity formation can
also be seen in many of VEA Noticias’s locally centered news stories. For example, in late May
1989 the KVEA newscast carried an investigative series produced by Marcelo Urquidi titled
“Ángeles Caídos” (“Fallen Angels”) which examined the experiences of eastside Los Angeles
Latinos addicted to drugs. The multi-day series explored the ways in which drug use spread
across generations in some Latino families.
94
“Frontera de Sangre” (“Border of Blood”), another
multi-day series, examined cases of violence involving the U.S. Border Patrol and undocumented
Mexican immigrants. The series featured interviews of migrants wounded by USBP agents and
directly criticized U.S. immigration policy through Urquidi’s narration.
95

92
Navarro interview, Audio Cassette, Box 8, Federico Subervi Collection.
93
Victor Valle, “Live and Beefed-Up Spanish-Language Coverage Planned,” L.A. Times (June 28, 1988), H-7.
94
The story showed a Spanish-speaking father identified as “Cholo” advising his young adult Spanglish-speaking
son on how to consume cocaine and crystal meth. The Spanglish-speaking youth laughed when recalling the
different drugs he had tried at home. “Ángeles Caídos,” VEA Noticias, KVEA Channel 52 (May 24, 1989), Cassette
23356, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
95
In a story titled “Invalido” (“Disabled”) Urquidi indignantly described the USBP’s justification for shooting
migrant Ignacio Méndez Pulido in the back (leaving him paralyzed) due to him allegedly throwing rocks at them as
their “argumento habitual” (or their “usual story”). INS denied Méndez Pulido’s naturalization process on account
of him being physically disabled. VEA Noticias, KVEA Channel 52 (Sept. 1, 1989), Cassette 25055, NAPA
Collection, FTVA, UCLA. The excellent “Frontera de Sangre” segments – demonstrating migration and border
enforcement conditions in the Tijuana -San Diego area at the time – aired from September 4-8, 1989, on KVEA’s
rebranded Noticiero 52. See Cassettes 25090, 25120, 25136, and 25161, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

215

Stories aimed specifically at promoting Latinos’ political awareness and participation in
the U.S. political system aired throughout different VEA Noticias and Noticiero 52 newscasts,
reflecting Navarro and other Spanish-language news proponents’ belief that greater social
consciousness was “vital for the Hispanic community.”
96
Vicky Gutiérrez reported on a story
analyzing the complete lack of Latinos in the Huntington Park city government despite the
community being 90 percent Latino. Gutiérrez explained that the high percentage of
undocumented Latino residents contributed to that, but noted that the citizenship provisions
offered by the 1986 Immigration Reform held the promise of increasing Latinos’ political power
in the long-term.
97
In a piece on Latino immigration lawyers’ migrant outreach, the newscast
explained to viewers how the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protected undocumented
migrants from self-incrimination as well as guaranteeing their due process rights. That story
closed by exhorting undocumented Latinos to not be afraid to participate in the 1990 Census.
98

Stories like these are a clear demonstration of how KVEA-52 utilized the public sphere it gave to
ethnic-oriented news to create a U.S. Latino identity and political bloc at a time when Latinos’
representation in government and other institutions of power was not commensurate to their
proportion of the Southern California social landscape.
KVEA’s coverage of the November 1989 escalation of the Salvadoran Civil War also
illustrates how its newscasts directly served the Southern California Latino community by
informing it in ways English-language mass media did not. The differences in reporting between

96
Navarro interview by Subervi-Vélez, February 16, 1989, Audio Cassette, Box 8, Federico Subervi Collection,
Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
97
“Sin Representación,” reporting by Vicky Gutiérrez, Noticiero 52, KVEA Channel 52 (Sept. 4, 1989), Cassette
25090, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
98
Pepe Barreto reported on the California La Raza Lawyers Association’s efforts to promote undocumented
migrants’ awareness of their rights by highlighting lawyer Hector Manuel Briones’s streetside meetings with day
laborers in San Fernando. “La Raza,” Noticiero 52, KVEA Channel 52 (Dec. 29. 1989), Cassette 27023, NAPA
Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

216

Los Angeles’s English- and Spanish-language television stations could not be starker. KCBS’s
Action 2 News opened its midday newscast on November 13 explaining how the leftist
Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) attack on San Salvador represented the worst
violence the country had faced since the conflict began. However, the taped segment gave the
impression that the violence in El Salvador was mainly a distant foreign tragedy, with the
newscast transitioning to the next story which focused on the fall of the Berlin Wall the
preceding weekend. The rebel attack on San Salvador was also the lead story on Noticiero 52 but
was followed by a local report on how Salvadorans in Los Angeles (including the Salvadoran
Consul General) reacted to the violence. Invisible on mainstream television, remarks shared by
salvadoreñas and salvadoreños interviewed on KVEA underscored the emotional proximity of
the Central American conflict. “Everyone here is personally experiencing and suffering from this
situation,” one salvadoreño said.
99

Given the general paucity of reporting in English-language media on the violence in El
Salvador especially as it affected the Salvadoran community living in the United States,
Noticiero 52’s coverage of the conflict’s local impact on Salvadoran L.A. demonstrates the role
of U.S. Spanish-language TV in functioning as a public space for Latinos to explore issues
directly affecting them as residents of a multiethnic U.S. metropolis. Coverage of the Salvadoran
Civil War’s impact on Salvadoran Americans remained constant throughout the FMLN’s fall
offensive, with Noticiero 52 regularly highlighting local reactions such as the Central L.A.-based
CARECEN advocacy group’s condemnation of martial law and torture in El Salvador.
100
A

99
Untitled story, with reporting by Juan Vasquez, CBS Action 2 News, KCBS Channel 2. KVEA’s interviewee said
“La situación todos la estan viviendo y sufriendo en carne propia.” My translation, from “Reacciones,” reporting by
Sandra Luz Gallegos, Noticiero 52, KVEA Channel 52 (Nov. 13, 1989), Cassette 26284, NAPA Collection, FTVA,
UCLA.
100
“CARECEN,” with reporting by Sandra Luz Gallegos, Noticiero 52 (Dec. 1, 1989), Cassette 26595, NAPA
Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

217

December 1989 story highlighted the efforts of Salvadoran activists in fighting their invisibility
in front of White American leaders by holding a demonstration in Beverly Hills. “We are doing
this here,” a salvadoreña activist said, so that White Americans “who never approach the side of
the city where the Central American community lives” can see them “as people with feelings and
problems who are coming to this country fleeing war.”
101

KVEA’s coverage of Latino news stories in greater Los Angeles, whether of a
transnational focus, as seen in its reporting on Salvadoran Americans’ responses to war and
natural disasters in El Salvador, or of a more local focus as seen when stories examining the lack
of Mexican American political representation in an overwhelmingly Mexican-majority
California city, is an affirmation of the televised public sphere it created for Latinos to inform
themselves about their life in the U.S. Although KMEX-34 was likely broadcasting relatively
similar reporting, KVEA news programs from the late 1980s exemplifies the ways in which
Spanish-language television in metropolitan Los Angeles adapted to the demographic growth
and panethnic diversifying of its audience base. KVEA’s noticieros were generally not novel in
their approach, but their presence as a competitor to KMEX’s newscasts expanded the overall
televised news coverage of Latino issues available to Spanish-speaking viewers. KVEA’s
newscasts covered many of the same stories in much the same way English-format stations did,

101
“El Salvador,” with reporting by Fernando Escandón, Noticiero 52 (Dec. 22, 1989), Cassette 26917, NAPA
Collection, FTVA, UCLA. The unidentified Salvadoran woman quoted here said “Estamos haciendo aqui en
Beverly Hills para dar a conocer a la gente aqui, también a los norteamericanos que nunca se acercan por el lado
donde la comunidad centroamericana vive, de que a lo mejor muchas de las sirvientas que ellos tienen y muchos de
los jardineros que tienen son de Centroamérica y tal vez despues de esto ellos puedan verlo de una manera
diferente, más como personas con sentimientos y con problemas que venimos a este pais huyendo de la guerra.”
(“We are gathered here in Beverly Hills to raise awareness to the people here, especially White Americans who
never get close to where the Central American community lives, since many of their housekeepers and gardeners are
from Central America. Maybe this will help them see us differently, more like people with feelings and problems
who are coming to this country fleeing war.”)

218

but KVEA and Spanish-language television provided coverage of relevant U.S. Latino
perspectives viewers would not get watching the mainstream English TV stations.
News reporting on KVEA also drew the recognition of the Los Angeles-area television
industry which honored the station with Emmy Awards for news writing and creative technical
crafts during the station’s first year on the air.
102
Harry Abraham Castillo received his news
writing award for a series of stories VEA Noticias carried on Mexico’s “Flying Doctors of
Mercy” while animators Jackie Kassorla, Helen Davis, and Mike Davis were honored for their
work on VEA L.A.’s intro animation graphics.
103
In 1989 VEA Noticias again won L.A. area
Emmy Awards, this time beating out long-established English-language rivals in the
investigative reporting category for Marcelo Urquidi’s story “Mama, ¿Porqué Me Muero?”
(“Mother, why am I dying?”)
104
The next year KVEA received five Emmy nominations.
105

VEA Noticias and Noticiero 52 played a role in KVEA’s early overall ratings growth,
climbing an estimated 40 percent between 1986-1987; by 1989 VEA Noticias at 11pm was the
most-watched late evening newscast by men ages 18-49 in Los Angeles.
106
It is likely viewers
noticed the station’s unique appeals, such as its video telegrams during the 1986 San Salvador
earthquake. KMEX, which also covered the tragedy but apparently did not immediately send its
own crew, imitated KVEA’s lead by collecting letters at the San Salvador airport for their

102
KVEA management, such a General Manager Stephen Levin (Frank Cruz’s successor), repeatedly highlighted
the value the station gave its locally-produced newscasts. Quintana, “A cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA,” La
Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-9.
103
KVEA Emmy Advertisement, Television/Radio Age (June 8, 1987), 19, American Radio History.
104
Shauna Snow, “KNBC Tops Emmy List; KCBS Wins Best News Program,” L.A. Times (May 22, 1989), E-10;
Quintana, “A Cuatro Años de la Fundación de KVEA,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-9.
105
Sharon Bernstein, “Channel 2 Leads Pack in Emmy Nominations,” L.A. Times (April 20, 1990), F-8. Other
industry organizations, such as the Broadcast Designers Association (BDA), broadened KVEA’s trade recognition
when awarding the station honors for its on-air graphics design. Canal 52 was the only Spanish-language TV station
honored in the BDA’s international award competition that year. Art Director Sue Gross and graphic design artist
Gabriel Gómez were recognized for their work in KVEA’s September 16, 1987 Mexican Independence Day
coverage. “Premio a Canal 52 en Concurso de Diseño,” La Opinión (June 26, 1988), Teleguia 13.
106
“Local Programming Power” (KVEA-52 advertisement), Television/Radio Age, vol. 36, no. 26 (July 24, 1989),
A-35, American Radio History.

219

relatives in Los Angeles. Events such as these give context to La Opinión’s characterization of
Los Angeles Spanish-language television as “mediocre” prior to the introduction of choice for
Latino viewers/consumers. KVEA expanded the Latino public sphere and by introducing a level
of competition against KMEX provided more opportunities for different Latino issues and
perspectives to be disseminated over the Southern California airwaves.
107

Cara a Cara: KVEA’s Latino Issues Talk Show
An examination of KVEA’s other major local production, the live audience Cara a Cara
talk show, illustrates another attempt by the station to attract viewers and create a U.S. Latino
identity through a mass-mediated public sphere. The first U.S. talk show produced by a Latina,
the open debate format show hosted by Cuban American news anchor Maria Laria, debuted in
late 1987. By year’s end it was picked up by Telemundo to bolster the growing network’s
reputation through original content.
108
In later years (when produced in Miami) Cara a Cara
shifted towards soft news content, but during its early days at KVEA the show commonly
featured expert panels and guests discussing a variety of issues pertaining to the Southern
Californian Latino community.
109

107
Daily newscast recordings for KVEA-52 and KMEX-34 are not available prior to 1989 at the UCLA FTVA.
While KVEA’s recordings for November 1989 are available, KMEX’s newscasts are not extant for that period,
preventing a more detailed comparison of the two stations’ coverage of the violence in El Salvador that fall.
Victor Valle, “A Strong Choice for Latino Viewers,” L.A. Times (Feb. 25, 1987), G-10; Quintana, “A cuatro años de
la fundación de KVEA,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-0. By October 23 when KMEX-34 placed a
mailbox in the San Salvador airport for sansalvadoreños to send messages to their Los Angeles relatives KVEA had
already been collecting video telegrams for nine days. La Opinión subsequently published lists of the letters
collected by KMEX. ”Siguen llegando cartas de El Salvador,” La Opinión (Oct. 23), 9.
108
Quintana, “A cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-9; “Jueves 30 de
noviembre” TV listings, La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 10. “Two networks slugging it out for viewers’
eyes,” Television/Radio Age, vol. 36, no. 26 (July 24, 1989), A-36, American Radio History.
109
Hugo Quintana, “A cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA: Algunas de cal y otras de arena,” La Opinión (Nov.
26, 1989), Teleguía, pgs 8-9; “Two networks slugging it out for viewers’ eyes,” Television/Radio Age, vol. 36, no.
26 (July 24, 1989), A-36.

220

KVEA’s marketing of Cara a Cara emphasized its ethnic identity-building content to the
point the show’s producers claimed it they were empowering viewers to participate in the U.S.
political process through ethnic consciousness. Associate producer Rita Herscovici explained
that KVEA saw it as a “way of opening up [a community] in a very dynamic way.” Reflecting on
the impact she hoped the show would have, Herscovici added, “I think that the show’s slowly
shaping the decision-making process in the Hispanic community. It’s giving them courage.” In
the eyes of Cara a Cara producers, covering social issues from a Latino perspective would
directly lead to Latino involvement in larger U.S. political life. “Now they have a place to
express their views and hear their problems spelled out, which will in turn make it easier to
express their views in the political arena.”
110

Before examining the ways in which the show explored different social issues, it is
necessary to consider the mass-mediated context of the dialogue Cara a Cara provided its
viewers. To be sure, Cara a Cara’s programs on drug addiction, immigration, and violence in
Latin America, among others, gave those critical topics specialized exposure but, as was the case
for many of KMEX’s own public affairs programs and news specials in the 1960s and 1970s, the
talk show aired during a time of relatively reduced viewership – the 12pm noon slot on
Thursdays when most of the station’s larger audience base was at work. While more watched in
general than the overnight and weekend afternoon graveyard time slots, daytime television’s
primary audience was stay-at-home women, a viewing demographic which gave daytime TV the
nickname “homemaker entertainment.”
111
Comparing the types of ads which aired on Cara a

110
Rita Herscovici quoted in Victor Valle, “Latino TV Re-Creates U.S. Images,” L.A. Times (August 18, 1988), G-1,
G-9. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-18-ca-833-story.html). For more on the TV talk show
genre, see Bernard Timberg and Bob Erler, Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2004).
111
Laura Grindstaff, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002), 18-19, 48-51. Cara a Cara’s mixing of serious sociopolitical topics with more sensationalist

221

Cara at noon, which tended to be in-house ads for local businesses and legal firms, and the 6pm
6:30pm evening newscasts, which tended to be highly-polished advertisements for national
companies, suggests that Telemundo might have struggled to recruit national advertisers for a
locally produced, issues-based talk show.
112
Although Cara a Cara would have had a larger and
more diverse audience during primetime (men as well as women back from work),
KVEA/Telemundo’s evening schedule was reserved for the regular TV newscasts, movies, and
telenovelas that defined the channel’s primetime in the 1980s.
Some of Cara a Cara’s production value left much to be desired, but it reflected the
program’s budgetary constraints. Editing was minimal, with some episodes not having footage
transitioning effectively between speakers, leaving viewers confused as to who was speaking. In
other moments, cameras would be positioned so that they would intrude on one another’s frames,
obscuring Laria and her guests’ visibility. In other instances, Laria walked into the frame
scratching her face or playing with her hair as she spoke to her guests.
113
Some episodes of Cara
a Cara ended with the show’s main theme and end credits playing as panelists and audience
members were still speaking. At times participants’ comments would be cut off mid -sentence
when the screen finally went blank after the credits ended.
114

tabloid stories is emblematic of daytime talk shows, a genre which debuted on U.S. television with the Phil Donahue
Show (1967-1996).
112
Cara a Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (May 3, 1989), Cassette 22993, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
113
Cara a Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (April 18, 1989), Cassette 22798, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
114
At times some of the cameramen would enter the frames as well. While not inherently problematic, the May 3,
1989 episode of Cara a Cara had one cameraman appear on frame for several moments very, very visibly chewing
gum as Maria Laria tried to explain how the Employment and Equal Opportunity Commission functioned. Cara a
Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (May 3, 1989), Cassette 22993, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

222

Figure 4.2 – Cara a
Cara, hosted by María
Laria. Besides
examining U.S. Latino
social problems, Cara
a Cara occasionally
had Latin American
heads of state as
guests, such as the
May 9, 1990 episode
which featured
President Alfredo
Christiani defending
his government’s
human rights
violations during the
Salvadoran Civil War.
Item 9, Digital Box
152, Frank del Olmo
Papers, Oviatt Library
Special Collections,
California State
University Northridge.

Better discussion moderation would also have helped the show’s examination of social
issues flow more effectively. In an episode featuring an exclusive interview with President
Alfredo Christiani of El Salvador, Laria only interrupted Christiani when it was time for the
show to take a commercial break rather than offer occasional counterarguments when he gave
verbose justifications for the Salvadoran state’s human rights violations. Often invited panelists
on Cara a Cara were only given one chance to speak during the entire show while audience

223

members who seemingly had more to say were not given adequate time to fully express
themselves.
115
Cara a Cara fostered the development of talk shows on U.S. Spanish-language
TV, but this mass-mediated public sphere did not always have moderating and post-production
editing which could have better served viewers’ interests with more structured presentations of
on-air dialogue.
Nevertheless, Cara a Cara demonstrated its ability to serve as a public sphere for
exploring the complex social issues and promoting a U.S.-based Latino identity, particularly
when guests and audience members actively deliberated over concerns about life as an ethnic
minority in the United States. For example, one episode featured Cuban-born L.A. resident
Ángel Hernández as the main guest in a discussion of the long-term impact of the 1980 Mariel
boatlift, specifically the problems faced by several thousand Mariel refugees still detained by
1988. Hernández led a prison riot at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta when it was announced that
the U.S. would repatriate them to Cuba. After condemning the communist system, Hernández
told Laria many Cuban refugees suffered greatly from White American racism. Hernández
quoted the words of U.S. prison guards. “La palabra de ellos típica era ‘You have no rights in
this country.’ Ustedes no tienen derechos en este pais.” Throughout the episode, panelists and
audience members debated whether the U.S. was truly a democratic country if it could detain
political asylum seekers indefinitely without due process. By the end of the discussion, one of
the guests, a Cuban American activist fighting on behalf of Mariel refugees, looked directly at
the camera and called on all Latinos in the U.S. to unite so that they could say “con voz firme ‘ya

115
El Salvadoran President Alfredo Christiani appeared on Cara a Cara on May 9, 1990, see Item 9, Digital Box
152, Frank del Olmo Papers, Oviatt Library Special Collections, California State University Northridge; Cara a
Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (May 3, 1989), Cassette 22993), NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

224

no vamos a aguantar la opresión de este gobierno’” (“With a firm voice we must say ‘we won’t
tolerate the oppression of this government’”).
116

Unscripted moments like these demonstrate how Cara a Cara functioned as an active
public sphere for Latinos to articulate their anxieties about life in U.S. society. Indeed, while the
show repeatedly revealed its pro-U.S. orientation – such as when Laria (a Cuban exile herself)
stated that incarceration in the U.S. was freer than Cuban life as a whole – the space created on
Cara a Cara allowed Latinas and Latinos of different backgrounds to verbalize on TV the
discrimination and fears they faced in daily U.S. life.
117
In another episode, the show similarly
became a public sphere for Latino concerns when lawyers, activists, and small business owners
hotly debated whether racial discrimination existed in the United States. Amid angry shouting
between guests arguing over the existence of job discrimination, the show again served as an
impromptu stage for criticism of the U.S. power structures, with one lawyer vociferously and
repeatedly condemning President Reagan and the Republican Party for weakening civil rights
institutions and not appointing enough Latinos as federal judges.
118
Deliberative moments like
these might not necessarily have caught every viewers’ attention or impacted them, but the
examination and debating of Latino social issues on Cara a Cara was an expansion of a mass-
mediate public sphere for the discussion of viewers’ lives as a growing panethnic minority
group, an important aspect of Spanish-language television’s creation of a U.S. Latino cultural
and political identity.

116
Orestes Alfonso was the above quoted activist. Ángel Hernández’s comment is translated as “Their usual attack
was ‘You have no rights in this country.’ You have no rights in this country.” Hernández also recalled that one time
he told a guard that dogs in the U.S. had more rights tha n Cuban refugees, to which the guard replied “You people
are worse than dogs.” Cara a Cara (February 24, 1988), Cassette 21885, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
117
Cara a Cara (February 24, 1988), Cassette 21885, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
118
Lawyer Luis Carrillo energetically led the discussion’s condemnation of right-wing policies; the more
conservative Latinos in the audience who argued with Carrillo were not identified by name, but mainly argued that
alleged victims of employment discrimination suffered from inferiority complexes. Cara a Cara, KVEA Channel 52
(May 3, 1989), Cassette 22993, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

225

Cara a Cara’s production in Glendale allowed the show to demonstrate some of the
different cultural and linguistic demographics of Latino Southern California. Although most
guests and audience members tended to be of Mexican heritage, the larger Latin American
immigrant diaspora in greater L.A. was represented throughout the show’s run as evident in the
episode on the Mariel refugees. As a public sphere, Cara a Cara’s guests, panelists, and
audience members reflected the diverse Spanish-language proficiency levels of a Southern
California Latino community characterized by its majority ethnic Mexican population. Listening
to the accents voiced by different speakers of Spanish in Cara a Cara one can sense the cultural
differences within the L.A. area Latino population such as regional and national accents as well
as distinctions between Latinos with longer roots in the U.S. (who tended to lean on Spanglish)
and more recent immigrant arrivals in California (who tended to speak Spanish more fluently).
Manifestations of this linguistic aspect of the Southern Californian Latino cultural
experience are rife throughout extant episodes of Cara a Cara. For example, an episode focusing
on drug abuse in Latino L.A. featured four Latina and Latino drug users speaking in various
levels of Spanish fluency. Fernie, a 35-year-old recovered cocaine addict, responded eloquently
to Laria’s questions about how peer pressure compelled him into drug use while Julie, a younger
woman with a neck tattoo and pompadour, struggled to express herself in Spanish, responding in
short one-word answers at first. Later in the show Julie gained confidence and participated more
assertively. “Ya tenía como años usando la droga y como ya estaba cansada usando las drogas y
quisiba [sic] ayuda – I needed help, you know.”
119
Interviewees on VEA Noticias and Noticiero

119
My translation of Julie’s remarks: “I had used drugs for many years and was tired of using drugs and I wanted
help.” Cara a Cara, KVEA Channel 52 (April 18, 1989), Cassette 22798, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.

226

52, particularly governmental representatives, often expressed themselves in Spanglish as
well.
120

These exchanges demonstrate how Cara a Cara’s production in Glendale allowed it to
incorporate different segments of the Southern Californian Latino public in its exploration of
social issues, from Spanish-fluent (usually Latin American-born Latinos) to English-dominant
U.S.-born Latinos. The presence of Latinos with varying levels of Spanish proficiency as invited
guests and audience members on Cara a Cara reflected KVEA’s intention of shaping Latinos’
ethnic and sociopolitical identities through its programming. The inclusion of individuals whose
Spanish proficiency faltered is indicative of U.S. Spanish-language TV’s potential to be a truly
Latino ethnic-oriented media space rather than only being television in Spanish. To be sure, the
dominant linguistic tendency of U.S. Spanish-language television has been its executives’
emphasis that the medium exclusively use a standardized non-regional Spanish to panethnically
unite the different Latin American nationalities. However, as a cultural phenomenon profoundly
shaped by the transnational context of the lives of Latino viewers, Spanish-language TV in the
U.S. is reflective of the mixed language habits of its U.S. Latino viewers.
121
While KVEA-52
and KMEX-34 have ultimately been more Spanish-language TV stations than fully ethnically-
oriented – which would more consistently incorporate English-language, bilingual, or even
Spanglish content and voices – the public sphere that programs like Cara a Cara expanded

120
In a story on a South El Monte larceny gang, L.A. Sheriff Deputy George DuCoulombier said “Eran personas
que robaron muchas cosas de, como, furniture, compressors, patio furniture, comida y robaron eso y ponieron [sic]
esas cosas aqui en la warehouse.” “Decomiso,” with reporting by Marcelo Urquidi, Noticiero 52 (March 6, 1990),
Cassette 27717, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
121
In another example of this L.A. Times reporter Frank del Olmo asked Salvadoran President Christiani some of
that program’s most critical questions, but Mr. del Olmo’s strained fluency in Spanish was evident (and it allowed
Christiani a way out of fully answering his human rights question). Cara a Cara (May 9, 1990), Item 9, Digital Box
152, Frank del Olmo Papers, Oviatt Library Special Collections, California State University Northridge. For more
on standardized U.S. TV Spanish, see Mora, Making Hispanics, 138-139.

227

reinforces the potential for Spanish-language TV to transcend viewers’ Spanish fluency while
serving as a mechanism for creating identity and raising ethnic consciousness.
Viewers appear to have positively received the mass-mediated examinations of Latino
issues on Cara a Cara after its 1987 debut. The talk show so succeeded in its daytime slot on
KVEA-52 that Telemundo picked it up for transmission throughout the burgeoning network’s
stations across the U.S., becoming the first Spanish-language talk show to reach national
audiences. Cara a Cara’s reception among viewers grew, reaching a 50 percent share of
households watching daytime TV in Los Angeles by summer 1989. Executives at Univision
responded to the positive reception of Cara a Cara by developing their own program, the
Miami-based Cristina talk show hosted by Cristina Saralegui beginning in April 1989.
122
Talk
shows were a staple for daytime TV viewers, but the uniqueness of KVEA’s Cara a Cara as the
sole Spanish-language talk show representing ethnic-specific social issues on U.S. television
clearly appealed to Latino viewers in 1980s Southern California.

The Limits of KVEA’s Community Reception
KVEA’s arrival into the Southern California TV market was noted by industry observers
as a success in courting viewers by increasing the overall number of people watching Spanish-
language television in the region, an accomplishment which enabled KVEA’s White American
owners in Wall Street to accelerate their plans for starting what became Telemundo. However,
the station’s quick incorporation into an East Coast-based national network dominated by White
Americans and Cuban Americans strained aspects of the relationship between Canal 52 and the

122
Quintana, “Algunas de cal y otras de arena,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, pgs 8-9; “Local
Programming Power” (KVEA-52 advertisement), A-35, and “Two networks slugging it out for viewers’ eyes,” A-36
in Television/Radio Age, vol. 36, no. 26 (July 24, 1989), American Radio History.

228

Mexican-majority Latino community in metropolitan Los Angeles. Indeed, the station’s
absorption by the Telemundo Network led to cost overruns, the dismissal of many of its early
founders, and replacing of many of its ethnic Mexican on-air and executive personnel by White
Americans and Cuban Americans with no ties to Southern California.
123
The deterioration of
KVEA’s reception among some community members climaxed in a series of Chicano activist
demonstrations which protested the station’s dismissal of Mexican American personnel,
including a brief activist takeover of the KVEA studios in Glendale.
Propelled by KVEA’s viewership growth and wishing to utilize their purchase of
WKAQ-2 San Juan and its namesake Telemundo studios to the fullest, the Telemundo network
led by CEO Henry Silverman and Reliance financier Saul Steinberg, neither of whom had TV
broadcast experience, established a prime-time schedule emphasizing shows popular with East
Coast Puerto Rican and Cuban audiences. The top-down, network-wide changes hurt KVEA’s
viewership in the Mexican-dominant L.A. TV market. By early 1987 KVEA-52 had picked up
nearly 40 percent of the Southern Californian Latino TV audience but a year into the network’s
streamlined programming schedule the station’s viewership dropped to 19 percent of the
market.
124
By 1989 management admitted KVEA “suffered” from absorption into Telemundo.
“KVEA’s goal is to provide programming for the Hispanic population of Los Angeles which is
predominantly Mexican.” The station struggled because its parent network had to consider New
York’s Puerto Rican and Miami’s Cuban audiences in providing “programming for the larger
U.S. Hispanic population.”
125

123
Niedermeyer, “1986 Mercedes 300E And the Birth Of Telemundo.”
124
Victor Valle, “KVEA Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (February 25, 1987), G-10; Quintana, “A
cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA,” La Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-9.
125
KVEA General Manager Stephen Levin quoted in Quintana, “A cuatro años de la fundación de KVEA,” La
Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguía, 8-9.

229

In addition, the network’s corporatization unleashed turmoil within the management
hierarchy as the KVEA experiment became the national Telemundo network project. Although
KVEA President Joe Wallach and General Manager Paul Niedermeyer had first raised Steinberg
and Silverman’s interest in Spanish TV, Wallach’s high expenditures at the station led to
“corporate dog-fighting” between the former Globo TV executive and the Wall Street venture
capitalists. According to Niedermeyer, Wallach “unilaterally initiated” the “massive cost
overruns” that prevented the station from fully translating its growing ratings into profits,
drawing Silverman and Steinberg’s ire. By April 1987, only two years since KVEA’s founding,
Silverman asked Wallach to resign as station president.
126
Anticipating the consequences of
Wallach’s financial decisions, Niedermeyer had already stepped down as general manager and
jumped at the chance to escape KVEA’s “brewing political troubles,” by moving north to help
start Telemundo’s new KSTS-48 station in San José.
127

However, it was the sudden departure of Frank Cruz – KVEA’s most visible Mexican
American executive officer – which first caught the attention L.A. area Latino community
organizers. Cruz had been at KVEA since its debut, first as vice president of community and

126
The “key founder and spark plug” of KVEA and Telemundo’s creation, Wallach’s ex pensive programming
decisions played a significant role in Silverman calling for his departure. Upon leaving, Wallach said his “initial
goal for KVEA in Los Angeles was to serve the Spanish-speaking people of Los Angeles” and hoped to continue
working with the community. Elizabeth Jensen, “Telemundo agrees to file for Chapter 11,” Wall Street Journal
(Aug. 2, 1993), B-8; Nancy Rivera Brooks, “People” L.A. Times (March 17, 1987), F-3; “1986 Mercedes 300E and
The Birth Of Telemundo”; Niedermeyer, “The True Story of the Founding of KVEA and Telemundo, Not the
Fabrications of “Straight Out of Barrio Hollywood – The Adventures of Telemundo Co-founder Frank H Cruz,”
Curbside Classic (June 26, 2019), (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/update-on-the-sites-problems/).
127
Niedermeyer, “1986 Mercedes 300E And The Birth Of Telemundo.” After successfully negotiating Telemundo’s
purchase of part-time Spanish TV station and NetSpan affiliate KSTS-48 in San Jose as its second Californian
affiliate during the summer of 1987, Niedermeyer moved to the Bay Area to guide that station as its general
manager during its relaunching. Although he missed KVEA’s excitement, Niedermeyer much preferred to run a
“smaller show” at KSTS and generate profits beginning with the station’s November 1, 1987, launch while
remaining under-budget. “Ole! Latino TV outlets bullish,” Television/Radio Age, vol. 34, no. 26 (July 24, 1989), 42.
Niedermeyer later helped coordinate KSTS’s efforts to raise relief money for victims of the October 1989 Loma
Prieta earthquake, see “Telemaratón ‘Dale la mano,’ de KSTS, recauda $100 mil para víctimas del terremoto,” La
Opinión (Nov. 26, 1989), Teleguia, 13.

230

public affairs before rising to general manager in March 1987. In February 1989 a tight-lipped
Cruz shocked station personnel by unexpectedly announcing he was leaving the station. Cruz’s
successor was media sales executive Stephen Levin.
128

The removal of Mexican American news staff increased under the Levin regime. In late
May 1989 Levin fired news director Bob Navarro after only 10 months on the job. Although
Levin provided few public comments on the high-profile dismissal, a combination of declining
ratings for VEA Noticias and Navarro’s emphasis on local news relevant for Latinos in Southern
California influenced the termination. Levin replaced the veteran Chicano newsman with
Roberto Soto, a Cuban American with no ties to the Latino community in greater Los Angeles.
Network executives wanted Navarro to save Telemundo money by spending airtime during the
local newscast on stories like the spring 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests. Unlike local
stories requiring reporters and cameramen to conduct research and go out in the field, the
broadcasting of international news items like the Tiananmen Square protests was cheap since the
station could simply broadcast licensed footage and news reports sent to it by Telemundo
through its corporate agreement with CNN. KVEA management thus deviated from covering
stories directly affecting Southern California Latino viewers to instead focusing on generating
profits as cheaply as possible by following mainstream English-language TV practices.
Further evidence of this corporate-centered cost-cutting can be seen in additional
dismissals of L.A. area Latino talent. Besides letting Navarro go, Levin also dismissed two other
Latino news editors, including Ray Díaz, the reporter who coordinated coverage of the 1986 San

128
USC Journalism Professor Félix Gutiérrez remarked at the time “that Cruz was probably the first Latino
journalist since the late Times columnist and KMEX reporter Rubén Salazar to switch from English to Spanish
broadcast media, lending Spanish-language TV mainstream credibility.” Victor Valle, “Cruz Resignation Baffles
Some at KVEA-TV,” L.A. Times (Feb. 4, 1989), 81.

231

Salvador earthquakes.
129
The non-renewal of VEA Noticias’s Mexican-born, U.S.-educated co-
anchor Alberto Aguilar also drew negative press attention, particularly when Levin gave the
explanation that it was customary for TV stations to renew and not renew on-air personnel.
130
By
Labor Day 1989 Soto revamped the KVEA newscast, renaming it Noticiero 52, reducing the
main news anchors to one person, and replacing the set’s light-colored Mesoamerican aesthetic
with a simple gray pastel background. In a subtle move meant to imitate the area’s English-
language TV stations, the weather forecast changed the on-screen text for Downtown L.A. from
“Plaza Olvera” to “Centro Cívico.”
131

The change in KVEA’s newscasts is a reminder of Arlene Dávila’s point that the ideas
and meanings promoted in television are mass-mediated by various levels of corporate
interests.
132
Though Canal 52 helped expand the public sphere upon which U.S. Latino identity
was articulated and negotiated, the firing of personnel interested in using the TV medium to raise
Latino ethnic consciousness by non-local network bosses shows the limitations of the U.S.
Spanish-language TV industry in serving as community-centered, ethnic-oriented media. As an
affiliate of a larger panethnic network, KVEA-52 seemed at risk of no longer creating and
broadcasting content relevant to the particularities of Latino Southern California, an audience
dominated by ethnic Mexican viewers but also featuring a growing proportion of Central
American viewers.

129
Victor Valle, “KVEA Shakeup Fuels Debate at Latino Station,” L.A. Times (June 2, 1989), D-12; “Telemundo’s
KVEA Replaces Staffers,” Variety (June 7, 1989), 53.
130
Aguilar was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and educated at California State University Northridge. Before his work
at KVEA, Aguilar was a broadcast journalist at radio station KALI-AM and KMEX-34. Jaime Olivares, “Gerente
del Canal 52 se niega a comentar caso de Alberto Aguilar,” La Opinión (Sept. 21, 1989), 3.
131
Veteran broadcast journalist Fernando Escandón – who hosted KMEX-34’s opening broadcast on September 28,
1962 – anchored the new Noticiero 52 beginning September 4, 1989. Although the main news set’s color scheme
gave it a sedate look, Noticiero 52 also began showing reporters delivering stories in front of a small, but busy
newsroom. Noticiero 52 (Sept. 4, 1989), Cassette 25090, NAPA Collection, FTVA, UCLA.
132
Dávila, Latinos, Inc., 153-158.

232

The responses of advocacy groups such as Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) to the
reduction of KVEA/Telemundo’s Mexican American personnel offer an indication of how some
of the Latino viewing public received these events. Although the extent to which MALDEF and
NHMC represented sentiments among KVEA’s viewers is unclear, the loss of nearly half of the
station’s overall audience between 1987-1989 suggests a significant portion of the station’s
televidentes were dissatisfied with the top-down programming changes that were less tailored for
the ethnic Mexican viewers who formed the majority of its audience. Bob Navarro affirmed that
“KVEA’s viewership is 90 percent Mexican and Mexican American, but this station gives
nothing back to the community at the leadership level.” The Cuban American background of
Navarro’s replacement, part of a larger “Cubanization” trend occurring in Spanish-language
media nationwide, drew significant fire from the advocacy groups and other community
commentators.
133

The string of Mexican American dismissals from KVEA and the lack of Mexican
American network executives at Telemundo hurt the station’s reputation among some segments
of the L.A. Latino community during the summer of 1989. On June 5 approximately thirty
university students and community organizers protested outside KVEA’s Glendale offices to
draw attention to the station’s employment practices, the first of many. Raul Ruíz, a veteran of
the Chicano movement and a Chicano Studies Professor at California State University
Northridge, organized some of his students into the Mexican Coalition for the Improvement of
Mass Media (MCIMM) to pressure KVEA’s management. By the end of the month, the

133
MALDEF President Antonia Hernandez said, “It’s an affront to our community that they feel they can bring
people in who do not reflect the community.” Valle, “KVEA Shakeup,” L.A. Times (June 2, 1989), D-12;
“Telemundo’s KVEA Replaces Staffers,” Variety (June 7, 1989), 53. Roberto Soto was appointed KVEA news
director in summer 1989, see Wilkinson, 132-133. KVEA did not cover the protests in its newscasts.

233

MCIMM and other Latino groups protested at KVEA and demanded that Levin step down as
general manager as well as replace six of its senior-level managers with Mexicans or Mexican
Americans.
134

While the departure of half of KVEA’s overall audience signaled one form of viewer
disapproval with the station, the dialogue between KVEA/Telemundo and the Mexican
American activist groups demonstrated the active ways in which the station’s audience pushed
back against a mass-mediated Latino identity which failed to account for the sensitivities of the
Los Angeles area’s ethnic Mexican population. Telemundo Chief Operating Officer Donald
Raider met with Ruíz and the other activists for more than three hours but stated that neither the
network nor the station could guarantee hiring only Mexicans or Mexican Americans. “I would
like for the coalition to realize the difficulty of finding qualified talent to fill those positions.”
Raider offered only a vague promise to hire more Latino managers, but the MCIMM activists did
not want KVEA/Telemundo to hire non-ethnic Mexicans for staff and executive positions.
135

Accusing KVEA and Telemundo of discriminating against Mexicans, Ruíz and MCIMM
threatened to sue and seek revocation of the station’s FCC license for failing to serve the public
interest.
136

Amid the protests, KVEA/Telemundo management and ownership constantly revealed
their lack of understanding of the Southern California Mexican American community. When
defending KVEA’s programming and its increased hiring of Cuban American personnel, Levin

134
The late Raul Ruiz was a photographer for the La Raza magazine, taking a famous picture of the Silver Dollar
Bar in the moments after Rubén Salazar was killed inside. Ruiz passed away on June 13, 2019. “Former journalist,
Chicano activist, professor at CSUN Raul Ruiz dies at age 78,” Antelope Valley Press (June 17, 2019),
(https://www.avpress.com/news/former-journalist-chicano-activist-professor-at-csun-raul-ruiz-
dies/article_eeaaebde-90b6-11e9-bd3e-236cb904d553.html); Victor Valle, “Protestors Seek KVEA Exec’s Ouster,”
L.A. Times (June 15, 1989), H-1; Victor Valle, “Community Coalition Threats Compromise KVEA’s Future,” L.A.
Times (June 30, 1989), E-19.
135
Valle, “Community Coalition,” L.A. Times (June 30, 1989), E-19.
136
Valle, “Community Coalition,” L.A. Times (June 30, 1989), E-19.

234

glossed over the cultural and social differences between Cuban and Mexican Americans,
affirming “NBC produces on both coasts. Is anybody complaining about that?”
137
Telemundo
CEO Silverman flew into Los Angeles in July and August in an attempt to end the protests,
which were drawing the attention of broadcast industry journals. Sidestepping the more militant
MCIMM altogether, Silverman met with the business professional-oriented, Pasadena-based
National Hispanic Media Coalition and agreed to add two Latinos to the network’s board of
directors. Despite being a Spanish-language TV network which made its money from U.S.
Latinos and which presented itself as their advocate, the Telemundo board did not include any
Latinos prior to the protests despite. However, Silverman did not promise to hire Mexicans or
Mexican Americans at the Glendale-based local station.
138

The backlash against KVEA/Telemundo’s insensitivity to the majority ethnic Mexican
character of its audience climaxed in the brief but dramatic September 20, 1989, activist protest
and takeover of the station. During MCIMM’s sixth protest against the station’s personnel
practices, the activists led bilingual chants of saying “Don’t watch KVEA,” and “Mexicans yes –
Cubans no.” Unexpectedly, the thirty protestors rushed inside the station with their picket signs.
Professor Ruíz and ten of his students made it inside into the off-air news set shouting “KVEA
racists!” while a group of KVEA employees closed the newsroom doors. The takeover was brief,

137
When defending the high percentage of Cuban American personnel at KVEA a nd throughout the network, Levin
ironically explained most of Telemundo’s programming was targeted towards Mexican Americans with 65% of the
network’s content being imported from Mexico. Levin quoted in “Professor leads boycott of Los Angeles Spanish
stations,” Broadcasting (July 31, 1989), 36, American Radio History.
138
The first Latinos on the Telemundo board of directors were Cuban American Carlos Barba (former general
manager of New York-area WNJU-47) and Mexican American Roland Hernández, president of the Plaza de la Raza
in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles (as well as managing partner at a Dallas-based TV station). Barba became a major
executive at both Telemundo and Univision throughout the 1990s. Aleene MacMinn, “Morning Report,” L.A. Times
(July 20, 1989), E-2. Despite the headway, NHMC’s President Armando Duron affirmed “There is a campaign afoot
against Mexican Americans, despite all public denials. It seems entirely counterproductive to decimate the Mexican
American staff.” Felicia Paik, “Latino Group Urges Channel 52 Ad Ban,” L.A. Times (Sept. 8, 1989). E-16.

235

with station staff convincing Ruíz and the MCIMM activists to resume their protest outside when
the Glendale police arrived. No arrests were made. Levin locked himself inside his office.
139

The protests against KVEA/Telemundo ultimately faded away and may have been more
representative of a very informed and very vocal minority rather than the larger Latino viewing
audience, but combined with the station’s overall declining viewership as network executives
emphasized a single programming schedule for all Latino viewers across the U.S. it is clear that
the 1989 KVEA protests are indicative of broader viewer frustration with the station.
140

Ultimately, as media scholar Kenton T. Wilkinson notes, the MCIMM and NHMC protests did
little to change KVEA’s trajectory.
141
Indeed, even long-established KMEX faced similar
problems as Mexican-financed SIN was replaced by White American-owned, Cuban-led
Univision during the same time, but the continued primetime prominence of Mexican telenovelas
kept most of the station’s audience intact and allowed it to continue dominating the L.A. area
Spanish-language TV market.
However, the KVEA protests demonstrate the limits of U.S. Spanish-language TV’s
power. Spanish-language television could create a broader U.S. Latino constituency out of the
different ethnic communities watching it – such as Mexicans, Salvadorans, Cubans, Puerto
Ricans, etc. – but viewers did not just absorb programming content and ideological messages
because corporate managers put it on the schedule. In other words, ethnic Mexican viewers in
metro L.A. would not just watch and become dependable consumers of whatever was on KVEA

139
Santiago O’Donnell, “Protest Boils Over at KVEA-TV,” L.A. Times (Sept. 21, 1989), G-9. Noticiero 52 did not
report on the MCIMM protest on either Sept. 20 (Cassette 25338) or Sept. 21 (Cassette 25353), NAPA Collection,
FTVA, UCLA.
140
Despite the advocate’s criticisms, evidence suggests some televidentes were far less aggrieved than the advocacy
groups. One Latina unconvinced KVEA used discriminatory employment practices remarked MCIMM and other
groups “have spent so much energy protesting the dominance of Anglo culture in Los Angeles” but “would do well
to recognize the tendency in themselves and not interchange the labels of Hispanic and Mexican American.” Maria
Elena Gil letter to the editor, quoted “KVEA-TV Ethnic Dispute,” L.A. Times (June 17, 1989), J-4D.
141
Wilkinson, Spanish-Language Television in the U.S., 133.

236

just because it was in Spanish. SIN’s expansion into East Coast Puerto Rican and Cuban markets
in the early 1970s similarly struggled initially when executives mainly aired imported
Telesistema/Televisa programming from Mexico as part of the primetime schedule on its New
York and Miami stations.
142
To create a U.S. Latino constituency, whether as a political or
consumer bloc, mass-mediated appeals to Spanish-speaking viewers needed to be cognizant of
regional and ethnic cultural differences. Forming an imagined community through Spanish-
language television required careful engagement and understanding of viewers – broadcasting in
Spanish by itself was not enough to create a Latino public sphere.

Conclusion
KVEA-52’s emergence as the second Spanish-language TV station in metro L.A.
illustrated the prolific growth of the Latino community in the United States and the reinforcing
of Spanish as a language of U.S. cultural life. In successfully sustaining a second full-time
Spanish TV station, the Southern Californian Latino community showed its growing economic
power, a phenomenon White American Wall Street financiers noted when choosing the Los
Angeles market as the base from which to develop Telemundo. Canal 52’s initial inroads with
viewers were achieved by offering content to distinguish itself from KMEX, such as coverage
focusing on Southern California’s burgeoning Central American community, an increased look
at local Latino social issues, and experimentation with an ethnic-oriented Spanish-format talk
show.
Amid the demographically expanding and intraethnically diversifying Southern
California Latino population, VEA Noticias, Noticiero 52, and Cara a Cara provided spaces for

142
Mora, Making Hispanics, 135-136.

237

deliberation of the local U.S. Latino experience in a broadened televised and mass-mediated
public sphere. Successfully presenting content for ethnic Mexican viewers and the growing
Central American population helped the station claim 40 percent of the Latino viewing public
only two years after its 1985 debut. However, the station’s rapid integration into the Telemundo
Network it helped establish resulted in the loss of its autonomy and the reduction of its Mexican
American personnel and elicited viewer rejection in the form of protests and the departure of half
of the station’s audience. In actively negotiating the content aimed at them, Latino viewers
demonstrated they would not just passively accept anything the station threw at them. The
primarily ethnic Mexican population of Latino L.A. best supported KVEA when it broadcast to
them on their terms rather than when White American network executives willfully ignored the
regional cultural differences between different Latino groups. Ultimately, KVEA-52
strengthened the overall U.S. Spanish-language TV project by showing the medium’s vitality
with an expanded public sphere for Latino viewers as Southern California and the nation
underwent significant demographic transformation.

238

Conclusion
“Being Latino in the U.S., …the best of both worlds.”
1

– Late 1990s Telemundo appeal to national advertisers

When fulltime Spanish-language television debuted in Southern California at the height
of the Space Age, the Latino population in the five-county Los Angeles TV market numbered
nearly 756,500 people or 9.75 percent of the region’s total population according to the 1960
Census, with ethnic Mexicans forming almost all of Los Angeles County’s nearly 577,000
Latinos.
2
Thirty years later KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 faced a profoundly different TV market as
Latinos in the five Southern California counties numbered just under 5 million, representing just
under half of the L.A. TV market’s total population by 1990.
3
Although not all of these millions
of people spoke Spanish or watched Spanish-language television, they represented a significant
market that KVEA and KMEX could appeal to with their programming, particularly when one
considers the 1990 Census’s finding that 78 percent of the national U.S. Latino community spoke

1
“Telemundo: Mira Adelante” Corporate Advertising Packet, (undated, late 1990s), Box 1, Federico Subervi
Collection, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at
Austin
2
“Table P-1, General Characteristics of the Population, by Census Tracts: 1960,” on pages 25 and 29, in Census
Tracts – Los Angeles-Long Beach, Calif., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, U.S. Census Bureau and ““Table
P-1, General Characteristics of the Population, by Census Tracts: 1960,” on page 13, Census Tracts – San
Bernardino-Riverside-Ontario, Calif., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, both (Washington, D.C: U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, 1961). 7,751,616 people lived in the five-county region with Spanish-surnamed people enumerated in
Los Angeles County (576,716), San Bernardino County (60,177), Orange County (52,576), and Riverside County
(36,224). Spanish-surname data directly from the 1960 Census is not available for Ventura County, but Turner and
Allen report that Latinos made up 20 percent (approximately 39,828 people) of the county’s total population of
199,138 inhabitants. Eugene Turner and James P. Allen, “Ethnic Populations in Southern California Counties,” in
The Changing Ethnic Quilt of Southern California: Ethnic Distributions in 2010 and Changes 1990 -2010 (Self-
Published Ebook, 2010),
(http://www.csun.edu/~hfgeg005/eturner/images/Books/LAupdate2010/3CoPopTable_1990_2010.pdf), based on
James Allen and Eugene Turner, The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California (Northridge, CA:
CSUN Center for Geographical Studies, 1997).
3
“Hispanic Population Growth and Dispersion Across U.S. Counties, 1980-2014,” Pew Research Center (Sept. 6,
2016), (https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/hispanic-population-by-county/). As per the Pew
Research Center and the 1990 Census, the total number of people in the L.A. TV market were 9,752,411 with
Latinos numbering: Los Angeles (3,351,242), Orange (564,828), San Bernardino (378,582), Riverside (307,514),
and Ventura counties (176,952).

239

Spanish at home.
4
Reflecting on the role of Spanish as a public language, historian Rosina
Lozano describes the language’s vitality in the new millennium in light of the “apparent in the
many opportunities to consume Spanish-language media.”
5
With so many Spanish-speakers in
the U.S., the promotion of consumption habits, ethnic consciousness, and participation in the
U.S. political process on Spanish-language television takes on greater implications for the
cultural life of Southern California and the nation at large.
Prolific Latino population growth in Southern California was illustrative of patterns
occurring throughout the nation, but not everyone was enthused about the region’s dramatic
demographic changes. By the time KMEX and KVEA were claiming millions of viewers and
becoming increasingly competitive with their English-language counterparts in various
primetime metrics on the local level, on the geopolitical level the communist Eastern bloc was in
collapse and neoliberal economic restructuring in the U.S. was on the rise. The U.S.’s victory in
winning the Cold War was a significant political achievement, but in metropolitan Los Angeles
the end of military competition with the Soviet Union meant the acceleration of the region’s
deindustrialization. With the communist threat diminished, the Southern California defense
industry downsized, initiating a marked economic slowdown in the Southland. The growth of the
Latino community, part of the larger “browning” of California amid an also increasing Asian
American population, drew the anxiety of many White Americans feeling the pressures of the
economic downturn of the early 1990s.

4
“Table 3 - Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population: 1960 to 1990,” U.S. Census
Bureau (March 9, 1999), (https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab03.html), “Figure 1
Hispanic Population: 1930 to 2050,” and “Figure 12 Language Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for
Selected Hispanic Groups: 1990,” in We, the American Hispanics, Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics Branch, U.S.
Census Bureau (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1993), 2 and 7.
5
Lozano, An American Language, 263.

240

While many Californians reacted to the profound social and demographic transformation
of Greater Los Angeles with varying levels of acceptance, indifference, or anxiety, several
mainly White American conservative groups rose up to resist these changes. The 1990s in
California were defined by a xenophobic backlash against the increased proportion of people of
color in the state in general, but the animus was most consistently applied to Latino immigrants
in particular with one anti-immigrant law after another. The most controversial of the period’s
laws was the Proposition 187 voter initiative in 1994 which restricted undocumented immigrants
from most state services.
The two Spanish-language television stations in Los Angeles combined forces to resist
Prop 187, increasingly delivering discourses promoting a U.S.-based Latino identity celebrating
viewers’ Latin American ancestry while also emphasizing their civic responsibilities to
participate in the U.S. political process as informed voters. KMEX-34 and KVEA-52’s coverage
of Prop 187 before and after the November 1994 general election consistently promoted the loyal
and hard-working Americanness of their ethnic Mexican/Central American viewers. Such
discourses, anthropologist Arlene Dávila affirms, were vague enough to apply to almost any
ethnic group but reflected marketing trends from the 1970s and 1980s framing Latinos
specifically as uniquely family-oriented, work-driven, and quintessentially American.
6

Although almost 60 percent of California voters supported Prop 187, KMEX and KVEA
promoted the need for Latinos to stand in political solidarity with one another, emphasized the
need for Latinos to vote, and strongly encouraged permanent residents to file naturalization
papers so they could exercise their voice by voting against the systems which oppressed them.
This was a departure from the ostensible objectivity of mainstream English-language television,

6
Dávila, Latinos Inc., 90-101.

241

but as much as KMEX and KVEA expanded the Latino public sphere and promoted an
acculturating form of U.S. Latino identity (rather than assimilation), neither station was owned
by Latinos. In the mid-1990s both Univision and Telemundo were both White American-owned,
with Univision CEO Jerold Perenchio, a member of the increasingly anti-immigrant Republican
Party, donating sizable sums to Prop 187’s most visible proponent, Republican Governor Pete
Wilson.
7
When criticized by activists after Telemundo KVEA-52 broke the story, Perenchio
merely said he donated to Wilson because he was a friend and had not donated specifically to
Prop 187. In many ways little had changed since the 1960s and 1970s when KMEX provided a
public sphere for Mexican/Chicano community organizers while its management and owners
(such as Daniel Villanueva and Frank Fouce, Jr.) enthusiastically supported GOP political
leaders (like Ronald Reagan, another practitioner of White fragility identity politics) who
ardently opposed the social justice goals of the same Mexican/Chicano activists they brought on
the air. The owners of private businesses have every right to affiliate with political organizations
of their choice. However, it is more than bad optics for the White American owners of Spanish-
language TV stations and networks to use the money they make from Latino viewers (especially
migrants) to provide significant financial support to individuals whose policies make the lives of
many Latinos much more difficult through law and immigration enforcement harassment and
other forms racial discrimination. Perenchio’s metaphorical tap dance with reactionary

7
Daniel M. Weintraub, “California Elections: Wilson’s Top 20 Donors Give $3 Million to Drive,” L.A. Times (Nov.
1, 1994), A-18; and Patrick J. McDonnell, “California Elections: Proposition 187,” L.A. Times (Nov. 8, 1994), A-3,
in Folder 12, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian. In 1986 U.S. Courts found the Azcárraga family’s indirect ownership of
KMEX-34 and its sister stations unlawful on account of Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s son, Emilio “El Tigre” Azcárraga
Milmo, being a foreign national. SIN was sold to Hallmark Cards in 1986 and reorganized the network into
Univision. Although Univision continued its partnership with the Azcárragas/Televisa, the reorganized network no
longer was underwritten by them and faced numerous financial struggles in the following years before Jerold
Perenchio, an experienced film industry and television financier, purchased it through his Chartwell Group.
Although “El Tigre” Azcárraga and other Mexican nationals continued holding a stake in Univision, the network
and its stations were overwhelmingly White American-owned after 1986.

242

politicians who revived their sagging careers by harassing undocumented immigrants is a
reminder that Spanish-language television in the U.S. has often functioned more as just another
investment opportunity for elite White American capitalists rather than as an ethnic-oriented
instrument for Latinos to fight back against the various hierarchies of power subjugating them as
a minoritized group.
As problematic as this contradiction is, it is also true that KMEX and KVEA’s content
created a mass-mediated U.S. Latino ethnic identity acknowledging viewers’ cultural heritage as
a positive as it pushed for their coalescing into a larger and active ethnic, consumer, and political
bloc. Even before the passage of Prop 187, KMEX and KVEA worked in concert with Spanish-
language radio and print media to warn Latinas and Latinos about the danger of the xenophobic
ballot measure. After its passage, Univision KMEX-34 in particular promoted citizenship
naturalization drives among Latinos to protect their political rights and to vote in concert against
racist politicians and their policies. KMEX-34 and KVEA-52’s community advocacy helped
plant the seeds for the political transformation of California as more Latino citizens meant more
Latino voters. According to political scientist David Ayón, opposition to Prop 187 mobilized
Latino Californians to vote against Republican politicians espousing Pete Wilson’s anti-
immigrant ideologies, leading to the state’s transformation into a solid stronghold of the
Democratic Party.
8
Latinas and Latinos in California did not need KMEX, KVEA, or other
Spanish-language media necessarily to oppose Prop 187, but the presence of these outlets played

8
David Ayón, “Mobilizing Latino Immigrant Integration: From IRCA to the Ya Es Hora Citizenship Campaign,
1987-2007,” Research Paper Series on Latino Immigrant Civic and Political Participation, No. 1, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars-Mexico Institute (January 2009),
(https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/ayonpaperfina_feb032009.pdf).

243

a significant role in organizing Latinos to resist Prop 187 specifically and the general anti-Latino
hatred it represented more broadly.
9

While a federal court prevented Prop 187 from becoming law by determining it to be
unconstitutional on the grounds it infringed on the jurisdiction of the U.S. government over
immigration matters, the anti-immigrant animus – usually expressed specifically as anti-Mexican
racism but also directed at Central Americans – lived on throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
The September 11, 2001, terror tragedy placed the nation in a hysteria on all things related to
national security, including immigration issues. By late 2005 KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 faced a
situation profoundly reminiscent of the lead-up to Prop 187 a decade earlier after conservative
Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed and then passed a draconian
immigration bill elevating unauthorized entry into the United States from a misdemeanor into a
felony and also called for U.S.-Mexican border fencing and the deportation of undocumented
immigrants held by local authorities. Sponsored by a congressman from a suburban Wisconsin
congressional district far-removed from the realities of the border region, House Resolution 4437
– also known as the Sensenbrenner Bill after its main author – sparked mass demonstrations in
Los Angeles and all across the nation as the U.S. Senate debated the measure in spring 2006.
While scholars have noted that Spanish-language radio took the lead in mobilizing mass
Latino opposition to H.R. 4437, it is important to remember Spanish-language TV stations also
played a significant role in information Latinas and Latinos about the law’s contents. KMEX and
KVEA both provided space for community organizers to communicate their concerns directly to
viewers as mass demonstrations gained momentum in late March 2006. While the 2006

9
Gustavo Arellano, “Prop. 187 forced a generation to put fear aside and fight. It transformed California, and me,”
L.A. Times (Oct. 29, 2019), (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/proposition-187-california-pete-
wilson-essay).

244

immigration reform marches reached their climax on the one-day “Day Without an Immigrant”
strike on May 1, the largest demonstrations occurred on April 10, 2006 with actions in 102 cities
across the country. Coverage on KMEX and KVEA lasted the entirety of the day, interrupting
the usual schedule of daytime talk shows and evening telenovelas. Both stations gave community
organizers and immigrant rights activists such as radio host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo hours of
televised on-air exposure to encourage U.S. Latinos to mobilize and vote against proponents of
H.R. 4437 while reminding undocumented Latinos of their rights even if they weren’t citizens.
10

As in 1994, citizenship and voter registration drives followed on the two stations.
My first exposure to Spanish-language television occurred in the home of my
grandparents in Heroica Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, when I was a little boy, but on the evening of
April 10, 2006, my understanding of Spanish-language TV changed permanently. I was an
undergraduate at the University of Arizona when I returned from that day’s immigration reform
march held in Tucson and was glued to both Telemundo KHRR-40 and Univision KUVE-34 on
the TV in one of my dormitory’s common areas.
11
In my view at the time, Univision and
Telemundo were no longer just channels from which to watch telenovelas in the U.S. – they were
channels for all Latinas and Latinos as they emphasized our ties to the United States and our
contributions to this country. Watching the hundreds of thousands of people who converged on
streets and plazas around the nation profoundly informed my understanding of myself – that
day’s immigration march was the first time I participated in a mass demonstration – as nativist
fervor gripped Arizona in the years following these marches. H.R. 4437 was defeated, although

10
Beth Baker-Cristales, “Mediated Resistance: The Construction of Neoliberal Citizenship in the Immigrant Rights
Movement,” Latino Studies vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring, 2009): 60-82; and Alfonso Gonzales, “The 2006 Mega Marchas in
Greater Los Angeles: Counter-Hegemonic Moment and the Future of El Migrante Struggle,” Latino Studies vol. 7,
no. 1 (Spring, 2009): 30-59.
11
Prior to 2003, Tucson was served by Phoenix-based Univision affiliate KTVW-33. Although licensed in Tucson,
KUVE-34 essentially repeats all of KTVW-33’s programming, including its newscasts.

245

efforts to pass a comprehensive immigration and border security bill were ultimately
unsuccessful even now fifteen years later.
What is most salient from this history, though, is how Spanish-language TV contributed
to efforts to mobilize a broad Latino public against punitive laws and the racist hatred
undergirding such supposedly color-blind laws. Not all of the people tuning into the different
regional Telemundo and Univision affiliates necessarily spoke Spanish, but when I spoke with
my classmates I sensed there was a power from the images of the mass demonstrations broadcast
over television as one-by-one my friends mentioned how watching coverage of the marches on
Spanish-language TV affected them. What a difference from the days when KMEX-34 and
KVEA-52 pioneered televised Spanish-language broadcast journalism to cover local issues
affecting Latinos in Los Angeles – now Latinas and Latinos all across the country were being
mobilized by the Spanish-language TV medium. What would Rubén Salazar say about such a
development? My continuation of this project in the future will explore how KMEX-34 and
KVEA-52’s coverage and responses to Prop 187 and H.R. 4437 expanded the Latino public
sphere in Southern California and beyond in the 1990s and early 2000s to more fully historicize
these media outlets’ contributions to Latino cultural and racial formation.
The active social mobilization KMEX and KVEA promoted against Prop 187 in 1994
and then H.R. 4437 in 2006 represented the evolution of their long-standing efforts fostering a
U.S.-centered Latino ethnic and cultural identity through the creation of public spheres for
Latinos by utilizing Spanish as a public language of consumption, entertainment, and
information. Indeed, when Spanish-language TV debuted in Los Angeles the Latino community
was a heavily minoritized population composed almost entirely of ethnic Mexican people, but as
the Latino population grew – still overwhelmingly from Mexico but with increasing proportions

246

of Central American migrants – KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 adapted to the changing contexts of
the times. More than anything, advertising revenue considerations and an attempt to round up as
many Spanish-speaking viewers as possible to their stations shaped both of channels’ articulation
of a U.S.-based Latino identity. To make their programming appeal to a broader base of
televidentes hispanohablantes, both stations broadcast discourses unifying the different Latin
American nationalities into a singular, even if rather amorphous, Latino identity shaped by
viewers’ shared lived experiences in the U.S. and united by their shared Spanish language
heritage. Sociologist Griselda Cristina Mora puts it best in saying that by 1990 Univision, as well
as Telemundo, “developed various strategies and programs designed to promote the idea of a
Hispanic consumer market, a Hispanic vote and – most important – a Hispanic community.”
12

Mora has noted that the two Southern California stations more clearly and deliberately
advanced notions of a larger U.S. Latino market and political constituency as Spanish-language
television expanded nationally after the 1970s, but as has been demonstrated Spanish-format TV
in Los Angeles promoted a form of this U.S. Latino identity from its first days. Before KMEX’s
Spanish International Network corporate parent began taking consideration of Puerto Rican and
Cuban viewing trends as SIN expanded into East Coast TV markets, Canal 34 already framed
much of its L.A.-produced programming in panethinic U.S. Latino terms, appealing to viewers
by calling them “hispanos” or “latinos” in addition to “mexicanos.” Surviving footage from
KMEX’s Historia de Exito affirms the station emphasized Mexican cultural pride when
highlighting the success stories of local Mexican Americans. Additionally, local programming
and advertisements by and large emphasized the shared ethnicity of Spanish speakers in Greater
Los Angeles. Although KMEX’s focus on Chicano activist organizing necessarily involved an

12
Mora, Making Hispanics, 139.

247

emphasizing of ethnic Mexican solidarity, the station’s larger locally produced programming
repertoire such as Noticiero 34, Eduardo Quevedo, Rubén Salazar, Daniel Villanueva, and Pete
Moraga’s public affairs programs, and the José Feliciano Show were designed to appeal to
Spanish-speakers of all backgrounds and framed the language as a means of ethnic unity in the
context of life in the United States. Articulating a U.S.-rooted ethnic and cultural identity
through the Spanish language may have been more motivated by the need to build as a big an
audience as possible in the five-county region, but the building of a larger Latino consumer base
and political constituency went hand-in-hand with growing national efforts by advocacy groups,
bureaucrats, and marketing agencies to create a broader U.S. Latino community.
13
Much as
Benedict Anderson has noted newspapers shaped imagined national communities in the
nineteenth century, U.S. Spanish-language television in the latter twentieth century helped create
an imagined U.S. Latino community – a nation within a nation.
Spanish-language television in Los Angeles was foundational for making the medium a
significant cultural presence among U.S. Latinos coast to coast. The pioneering work of
entrepreneurs in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and San Antonio, Texas, mark the mid-1950s birth of the
medium in the U.S., but KMEX-34 after 1962 and KVEA-52 after 1985 gave their investors the
revenue and momentum to expand Spanish-language television to the national level. That the
stations’ parent networks were almost entirely owned by White Americans and a handful of
transnational Latin American industrialists by the 1990s is less significant than how KVEA and
KMEX appealed to audiences at the local level and how they acted as mass-mediated sites of
racial formation in a rapidly transforming multiethnic, metropolitan Southern California.

13
Mora, Making Hispanics, 155-169.

248

KMEX-34’s founding and financial success would not have been possible without the
participation of Mexican TV industrialist Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta as the project’s chief
financier. Although founded as a relatively economical way to generate revenue from
Telesistema Mexicano’s existing programming library in the Mexican American communities of
the greater U.S.-Mexican borderlands, Spanish-language TV in the U.S. was a significant money
loser at first. KCOR/KWEX-41 in San Antonio, the first Spanish-language TV station in the
continental U.S., teetered on dropping its Spanish format as financial losses mounted for the
independent station. “El León” Azcárraga’s underwriting of the medium’s significant financial
losses during its early years allowed for Spanish-language TV to gradually become a part of the
U.S. television media and cultural landscape. Generating success in Los Angeles – the city with
the largest concentration of Mexican American people in the country – was crucial for Spanish-
language TV to become a national project.
Indeed, Telesistema’s programming dominated KMEX’s schedule in the 1960s and for
decades later after it became Televisa. In its airing of telenovelas, sports programs from Mexico,
and films the station was very much a disseminator of a mass-mediated form of Mexican popular
culture. Telesistema, itself a product of transborder business interests and one of the foremost
examples of Mexican state capitalism during the latter twentieth century, was a powerful
influence on the new Los Angeles TV station. But as important as the Telesistema consortium
was in demonstrating the appeal of U.S. Spanish-language TV north of the U.S.-Mexican border
through the interest of viewers and advertisers in the group’s northern Mexican border town
stations, KMEX-34 was an entity that was neither fully Mexican nor fully American. The
challenges faced by KMEX-34 – and later by KVEA-52 in different historical circumstances –
during its formative years demonstrates that the transnational Mexican-funded and co-owned

249

station was more than just a Mexican TV station for ethnic Mexican people in the Los Angeles
area.
Locally produced programming on U.S. Spanish-language TV demonstrated the
medium’s dynamic as being a culturally “betwixt and between” phenomenon, but this is most
directly illustrated in the Habermasian public sphere created by newscasts and public affairs
programs on Channels 34 and 52. In the case of KMEX the station had a limited news
broadcasting tradition to draw on from Mexican television. Although news has been a part of
Mexican television since its commercial debut in 1950, the early TV news genre was little
developed by Telesistema and depended almost entirely on the on-air reading of newspaper
stories. While the news on early U.S. television in the 1950s and 1960s was usually only 15
minutes long, just like its Telesistema counterparts, experimentation with the genre at the local
and network levels increasingly made newscasts an integral part of TV. Besides helping it fulfill
its public interest obligations with the Federal Communications Commission, offering newscasts
similar in quality to those on English-language stations allowed KMEX-34 to compete for
viewers. KMEX’s early news teams imitated the practices of U.S. television by using broadcast
reporters and presented film and video footage collected from the field via the Channel 34 news
van/station wagon. The station was in ideal position to cover the Chicano social activism of the
1960s and 1970s, expanding Latinos’ public sphere by giving Chicanos a space, albeit a mass-
mediated Spanish-language space, from which to articulate and disseminate their grievances on
their own terms. Combined with KMEX-34’s coverage of the U.S. political process for Spanish-
speaking Latino viewers beginning with the U.S. election of 1964, KMEX’s efforts during the
1960s and 1970s developed broadcast journalism for Spanish-language television in the United
States. The station’s growth in viewership and ratings, with its newscasts in particular being

250

competitive with local big three network affiliates’ ratings, affirms KMEX’s success in attracting
viewers with its U.S.-shaped Spanish-language news broadcasting.
KVEA-52 similarly included news and public affairs programming, broadening Latinos’
televised public sphere in Southern California. Also obliged by the FCC to use its broadcasts for
the public interest (and motivated by a desire to compete for viewers with KMEX), Canal 52’s
news programming gave viewers an additional choice for Spanish-language TV news and helped
provide more holistic coverage of the L.A. area Latino community. In its competition for viewers
KVEA expanded Latinos’ public sphere as its informational programming covered the intra-
ethnically diversifying Latino community in new ways, such as with its on-air video telegrams
for Salvadoran American viewers after the 1986 San Salvador earthquake or when the station
created a space for Latino ethnic-oriented debates as it made daytime talk shows a successful
genre for U.S. Spanish-language TV with Maria Laria’s Cara a Cara. The high costs of these
productions hampered the station’s profits as a privately-owned concern, but the public sphere
they created for the exploration of Latino social issues clearly appealed to viewers in the Los
Angeles region as KVEA’s overall share of the Latino viewing public climbed to 40 percent by
1987.
This present study has spent much time on the news and public affairs programming
KVEA and KMEX presented because as the most consistently L.A.-produced programs on the
two stations they directly illustrate the manner in which U.S.-produced broadcasts articulated and
disseminated notions of identity and social inclusion in a minoritized U.S. Latino context.
However, leisure entertainment programming on the two stations also contributed to Latino
cultural formation in Southern California. Indeed, imported bullfights from Mexico raised
KMEX-34’s profile during its early months on the air as local advertisers ran commercials

251

during the fights and as businesses used the televised sport to draw in customers. Audience
reception to this type of programming becomes clear when one considers how Atlantic Dodge
enjoyed a packed house of corrida de toro aficionados who were then more motivated to buy
cars from the establishment. Despite occupying an ultra high frequency signal that required
viewers to purchase an expensive converter box for their TVs, Canal 34 leisure programming
attracted a significant audience of Latinos nostalgic for the sport as well as White American
suburbanites interested in watching something mainstream stations would not air. As journalist
Rubén Salazar quipped, “What happens at these taco parties is pure Americana.”
14
Telenovelas
and other imported Mexican fare consistently brought in scores of televidentes hispanohablantes
to watch KMEX’s primetime lineups.
Twenty years later when KVEA-52 debuted in the context of a demographically
expanding Latino population, the station made significant inroads with viewers by offering them
an alternative to the imported Mexican telenovelas on KMEX. Rather than the latest Televisa
novela, KVEA viewers could enjoy different Mexican movies during primetime as well as
Spanish dubs of popular U.S. films and telenovelas produced in Puerto Rico, Venezuela,
Colombia, and Argentina.
15
The offering of other types of Spanish-language entertainment,
including televising of local sporting events hosted by popular sportscaster Jaime Jarrín such as
L.A. Dodger games highlights, full preseason L.A. Raiders football games, and competitions
between East Los Angeles high school football teams helped attract viewers.
16
The growth of
KVEA’s audience to nearly half of the Los Angeles area Latino TV market in just two year after

14
Rubén Salazar, “Ole! Pass the Tacos – Hey, Down in Front,” L.A. Times (May 20, 1963), D-15.
15
Besides telenovelas, some of my earliest memories of Spanish-language TV include watching the Spanish-dubbed
Volver al Futuro (Back to the Future) and La Guerra de las Galaxias: El Imperio Contraataca (Star Wars: The
Empire Strikes Back) on Tucson’s Telemundo KHRR-40 at my grandparents’ home in Heroica Nogales, Mexico, on
different weekday evenings.
16
Victor Valle, “KVEA Gains in Spanish-Speaking Market,” L.A. Times (Feb. 25, 1987), G-10.

252

debuting demonstrates TV viewers’ positive reception to these appeals. Similarly, the massive
loss of KVEA’s audience after programming began emphasizing mainly Cuban and Puerto Rican
content as the station was absorbed by the Telemundo Network signals that televidentes could
demonstrate their negative reception to programming they didn’t like by switching to another
channel. Telemundo’s White American network executives learned that regional and cultural
differences among Latino viewers were important to recognize – just broadcasting something in
Spanish was not enough to attract Latino viewers in predominantly ethnic Mexican Southern
California. For both KVEA and KMEX imported Mexican and Latin American leisure
entertainment programming made up the majority of their overall schedules but worked in
tandem with their locally produced informational programming to create a U.S. Latino identity
by entertaining, informing, and educating their televidentes.
As mass-mediated sites of racial identity formation, KVEA and KMEX disseminated
discourses, imagery, and sounds celebrating Latino cultural heritage while emphasizing viewers’
positionality as individuals collectively living in the United States and shaped by its various
social, consumer, and political influences. In expanding the public sphere in which Latinas and
Latinos in the Southland could entertain and educate themselves, KMEX and KVEA reinforced
the value of the Spanish language in the lives of their viewers. Spanish-language television by
itself might not necessarily have motivated hispanohablantes to speak Spanish more often, but
Canal 34 and Canal 52 conveyed the utility of Spanish being a public language of consumption,
entertainment, information, and even political participation in the United States. In tandem with
the growth of the Latino immigrant population and other Spanish-format media, KMEX, KVEA,
and the Spanish-language television industry they ushered in strengthened the vitality of Spanish
as a language of everyday life in metropolitan Los Angeles and across the nation. The increased

253

interest on the part of corporations and politicians in reaching out to U.S. Latinos specifically via
Spanish-format television is an affirmation of the language’s public presence in American life.
The contributions of Spanish-language TV to U.S. Latino cultural formation must also be
considered in light of the medium’s limitations. At both KMEX and KVEA (as well as their
sister stations across the country) profit-seeking was the main motivator behind most of the
decisions undertaken by their owners. Indeed, the predominantly White American investors
behind the two stations (including KMEX-34 after the Azcárraga family were forced to sell their
SIN/Univision stations in 1986) were in the profit-making business rather than the
consciousness-raising business. To the extent both could be achieve great, but the emphasis was
always on the former. The U.S. and Mexican television industries’ development along a private
commercial model forced them to create programming appealing for sponsors, advertisers, and
viewers alike. While FCC obligations required the stations to use their broadcasts to serve the
public interest, KMEX and KVEA producers, managers, and owners had to balance the need for
ratings and advertising revenue in all of the programming decisions they undertook. It is this
context that Arlene Dávila reminds us to consider how concepts of identity and ideology are
curated and presented to viewers/consumers by mass media outlets seeking the greatest possible
return on their investment. This mass-mediated form of U.S. Latino ethnic conscious-building is
evident in KMEX scheduling its special program on the UFW and Teatro Campesino on a
Saturday afternoon graveyard slot and KVEA limiting Cara a Cara’s examination of Latino
issues to a daytime TV audience.
Furthermore, the dispositions of the stations’ White American owners affected the
programming viewers received on their TV screens. For example, the warm relationship between
KMEX-34 managers and owners with conservative politicians virulently opposed to the aims of

254

Latino advocacy groups served to further mass-mediate the public sphere of Spanish-language
TV. White American network executives’ ratings considerations and dissatisfaction that VEA
Noticias reporters who spent more time covering local (relevant) Latino stories rather than
following the English-language stations’ example of covering the student protests at Tiananmen
Square in Beijing (important, but not as relevant in the everyday lives of Latinos) led to KVEA’s
general manager firing News Director Bob Navarro after less than a year on the job.
17
Viewer
protests against KVEA – and later against KMEX and Univision when CEO Jerold Perenchio’s
sizable financial contributions to anti-immigrant politicians came to light – demonstrate that
televidentes were not just passive receptors of whatever content and media practices Spanish-
language television threw at them.
18

As cultural theorist Stuart Hall and media critic John Fiske remind us, viewers negotiate
with the varied meanings, images, and sounds of television in any number of ways ranging from
indifference, distracted viewing, acceptance, to even active rejection.
19
A variety of factors filter
our understanding of audience reception to television in general – including the paucity of
available ratings information, viewer letters, and independent market surveys for KMEX and
KVEA from 1960-1990 – but again, the important consideration to keep in mind is that viewers
do not just passively accept whatever television disseminates. Furthermore, the U.S. Latino
identity-building ideologies and rhetoric were not just absorbed by Southland TV viewers – they
negotiated and contested its meanings in multiple ways. KMEX and KVEA’s Spanish-language
television broadcasts – examined in the preceding pages from trade journal reporting on the

17
Victor Valle, “KVEA Shakeup Fuels Debate at Latino Station,” L.A. Times (June 2, 1989), D-12; “Telemundo’s
KVEA Replaces Staffers,” Variety (June 7, 1989), 53.
18
Mark Acosta, “Boycott over Prop. 187 urged at La Raza rally,” Long Beach Press-Enterprise, November 27,
1994, B-7, in Folder 12, Box 6, AC 1404, Smithsonian.
19
Fiske, Television Culture, 62-64; Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” 128-138.

255

stations, oral history interviews, and surviving audiovisual materials – were one of many factors
influencing U.S. Latino cultural and racial formation in twentieth century metropolitan Los
Angeles.
The general success enjoyed by KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 ironically also sheds light on
the massive challenges of ethnic-oriented television broadcasting in the United States. The
prevailing pattern for ethnic-oriented TV in the U.S. is one of financial failure, an indication of
the massive capital needed to initiate and sustain television operations. In addition, the difficulty
of providing appealing programming on a level competitive to that on mainstream TV stations
further complicates the development of ethnic-oriented TV. KMEX struggled financially in its
early years and faced many of the same challenges as L.A.’s first African American TV station,
KIIX Channel 22 which debuted in 1963 and whose owners were quoted in the local press saying
they drew inspiration from KMEX’s entry into the field. Unlike its Mexican/Latino-oriented
counterpart, however, KIIX-22 struggled appealing to African American viewers. Also located
on a UHF signal which most TVs still could not receive, KIIX had a built-in disadvantage in
developing its audience and, as an independent station, lacked a library of African American-
oriented programming to broadcast to viewers. KIIX’s reliance on live programming and
occasional old films failed to win over audiences, leading to its reformatting as a general
audience independent station (and the firing of most of its African American staff) by 1964.
20

The failed channel was White American-owned but even the African American-owned WGPR-

20
Cecil Smith, “The TV Scene: Things Get Wild on New KIIX-TV,” L.A. Times (April 5, 1963), D-20; K.M.
Richards, “KBIC-TV/22, Los Angeles CA,” The History of UHF Television
http://www.uhftelevision.com/articles/kbic.html; “KIIX Cancels Shows, Fires 35 Employees,” L.A. Times (Aug. 3,
1970), B-3.

256

62 in Detroit faced massive obstacles in being financially viable before being bought up by
CBS.
21

KMEX’s success with its viewers was enabled by the underwriting of its financial losses
by Mexican co-owner Azcárraga Vidaurreta and its economical access to existing programming
from Mexico’s sole television network. Similarly, KVEA-52 faced significant challenges as an
ethnic-oriented station broadcasting in a non-English language, but the station’s access to
Mexican, Puerto Rican, and South American programming reduced some of the capital costs
associated with drawing in viewers. Although the presence of the Azcárragas in founding and
owning KMEX/SIN at least gave ethnic Mexicans a significant role in the management of this
project, that transnational Mexican family’s dominant position in KMEX/SIN was the exception
to the rule. Besides “El León” Azcárraga and his son, the principal investors in KMEX/SIN were
White Americans (with Mexican Americans like Daniel Villanueva holding a small minority
stake in the enterprise). KVEA and Telemundo, though co-founded by Joe Wallach after his
decades of work in Brazilian TV, were also almost entirely White American-owned. Ethnic-
oriented media in the U.S. may be structured to appeal to different communities of color, but in
the case of Latino-oriented Spanish-language television in the U.S., executive leadership and
ownership of the medium has not been open to Latinos.
Although excluded from owning the medium, U.S. Latinos’ interest in Spanish-language
TV stations KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 gave the stations an audience to disseminate cultural and
racial identity-formation messages while also strengthening the role of the Spanish language in
viewers’ everyday lives. Viewers could engage with a wider world from an ethnic-based
perspective through the public spheres Spanish-language TV provided. Furthermore, Canal 34

21
Dan Holly, “The Battle to Keep Detroit’s WGPR,” Black Enterprise vol. 25, no. 8 (March 1995), 19-20.

257

and Canal 52 contributed to the U.S. Latino cultural experience by offering ethnic-oriented
televised spaces for leisure, consumption, information, and the examination of Latino identity in
its U.S. social, economic, and political context. In the process, Spanish-language TV imagined a
U.S. Latino community into being from its audience through its mass-mediated discourses of
identity.
U.S. Latinos in metropolitan Los Angeles who tuned into KVEA and KMEX and made
them successful enough to launch their respective Spanish-language TV networks are at the heart
of this story in front of the TV screen. As important as the stations’ owners were in shaping the
history and direction of these two channels, it is the televidentes – U.S. Latinos – who ultimately
influenced the stations’ content and enabled their financial success. Canal 34 and Canal 52
helped create an imagined U.S.-rooted Latino ethnic community in the region as the two stations
responded to the changing conditions experienced by an expanding and intra-ethnically
diversifying population of Latinas and Latinos. The development of KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 –
and in particular their launching of the national U.S. Spanish-language TV industry – is a
reflection of the growth, struggles, and hopes of the Latino community in Southern California
and across the United States.

258

259

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Creator Parra, Carlos Francisco (author)

Core Title A community on the air: Latino Los Angeles and the rise of Spanish-language TV in the United States, 1960-1990

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Degree Conferral Date 2021-08

Publication Date 07/04/2023

Defense Date 03/23/2021

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Tag borderlands,California,Chicanas,Chicanos,ethnic identity,identity formation,KMEX,KVEA,Latinas,Latinos,Los Angeles,mass media,metropolitan Los Angeles,Mexican Americans,OAI-PMH Harvest,southern California,Spanish International Network,Spanish-language television,Telemundo,transnational,Univision,US-Mexico border

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu