Azcárraga Vidaurreta

"Another favorite of Don Emilio who contributed to TSM’s growth, but was not an employee, was his nephew Víctor Rivero Azcárraga. Víctor showed he had a firm character from a very young age by refusing to offer a bribe to avoid performing military service. After finishing his service, he founded Majestic, a factory of radio and television sets, for which Azcárraga Vidaurreta lent him the capital. Don Emilio never had an equity stake in that company, but the advantages for his own business were obvious, since if there were more televisions accessible to the public, TSM’s advertising revenues would increase. To promote the business, Don Emilio gave Majestic free airtime to advertise and financed the company’s expansion. The company grew rapidly, and Rivero —three or four years older than his cousin Emilio— was a wealthy man at the age of 30. Don Emilio took pride in this and used to exclaim: “This is a hardworking Azcárraga!” For several decades, while there were high taxes on imported products, Majestic produced many of the televisions that were sold in the country."

"Azcárraga Vidaurreta was annoyed by his son’s recklessness. Although not too much; on second thought, he had good reasons to accept the boy’s decision. What he wanted most was for his son to become a businessman in his own image. It was not necessary for Emilio Jr. to have a graduation certificate; after all, he himself had not even finished high school. He also feared that if his son, an American by birth, stayed at Culver until graduation, he could be drafted by the United States Army, which maintained the selective draft system after the war. He was also worried about the economic crisis in Mexico. With a devaluation that seemed imminent, it was time to tighten belts, and Don Emilio was surely glad to be able to save the cost of another round trip to Indiana and the inevitable parents’ visit for the graduation ceremony."

"Alemán had clear reasons to get involved in this new medium and to thwart Azcárraga Vidaurreta. The substantial investments that had been made in U.S. television suggested that the business could be very lucrative—not in the short term, due to the high initial costs, but certainly in the future. As with the newspaper Novedades, acquired in 1946 by Alemán, O’Farrill, and several partners, television could also become a powerful tool for personal propaganda. Moreover, obstructing Azcárraga’s application for a concession allowed Alemán to exact political revenge: in the 1940 elections, when Alemán had been the campaign coordinator for Manuel Ávila Camacho, Azcárraga supported the opposition candidate, Juan Andreu Almazán."

"On September 18, 1930, with RCA’s backing, he embarked on a new venture that would complement his record business: XEW Radio. At the age of 35, Azcárraga Vidaurreta owned the most modern radio station in Mexico City and the cornerstone of an entire media empire."

"When the Azcárragas sold their holdings in radio, after leaving the film industry, the maneuvers were interpreted by some observers as a reduction of their presence in the media per se. They could not have been more wrong. The family business was simply concentrating on a single medium. In 1959 TSM invested $1.7 million in expanding the geographical reach of its network, and in 1960 it spent even more. Betting on the future, Azcárraga Vidaurreta made every effort to inject resources into the insatiable television business. As Emilio Jr. would recall years later: “My father always told me that television was the mistress and radio was his wife. You gave nothing to radio, and to television everything!”"

"Definitely, Azcárraga Vidaurreta had the best facilities. In September 1943 he had begun to build a large broadcasting station on Avenida Chapultepec, which was to be called Radiópolis. But in 1947, in a moment of visionary anticipation, Azcárraga halted the work to redefine his strategy. The future, he concluded, was not in radio but on the small screen. Perhaps NBC’s unprecedented success in televising the 1947 World Series inspired this change of mind. In any case, realizing that television would be considerably more expensive, both in equipment and in program production, he began selling his provincial radio stations in order to raise more capital. When he resumed work on Avenida Chapultepec, it was no longer to build Radiópolis, but Televicentro."

"Azcárraga Vidaurreta concluded that the only solution was to buy U.S. stations and thus impose his program lineups. In that sense, he envisioned a chain of Spanish-language stations in California and Texas, among other states, that would be watched by the growing Latino population in the United States, thereby enabling him to satisfy his own political needs. The idea had its complications. By insisting on controlling these stations—which for a foreigner was illegal and had to be done covertly—Don Emilio made the first of several key decisions about his expansion in the United States, which were very smart although fraught with risk. These decisions sowed the seeds of a tug-of-war over ownership that would reach its climax 25 years later, when his son lost control of half the family’s interests in U.S. television. In the United States, foreigners may own only up to 20% of a station or 25% of the station’s controlling company, so Azcárraga looked for American partners whose loyalty he could count on. Two of them were already his employees: the head of Teleprogramas, René Anselmo, and Julian Kaufman, who ran XETV in Tijuana, Azcárraga’s personal property. A third was Edward J. Noble, founder of the prominent advertising agency Noble and Associates, and a key TSM client. The only partner in the group based in the United States was Frank Fouce."

"In essence, Azcárraga Vidaurreta was the example of the “good boss”: demanding but with a noble heart. Despite the fear he inspired, even the lowest-ranking employees who had sick relatives, or other personal problems, would wait in the anteroom to be received, and generally the boss would attend to their requests for help. His philanthropy went beyond the bounds of the company; he often wrote checks for charitable works, and one of his greatest contributions was being the principal benefactor of several hospitals that are still operating today. But Don Emilio’s reserved nature did not allow people, and in particular the press, to see that side of him. What did show in him was the respect he felt for his audience. He often showed up outside XEW or Televicentro, where lines formed of ordinary people who wanted to enter the studios to watch a program, and he would ask them for their comments and suggestions."

"For those who saw them up close there was no doubt that Azcárraga Vidaurreta loved his son and had big plans for him. But the old man’s rough, demanding nature annoyed Emilio. The father’s severity led him to develop a growing ambition, the desire to succeed independently and leave his own mark. But it also alienated this temperamental young man and caused him to keep on carousing. The beautiful actresses and singers who paraded through the doors of XEW and Televicentro provided him with a good pastime. There was reciprocity: by the mid-1950s, Emilio had filled out and was extremely attractive, so the combination of looks, charm, and power made him irresistible to many of the young stars."

"The most popular radio soap opera, which would later be adapted for television in Mexico and in other countries, was El derecho de nacer. Written by the Cuban Félix B. Caignet and first produced in 1948, the serial tells the story of any mother’s nightmare: a woman is separated from her son shortly after he is born and spends several years in tears and feelings of guilt, trying to find him. (The theme would resurface in many successful Mexican telenovelas, including in María la del barrio from 1995.) Thanks in part to Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s radio stations, radio soap operas were also very popular in Mexico. However, the change of format to television originated once again in Cuba, where by 1951 radio soap operas were beginning to be readapted for the small screen."

"Between 1958 and 1961, soap operas replaced most of the slots that had been occupied by teleteatros, becoming Mexico’s most important dramatic format. However, their initial success has sometimes been overstated. They were not yet more popular than variety shows or than the much more sophisticated U.S. series that were being imported in large quantities. With a few exceptions, these would remain the genres with the greatest attraction for another 10 years. In 1961, the year in which television ratings were measured for the first time, TSM issued a statement denouncing the poor quality of the direction, acting, and editing of Mexican series and their technical shortcomings; a challenge to the industry by Azcárraga Vidaurreta to work harder and bring it up to U.S. standards."

"It has not been clearly determined whether Azcárraga Vidaurreta used the blacklist directly or threatened to use it, and how many of his high-ranking executives, anticipating his wishes, took part in this practice. But in any company run by an autocrat, executives tend to try to reinforce their own sense of power by taking a hard line with their subordinates, emulating certain traits of their boss’s character. This was fully borne out with Emilio Jr. to the point that one day he came to be more feared than his father, and Don Emilio, by contrast, would be remembered as a much gentler boss than he actually was."