Don Emilio

"The old man’s strategy worked better than he could have imagined. At the suggestion of his friend Gerardo Rodríguez, with whom he used to go horseback riding every morning, Emilio traveled to San Sebastián, Spain. There, through Gerardo’s friends, he joined a circle of friends that included several expatriate French. At a party he met a young and wealthy Parisian girl, who would surely meet Don Emilio’s approval. Her name was Pamella de Surmont, and she would be the next Mrs. Azcárraga."

"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."

"Don Emilio’s favorite was Fernando Diez Barroso. Married to Laura Azcárraga, his eldest daughter, Diez Barroso served as the company’s chief administrator and chief financial officer. Since Othón Vélez Sr. had remained at XEW-Radio and because television had become Azcárraga’s main interest, Diez Barroso once again became Don Emilio’s right-hand man. This hierarchy, together with his undeniable professional talents and his close relationship with the Azcárraga family through his marriage to one of the daughters, made him the apparent heir to the leadership of TSM. In a bitter irony, Diez Barroso had a nickname that Emilio Jr. surely felt ought to be his: The Prince."

"Even though Don Emilio was promoting his son as an executive, he did not give him special treatment in day-to-day work. He was concerned about and disapproved of the playboy turn his son’s life had taken after Gina’s death. Don Emilio thought that the only way his son would mature would be if he put more energy behind the desk and less in bars and bedrooms. Emilio Jr. liked to argue about everything and often interrupted his father, so he was frequently reprimanded: “Don’t be stupid, this is a serious business!” or “Let’s see, Mr. Know-it-all!” On one occasion, Don Emilio explained this strict attitude to a friend: “I demand a lot from my son for two reasons: because he is Emilio and because he is an Azcárraga.”"

"By the time Don Emilio decided to scale back his daily activities, he had already begun to shed some of his other businesses to prioritize investments in TSM. The first thing he gave up was his equity stake in the film industry. Paradoxically, Azcárraga had enjoyed an enviable position in it. He was president and co-owner of Estudios Churubusco — which since 1947 had produced more than half of Mexican films — and the owner of about 20 movie theaters. But the golden age of Mexican cinema had begun to decline at a time when Azcárraga needed cash to establish Channel 2. In 1952 he initially sold a portion of his shares in Churubusco to Gabriel Alarcón, one of the leading theater owners. As the decade went on, the film industry declined even further, as the audience for Mexican cinema, both in Mexico and in South America, shrank while American films gained ground."

"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."

"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."

"Azcárraga knew not only what a few personal remarks meant to certain employees, but how effective they proved if spoken rarely but with emphasis. In the course of some conversation he might comment to an actor that such-and-such new venture was causing problems, or to a sales agent that a certain program was a disaster. He could reveal vulnerable details; he could even sound depressed or say: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” The employee, flattered to have earned Don Emilio’s trust in a matter about which he knew little, would reiterate absolute confidence in Azcárraga’s leadership. Then the boss would drop a brief but memorable compliment like: “You know what? No one had told me what you’re telling me,” and the result of the brief conversation was the employee’s admiration and loyalty strengthened."

"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."

"Upon launching KMEX, Don Emilio made another smart decision: to create an independent company—a “network” in industry terms—that would be 100% owned by him and would supply programs to the two stations. He called it Spanish International Network (SIN). This network acquired the rights to TSM’s programs for later sale to the stations. It also set out to boost national advertising sales to complement those the stations made locally, as well as TSM’s international sales. Since SIN had a captive market and a small staff, its profitability was a sure bet. The stations, given the cost of equipment, the purchase of programs, and the costs of producing local newscasts, would take much longer to recoup the investment, but that did not worry Azcárraga because he shared ownership of the stations, whereas he could legally hold outright ownership of SIN. Separating SIN from the stations, while ensuring the stations’ complete dependence on the former, was the second maneuver that, although very astute at the time, would cause serious tensions among the partners in the decades to come."

"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."

"Azcárraga’s main maneuver was to sell Radio Programas de México. His partner in the network, Clemente Serna Martínez, had been pressuring Azcárraga to define his stake. “Let me buy your share or I’ll sell you mine,” Serna went so far as to tell him. Since Don Emilio was investing most of his radio profits in TSM, and as many performers increasingly had to choose between working for radio or for television (with Azcárraga pressuring them to choose the latter), Serna was concerned about the evident conflict of interest. In 1961, Azcárraga completed the sale of his shares in RPM in favor of Serna and kept only a few stations, among them his beloved XEW and XEQ. As part of the deal, Serna ceded his stake in TSM’s stations in the provinces. Azcárraga owned shares in broadcasters outside RPM, and he sold most of these to his nephew Rogerio Azcárraga, who grouped these and others into the Organización Radio Fórmula."

"On one occasion, during a meeting with Luis de Llano, Don Emilio noticed that the man wasn’t feeling well. De Llano explained to him that, since the Spanish Civil War, when he was wounded in the head by a bullet fired by a Messerschmitt, he had suffered recurrent headaches. Don Emilio said he was very sorry, but went on discussing programming. From time to time, as he did during one-on-one meetings, he would turn away and speak quietly on the phone and then come back to continue the discussion. When De Llano stood up to leave, his boss stopped him: “You will take a few days and go to New York”—he almost ordered. “You will see Doctor Wicks at Roosevelt Hospital; he will take care of you. Everything is arranged.” De Llano was absent for 14 days, six shrapnel fragments were removed from his skull, and he did not pay a single cent."

"As for TSM’s interference, Don Emilio had the final say in broadcasting Senda prohibida, and it is likely that De Llano asked Villeli to write several of the roles for certain actors he had in mind and to make some changes to the script. But this one, the most Mexican of the prototypes, was ironically more a product of the U.S. company that backed it. Colgate, in addition to handling hiring, had a literary editing department that drew on the company’s experience producing soap operas in New York. It was they, and not the TSM team, who advised Villeli on issues of pacing and suspense. Colgate also conducted surveys among viewers with questions about tastes and attitudes toward the actors and the themes, in order to modify the course of the soap opera and maximize viewership."

"The expansion of the television business undertaken by Don Emilio was not limited to Mexico. The same year he sold his stake in RPM he acquired a station in Texas, which would become the cornerstone of the Spanish International Network, the first and largest Spanish-language television network in the United States, today known as Univision."

"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."