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Already the leader, Hispanic network acquires Diller's 13 TV stations and plans to form a second Spanish-language net
Three years ago, Barry Diller came up with a plan to convert his rag tag bunch of barely visible UHF TV stations from hawkers of zirconium jewelry into "portals" of local news and information, sports and entertainment-most of which was to be locally produced.
Last week, saying he had been "overly ambitious," Diller abandoned broadcasting altogether, selling his still barely visible 13-station TV group to Univision, which plans its second Spanish-language broadcast network.
While Univision has led the market for more than a decade, the competition to reach the nation's 32.4 million Hispanics (with $440 billion in spending power) is heating up. Hispanic TV advertising is expected to grow 15% a year or more for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, if Univision does proceed with the launch, as company officials told analysts last week that it would, there could be as many as six U.S. Spanish-language networks up and running by 2002. Five of them would be over-the-air; the sixth, Galavision, is a Univision-owned cable network.
Univision's lagging competitor, Telemundo, declined comment last week. But sources said the network would continue to look for other station buying opportunities. It recently signed a letter of intent to buy a second station in Los Angeles.
Then there's Azteca America, a venture of Pappas Telecasting and TV Azteca of Mexico set to debut next year. Last week, Harry Pappas, the network's CEO, said Univision's USA deal didn't...