Television

It is difficult to overstate the potential influence of television on Mexican political life. Over two-thirds of Mexicans get their information about politics primarily from the small screen, and even among the most affluent and educated segments of the population, television remains the dominant medium.

Chappell Lawson, 2004357

In the early 1970s, both of the early TV networks, Telesistema Mexicano and Television Independiente de Mexico, were losing money since they engaged in bidding wars for talent and foreign shows. In addition, competition for ad sales in the still small Mexican TV market forced prices down.358

In 1973, the two TV networks merged to form Televisa (which is short for Television via Satelite), thus creating what was for all intents and purposes a private television monopoly. The merger created the largest television network in Latin America. Televisa became a far flung conglomerate, broadcasting Spanish-language television in the United States, exporting its soap operas to roughly ninety countries, producing film and print media, and staging sports and artistic events. Eventually Televisa became the world’s largest producer of TV programming.359

For more than two decades, Televisa and the PRI were deeply intertwined, with the network depending on the regime for broadcast licenses and infrastructure development, and successive PRI regimes depending on Televisa for political marketing. Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, who assumed control of the family broadcast empire after his father’s death in 1972, made the network’s pro-PRI slant explicit. In January 1988, he stated: “We’re from the PRI, we’re members of the PRI, we don’t believe in any other party. And as members of our party, we will do everything possible to make sure our candidate wins.”360

Azcarraga’s political bias was manifest in Televisa’s coverage of political campaigns. PRI candidates received a much greater share of TV coverage than they did of the popular vote. Opposition candidates were presented in an unflattering light, if they were covered at all. In 1988, PRI presidential candidate Carlos Salinas, one of six presidential candidates, was credited with 50.74 percent of the vote, yet received 90.7 percent of TV coverage. To protest the network’s bias, PAN presidential candidate Manuel Clouthier called for a boycott of Televisa and its advertisers.361

In their 2001 biography of Azcarraga, authors Claudia Fernandez and Andrew Paxman proclaimed him to have been “the most powerful businessman Mexico has ever seen.” This power came from his enjoying a quasi-monopoly on television. In 1993, Televisa produced all of the twenty toprated shows in Mexico. In 1994, Forbes placed his family’s net worth at $5.4 billion. Azcarraga was a famously autocratic leader, a man of vast appetites, and extravagant gestures. His 243-feet long custom-built yacht Eco cost an estimated $45 million.362

In the 1970s, radio and television surpassed movies and newspapers as shapers of public opinion. By 1984, a third of Mexican homes had a TV set. During the 1980s, fewer than 1 million newspapers circulated daily, while between 15 and 20 million watched TV news every night. The growing impact of TV was revealed by a 1981 poll that found Mexico City children could identify TV characters more readily than national heroes and knew TV schedules better than the dates of religious holidays. This is not surprising, since they spent over 50 percent more time in front of the TV set

Than in school.363

Change came more slowly to television than to print media, since Televisa’s quasi-monopolistic nature shielded it from competitive pressure. Serious competition to Televisa only emerged in 1993 when the Salinas administration privatized a little-watched government TV network, selling it to Ricardo Salinas Pliego (no kin to the president) for $642 million dollars.364

Salinas Pliego branded his newly acquired network TV Azteca and immediately turned his sights on Televisa. One of his first moves was to air credible newscasts. He began to hire actors away from Televisa, which had so many actors under contact that many failed to get good roles. TV Azteca plunged into the commercially lucrative soap opera market with Nada Personal (Nothing Personal), which became Mexico’s top-rated soap. Rather than the formerly anodyne formula of poor girl marrying rich man, Nada Personal dealt with the murder of a politician by drug traffickers. Given its more credible news programming and more socially relevant soap operas, by 2002 Azteca controlled 26 percent of the TV market, compared to Televisa’s 71 percent.365

A second event that reshaped Televisa was the death of its undisputed patriarch, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, in 1997. At the time of his death, Televisa owned four separate TV networks totaling 280 stations. During the twenty-five years he headed the company, Televisa’s dollar income increased twenty-five-fold and the number of its employees increased from 2,350 to 20,000. He was one of the few children of the rich to actually increase his inherited fortune. While he will probably be best remembered for his allegiance to the PRI, he did serve Mexico in various ways. Under his control, Televisa promoted adult education and broadcast a soap opera favoring family planning. Azcarraga patronized various artistic endeavors, including $2 million donated to the highly acclaimed art exhibit “Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries.”366

Azcarraga Milmo was succeeded by Emilio Azcarraga Jean, his only son. When he assumed control of the Televisa media empire at age twenty-nine, Azcarraga Jean was widely seen as a spoiled rich kid. However, he survived an internal power showdown with other family members, refinanced Telvisa’s debt, and laid off more than 6,000 staffers to cut labor costs. He disavowed any allegiance to the PRI and shifted his allegiance to an even more jealous god—the marketplace.367

Mounting pressure from the increasingly influential opposition political parties and civic groups also led Televisa to more balanced coverage, as did the loss of market share to TV Azteca. The 1994—1995 economic crash further sullied the image of the incumbents and made criticism of them less risky.368

Electoral coverage on television reflected the changes in Mexican TV. By 1994, the airtime dedicated to major parties approximated their share of the national vote. The change was not only in volume, but in tone, in that the opposition was not routinely denigrated. In 2000, the two most watched news shows gave PAN candidate Fox 36 percent of their airtime, while PRI candidate Labastida received 33 percent. Rather than reflecting a new political bias, this imbalance likely resulted from the baritone-voiced Fox being a master at showmanship and the PRI candidate being conspicuously bland.369