Anselmo

"Azcárraga and his partners invested first in San Antonio, the Texas city where he went to school and where his son was born. In September 1961, they put up $200,000 to acquire KCOR-TV (Channel 41), which had been founded in 1955 as the country’s first all-Spanish station and obtained most of its programming from TSM. Unfortunately for its founder, Raúl Cortez, it had never sold enough ads to be profitable. Fortunately for Don Emilio, Cortez—who had been resisting the idea of new shareholders—chose to throw in the towel just as the Mexican government’s complaints about TSM imports were reaching a climax. Close to the border, an affiliate station in San Antonio would be the perfect anchor for a string of acquisitions in the United States. Fouce and Noble took 20% each. Azcárraga kept the legal maximum of 20% in shares, but since his employees Anselmo and Kaufman took 35% and 5%, respectively, and since Noble was surely a front man for Don Emilio, he was in fact illegally controlling a majority of 80%. There were no objections from the powerful regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); this was, for the time being, too small a business to attract Washington’s attention."

"But Anselmo did fall in love with Mexico. He and his wife Mary stayed for 12 years and had three children. Anselmo wrote copy for radio commercials for JWT, and in his free time directed plays for the English-speaking community theater group. He quickly built a network of contacts in the Mexican media and ventured into Spanish-language theater. Since at that time Emilio Jr. was also dabbling in theater, it was inevitable that their paths would cross. In 1954, Emilio and René became friends. Over the following years, together with Luis de Llano of TSM, they produced various Broadway musicals. Generally, Azcárraga provided the capital, Anselmo produced, and De Llano directed. For those who worked with the trio, René was the diplomat: if Emilio lost his temper with someone, René would smooth things over, waiting until his friend was out of earshot to say, “Don’t worry, what Emilio meant is…”"

"This kind of conflict was advantageous for Anselmo. The former Italian American artilleryman was a fighter by nature and an honorary Hispanic by virtue of the 12 years he lived in Mexico. Driven by an obsession with fairness, a disdain for the conventional, and a zeal against the establishment, Anselmo excelled when everything was against him. Energetic and shrewd, he was also a very persuasive salesman, and he used the high sales figures for UHF converters in San Antonio and Los Angeles as evidence of his stations’ popularity. Don Emilio and Emilio Jr. occasionally traveled to New York to help Anselmo persuade the advertising agents on Madison Avenue and to plan a SIN station to serve that city."

"Before long, Emilio introduced René to his father, suggesting that it could be very useful to hire that very dynamic gringo, who had a terrible Spanish pronunciation but a very good head for the entertainment business. Don Emilio accepted, and in 1955 Anselmo was put in charge of running a new subsidiary: Teleprogramas de México, which would be responsible for exporting TSM’s programs to Central America and the United States. It was the first version of an operation that, four decades later, under the name Protele, would become the most prolific exporter of television programs in the Spanish-speaking world, with annual sales of more than 100 million dollars."