Telemundo Television Group

NBC Universal's Spanish-language television division, Telemundo, is whittling its workforce by 5%, cutting at least 85 jobs amid a slowdown in advertising. "The broadcast business is being challenged," Telemundo President Don Browne said Thursday. "We are proactively and strategically making some adjustments to protect the larger company so that we can weather this period." Employees at the Hialeah, Fla.-based company, owned by General Electric Co.

Considering that Latinos make up the largest ethnic group in the United States and Latino buying power is on an upward march, you'd figure Spanish-language networks would be fighting advertisers off. They aren't. This week in New York, where the bulk of the commercial time for the upcoming television season will be sold at what's called the upfront market, Univision and Telemundo will need to make hard sells.

Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo placed newscaster Mirthala Salinas on paid leave Thursday while it carries out an investigation into whether she breached journalistic ethics by having a relationship with someone she covered: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Salinas has been missing from her anchor chair on the 6 p.m. newscast for the last three nights, since news of the relationship broke. Telemundo's national newscast on Thursday evening aired a lengthy story about her removal.

Late at night in a college classroom, Liliana Hung opened her laptop and adjusted her Chanel eyeglasses. She took a swig of Rockstar energy drink before tackling her assignment, which was to write a synopsis of one of three scenarios for a television show: A man learns that his long-lost mother is working in a strip joint. A woman seduces a young man, then realizes that he is her son. A transvestite called the "Queen of the Night" discovers his father dancing onstage at a club. At Telenovela U.

Mirthala Salinas was a rising star at one of Los Angeles' premier Spanish-language television stations before she came to be known as the other woman in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's life. A respected and aggressive journalist, she anchored a newscast that won two local Emmy Awards at KVEA-TV Channel 52 during her 10 years at the Telemundo station. She earned a Golden Mike broadcasting award as well.

Nearly three weeks after Telemundo executives launched an inquiry into Channel 52 anchor Mirthala Salinas' relationship with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, station officials have yet to ask him about it, Villaraigosa said Monday. The mayor repeated his vigorous defense of Salinas, a Spanish-language journalist who embarked on a romantic relationship with him while she reported on City Hall. He said he still believes the station will find she did nothing wrong.

Top NBC Universal executive Jeff Gaspin's world got a lot bigger and more challenging on Wednesday. Gaspin was put in charge of Telemundo, the Spanish-language network that has struggled in the shadows of its dominant rival, Univision Communications Inc., ever since NBC bought the operation five years ago for $2.7 billion. Gaspin, who is quickly becoming NBC Universal's jack-of-all-trades, also picked up responsibility for domestic TV syndication.

The extramarital affair between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a newscaster for Telemundo has created a new set of complications for the broadcaster's corporate parent, NBC Universal -- and possibly the mayor himself.

In a plot twist worthy of the most gripping telenovela, two brothers are battling for real-life television glory. NBC Universal on Wednesday cast a new leading man to run Telemundo's KVEA-TV Channel 52 in Los Angeles, the Spanish-language station that has been rocked by scandal in the wake of revelations of an affair between one of its news anchors and the mayor of Los Angeles.

Television newscaster Mirthala Salinas, who was suspended without pay for two months in August after her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public, is scheduled to return to work Monday. But she won't be taking up her old job as a fill-in anchor on evening newscasts for KVEA-TV Channel 52.