Practically since the day he was born, in 1968, Emilio Azcarraga Jean has owned one of the most famous names in Mexico.
That's because his father, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, also known as "El Tigre" (The Tiger), was among the hemisphere's richest men and head of a sprawling media empire.
His empire's cornerstone was Grupo Televisa, the giant Mexican television broadcaster that for decades operated as a monopoly. Although Mexico now has a second national network, TV Azteca, Televisa remains by far the country's dominant broadcaster, with an unrivaled power to influence not only Mexicans' entertainment preferences but also their ideas about politics, business and the rest of the world.
In 1997, the year his father died, Azcarraga Jean at age 29 became Grupo Televisa's chief executive. He has been credited with bringing greater neutrality and professionalism to its news department, which under his father had been an unabashed cheerleader for Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which represented the country's political establishment for 70 years until 2000.
Azcarraga Jean has been described by some as a Latin American Rupert Murdoch, who took over his father's Australian media company at a similarly young age. Under Azcarraga Jean, Grupo Televisa increasingly has become a powerhouse of global television production, with partnerships in China, the United States, South America and other places. Both Latin American and U.S. media outlets repeatedly have speculated that Azcarraga Jean might apply for U.S. citizenship -- as did Murdoch -- to take control of a U.S. broadcasting company outright. Federal laws stipulate that no more than 25% of a U.S. broadcaster can be controlled by foreign investors.
Grupo Televisa and U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. this year ended a four-year legal battle with a settlement in which Univision agreed to pay Televisa tens of millions of dollars more in royalties. At risk in the dispute was Univision's continued access to Televisa's telenovelas, or soap operas, an enormously popular and lucrative part of its programming lineup.
Last year, Grupo Televisa reached an agreement to distribute content from NBC Universal's bilingual Telemundo Group Inc. on its broadcast and pay-TV services, as well as through websites and mobile services. That move signaled Televisa's interest in tapping into the fast-growing bilingual and bicultural youth market on both sides of the border.
