Televisión Azteca, S.A.B. de C.V.
TypeSociedad Anónima Bursátil de Capital Variable
BMV: AZTECACPO
BMAD: XTZA
ISINMX01AZ060013
IndustryMass media
PredecessorImevisión (1983-1993)
FoundedAugust 2, 1993 (1993-08-02)
FounderHugo Salinas Price
Headquarters
Mexico City
,
Mexico
Key people
Benjamín Salinas Sada (CEO) Ricardo Salinas Pliego (President)
ProductsTelevision broadcasting, radio and multimedia
RevenueIncrease US$ 3900million (2012)
Increase US$ 1850 million (2012)
Number of employees
6,000
ParentGrupo Salinas
Websitewww.tvazteca.com

Televisión Azteca, S.A.B. de C.V. is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate owned by Grupo Salinas. It is the second-largest mass media company in Mexico after Televisa.[1][2] It primarily competes with Televisa as well as some local operators. It owns two national television networks, Azteca Uno and Azteca 7, and operates two other nationally distributed services, adn40 and a+. All three of these networks have transmitters in most major and minor cities.

TV Azteca also operates Azteca Trece Internacional, reaching 13 countries in Central and South America, and formerly part of the Azteca América network in the United States. Its flagship program is the newscast Hechos.

History

Formation

TV Azteca, Chihuahua City, Chihuahua.

In the early 1990s, the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari privatized many government assets. Among them was the Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión, known as Imevisión, which owned two national television networks (Red Nacional 7 and Red Nacional 13) and three local TV stations. In preparation for the privatization, the Imevisión stations were parceled into a variety of newly created companies, the largest of which was named Televisión Azteca, S.A. de C.V.[3]

With the exception of Canal 22, which was spun off to Conaculta, one bidder won all of the stations. On July 18, 1993,[4] Mexico's Finance Ministry, the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP), announced that Radio Televisora del Centro, a group controlled by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, was the winner of the auction to acquire the "state-owned media package", which also included Imevisión's studios in the Ajusco area of Mexico City. The winning bid amounted to US$645 million. The new group soon took on the Televisión Azteca name for the entire operation and soon challenged Televisa, turning what had been a television monopoly into a television duopoly. The two conglomerates held 97 percent of the commercial television concessions in the country.[5]

Expansion

TV Azteca, Mérida, Yucatán.

In 1998, TV Azteca announced an investment of US$25 million in XHTVM-TV, which was owned by Javier Moreno Valle through concessionaire Televisora del Valle de México, S.A. de C.V. Under the deal, Azteca restructured TVM and took control of ad sales and most programming duties, while Moreno Valle's CNI news service retained some primetime space. However, in 2000, Moreno Valle broke the contract with Azteca, alleging Azteca of filling up time allotted to CNI and not fulfilling the obligations in the contract. In December 2002, Azteca used private security guards to retake control of the XHTVM facilities on Cerro del Chiquihuite in Mexico City. However, the Mexican government stepped into the dispute and forced Azteca to relinquish control of XHTVM. In 2005, an employee strike that crippled CNI, Moreno Valle's mounting legal troubles, and a deal with the 5% owner of the concessionaire allowed Azteca to buy the remainder of the station and retake control of XHTVM, under the name Proyecto 40, in 2006.

TV Azteca, Querétaro City, Querétaro.

On March 7, 2011, TV Azteca changed its name to Azteca, reflecting its growth into a multimedia company.[6] However, in May 2016, the TV Azteca name was restored.

TV Azteca is the second largest mass media company in México after Televisa.[5] These two big organizations control the 97% of mass media in Mexico.[5] TV Azteca was funded in 1993 by Ricardo Salinas Pliego. TV Azteca has 31% of the 465 television concessions in México.[5] The auction of the state channels and the granting of further concessions to TV Azteca further strengthen their connection. It also owns Azteca banks, Azteca insurance, Iusacell, programing pay television, cinemas, live theater, news channels, newspapers, Azteca music, an acting school, Azteca consumer products, Azteca internet, Azteca series, Azteca sports, stadiums, etc. TV Azteca is another company which also serves the government however to a much lesser extent than Televisa.[7] TV Azteca also receives lucrative contracts from the Mexican government, and therefore the information that emits is also controlled by the actual government. The news that is normally emitted by TV Azteca is 25% news bulletins that come from advertising, and infotainment relying on celebrities and biased editorials.[5]

On March 21, 2023, creditors for the company pushed the company into an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in the U.S.[8] However, on April 26, TV Azteca asked the New York bankruptcy judge to dismiss its Chapter 11 case due to it being pointless to start reorganization proceedings for the company anywhere but Mexico.[9] On June 1, 2023, TV Azteca was suspended from the Mexico Stock Exchange.[10]

Sub-brands

Azteca Noticias

Azteca Espectáculos

Azteca Deportes

Azteca Novelas y Series

Services

Terrestrial networks

In Mexico
Network Flagship Programming
Azteca Uno XHDF 1 general programming and news and first-run telenovelas
Azteca 7 XHIMT 7 general programming, sports, and series
adn40 XHTVM 40 news and informational shows
Outside Mexico
Network Flagship Programming
TV Azteca Guate N/A Guatemalan channel with programming from TV Azteca's three television national networks in Mexico and local news
TV Azteca Honduras N/A Honduran channel with programming from TV Azteca's three television national networks in Mexico and local news

Formerly owned

  • Azteca América: American broadcast network with programming from TV Azteca's three television national networks in Mexico and local news. The owner, HC2 Holdings, continued to use the Azteca branding under license.[11] Ceased operations on December 31, 2022.[12]
  • KAZA-TV used to be the flagship of Azteca América from 2001 to 2018 but was sold to Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, which stripped KAZA of its flagship status, and was replaced by MeTV as an O&O.

Cable

Disputes and controversies

On 5 January 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused TV Azteca executives (including chairman Ricardo Salinas Pliego) of having personally profited from a multimillion-dollar debt fraud committed by TV Azteca and another company in which they held stock.[13] The charges were among the first brought under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,[13] introduced in the wake of the corporate financial scandals of that year.

The Federal Radio and Television Law (known as the Ley Televisa) was a bill concerning the licensing and regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. The LFRT was favorable to both TV Azteca and Televisa (who together control 95 percent of all television frequencies) because it allowed them to renew their licenses without paying for them. According to The Economist, the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión "raced through Congress confirming the country's longstanding television duopoly" and constituted a "giveaway of radio spectrum and a provision that allows broadcasting licenses to be renewed more or less automatically".[14]

In February 2012, TV Azteca networks (Azteca 7, Azteca 13, and Proyecto 40) were dropped by Mexican cable-TV carriers representing more than 4 million subscribers in a carriage dispute over terms. Cable operators claimed that Azteca wanted to charge a fee by packaging its over-the-air stations with cable networks, such as news and soap opera channels, which potentially represented a higher cost to subscribers.[15] After a nine-month absence, TV Azteca returned gradually to cable operators.[16]

In August 2018, American Tower's Mexican Unit, MATC Infraestructura sued TV Azteca for $97 Million in a New York court for defaulting on a loan from the company.[17]

Holdings

TV Azteca is part of the conglomerate Grupo Salinas, which includes the Grupo Elektra franchise of department stores, the Banco Azteca bank, and Seguros Azteca life insurance. TV Azteca also owns Liga MX soccer club, Monarcas Morelia.

Acting school

The network has set up an acting school, Centro de Estudios y Formación Actoral (CEFAT). Alumni include Iliana Fox, Luis Ernesto Franco, Adriana Louvier, Fran Meric, Bárbara Mori, Laura Palma and Adrián Rubio.[18]

Record label

The network also owns a record label, Azteca Music,[19] which was founded in 1996.[20]

Logos

See also

References

  1. ↑ "TV Azteca". Grupo Salinas.
  2. ↑ "TV Azteca, Mexico's Second-Largest Mass Media Company, Replatforms on Brightspot". Perfect Sense. 2019-08-26. Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  3. ↑ Peschard-Sverdrup, Armand B.; Rioff, Sara (2005). Mexican Governance: From Single-party Rule to Divided Government. CSIS. p. 281. ISBN 978-0-89206-457-1.
  4. ↑ Goggin; Albarrán, G.;C. (2014). "Political and mobile media landscape in México: the case of #yosoy132". Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. 28: 28–42. doi:10.1080/10304312.2014.870870. S2CID 145301961.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Mahan, E. (1985). Mexican Broadcasting: Reassessing the Industry-State Relationship. Journal of Communication, 35(1), 60-75.
  6. ↑ TV Azteca (March 7, 2011). "Azteca se renueva para ti ("Azteca renews for you")" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Retrieved March 14, 2011.
  7. ↑ Murphy, P. D. (1995, December). Television and cultural politics in México: Some notes on Televisa, the state and transnational culture. The Howard journal of communication, pp. pp. 250-
  8. ↑ "TV Azteca creditors push for involuntary bankruptcy -court filing". Reuters. March 21, 2023. Retrieved April 30, 2023.
  9. ↑ "Mexico Won't Recognize US Ch. 11, TV Azteca Says". Law 360. April 26, 2023. Retrieved April 30, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Mexico's stock exchange suspends TV Azteca trading for not reporting Q1 results". Reuters. 1 June 2023. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
  11. ↑ TV Azteca Announces the Sale of Azteca America to HC2 Network Inc. Archived 2018-03-20 at the Wayback Machine - CNBC (released November 29, 2017; accessed March 19, 2018)
  12. ↑ "Azteca America will cease operations after 22 years in the US Hispanic". PRODU (in Spanish). 21 October 2022.
  13. 1 2 The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Chairman of TV Azteca Is Charged With Fraud Archived 2013-05-22 at the Wayback Machine, Patrick McGeehan, New York Times, January 5, 2005.
  14. ↑ "Court TV". The Economist. 2007-05-31. Archived from the original on 2018-02-12.
  15. ↑ "TV Azteca Loses 4 Million Cable Viewers in Price Dispute". Bloomberg.com. 14 February 2012. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  16. ↑ "Mexico: TV Azteca regresa a Cable - Anime, Manga y TV". www.anmtvla.com. Archived from the original on 2013-03-07.
  17. ↑ "American Tower feud 'not positive' for Mexico's TV Azteca, Fitch says". Reuters. 9 August 2018 – via www.reuters.com.
  18. ↑ "Centro de Formación Actoral CEFAT". tvazteca.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  19. ↑ Billboard - 25 Oct 1997 - Page 54 "The theme song of TV Azteca's new telenovela "Demasiado Corazon" was written and performed by noted salsero Willie Colon, who is signed in Mexico to Azteca's record label Azteca Music."
  20. ↑ Florence Toussaint Alcaraz, TV sin fronteras - 1998 - Page 136: "También en 1996, Televisión Azteca inició su incursión en el negocio de los discos. Azteca Music se llama la nueva compañía, que como primer título de su catálogo tiene Nada personal, tema de la telenovela del mismo nombre compuesto ...
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