Univision

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- President Obama today defended his administration's efforts to protect American diplomats around the world in the wake of a round of violent attacks on embassies in the Middle East. A journalist at an afternoon town hall meeting here asked Obama why his administration “wasn't better prepared with more security" at the time of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed last week. Obama did not directly address the point about preparation in advance, but he said that as soon as officials saw the initial events near the embassy in Cairo before the attack in Benghazi, his administration worked with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to take precautions.

NEW YORK - The two major Spanish-language television companies delivered an unusual pitch to advertisers: Our viewers watch our programs live. They don't digitally record them to fast-forward through the commercials. Both Univision Communications and Telemundo on Tuesday sought to reinforce a message that Spanish-language television is a better value for advertisers. The major networks, including Fox, NBC and ABC, have been bleeding viewers, but the audiences have been growing on Spanish-language channels.

FLUSH with a growing Latino audience and increasing recognition as a dominant player in the broadcast industry, Univision is heading into the fall television season determined to close in on its English-language competitors. During its announcement to reporters Wednesday morning, Univision said it would add seven new series to its prime-time lineup, including four telenovelas, two reality shows and one comedy.

NEW YORK -- Univision intends to remain the king. The nation's largest Spanish-language media company, Univision Communications, on Tuesday said it has made a financial investment in the planned El Rey cable channel owned by Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez and FactoryMade Ventures. El Rey, which means "the king" in Spanish, is expected to launch in December and target male Latinos under 35 with English-language programming. El Rey becomes the second planned English-language network to capture Univision investment.

Replete with clunky dialogue and stock characters, the telenovela is a nail-biting combination of soap opera and fairy tale, but it has proven once again to be the bedrock of Spanish-language television programming. While Univision maintains its huge lead over Telemundo, its scrappy competitor, the distance between the two networks' ratings narrowed just a bit last month after Telemundo reverted to an entire three-hour prime-time block of new telenovelas.

"El Show de Cristina" bids a star-studded farewell Monday, but host and executive producer Cristina Saralegui says you shouldn't believe everything you read. Despite Univision's claims that the 21-year-old groundbreaking hit show is ending because Saralegui is retiring, she says that she did not quit and that she'll work until "I rot. " In fact, the 12-time Emmy winner already has landed a new job, which she can't disclose until her contract with Univision ends Dec. 31. But she says she will be back on TV in March.

Goodbye, metrosexual, and hola, vanidoso . Increasingly, growth in the men's grooming arena will be driven by the personal care habits of Latinos. That's the takeaway from a recent study focusing on the grooming preferences of Latino men in the United States and Census Bureau figures that show the Hispanic population growing at a faster rate than the general population. "That demographic is really driving population growth," said Peter Filiaci, vice president of brand solutions for Univision, the Spanish-language network that commissioned the grooming study.

Spanish-language television network Univision News will go to Argentina next month for the country's presidential elections, according to Guillermo Martinez, Univision's vice president and news director. Maria Elena Salinas, Univision News co-anchor and Osvaldo Petrozzino, Univision News correspondent, will report daily from Buenos Aires from May 10 through 15 (the election is on May 14), and the network has scheduled a special series of reports during its evening and late-night newscasts.

Huell Howser, 67, one of public television's most iconic figures, died Sunday night, his assistant Ryan Morris said. No other details were given. His platform was traditional and unflashy - highlighting familiar and off-the-beaten-track spots all around California in public television series with titles such as "California's Gold," "Visiting," "Road Trip" and "Downtown. " But though his shows were focused on points and people of interest, it was Howser who turned into the main attraction, tackling his subjects with an awestruck curiosity and relentless enthusiasm.

Kudos to reporter Reed Johnson for his great piece about a new book written by Mexican women ["In a Voice Rarely Heard, 38 Women Speak for Mexico's Silent Generation," Dec. 12]. Johnson's piece is more than a book review. He provides a very right-on, insightful analysis about the state of women in Mexico. The only scary part about this story is the fact that some adaptation of the book has been produced by Televisa and will be broadcast in the U.S. on Univision. I just hope it's not watered-down or sensationalized like Univision usually treats serious topics.

Univision Communications notched some milestones during the first fiscal quarter of this year, including beating beleaguered NBC during the February sweeps. The privately held Spanish-language media company on Tuesday released its first-quarter earnings, which saw a 6.4% increase in revenue to $562 million. During the first quarter of 2012, the company generated $528 million in revenue. For the quarter ended March 31, net income came in at $9 million, compared with a $14-million loss in the first quarter of 2012.

Huell Howser, 67, one of public television's most iconic figures, died Sunday night, his assistant Ryan Morris said. No other details were given. His platform was traditional and unflashy - highlighting familiar and off-the-beaten-track spots all around California in public television series with titles such as "California's Gold," "Visiting," "Road Trip" and "Downtown. " But though his shows were focused on points and people of interest, it was Howser who turned into the main attraction, tackling his subjects with an awestruck curiosity and relentless enthusiasm.

With the Spanish-language television space heating up, industry leader Univision Communications Inc. is making an aggressive move to solidify its dominance. On Monday, the media company plans to rename its secondary broadcast network UniMas, which translates loosely as Univision Plus, underlining its ties to its hugely popular sister network Univision. The company also is locking up rights to programs from key Latin American producers to buffet gains from the flood of competitors charging the field.

Telemundo has long been like a remote Caribbean island, cut off from its sprawling media homeland. NBCUniversal acquired the Spanish-language television network a decade ago for $2 billion but became discouraged by its seemingly limited prospects. But Comcast Corp.'s takeover of NBCUniversal last year may be building Telemundo a bridge to the mainland. "Telemundo now has the full support of Comcast and NBCUniversal," said Emilio Romano, a former Mexican airline chief executive who was hired a year ago to run Telemundo.

Looking to tap the wealth of U.S. Latinos, CNN is planning to introduce a Spanish-language programming service tailored for broadcast TV stations next year. The service, CNN Latino, is being designed as an eight-hour programming block featuring news, documentaries, talk shows and lifestyle programming. It is expected to launch in late January in Los Angeles on independent station KBEH-DT Channel 63 and eventually be carried by TV stations in other cities. CNN Latino comes 15 years after the Atlanta-based news organization launched CNN en Español, a 24-hour Spanish-language news network available in about 30 million homes in Latin America and 7 million homes in the United States.

Univision Communications' top lawyer, C. Douglas Kranwinkle, is retiring after 12 years with the Spanish-language media giant, leaving the company without a corporate presence in its marquee market of Los Angeles. On Monday, the company said Kranwinkle will be succeeded by Jonathan Schwartz, who most recently served as general counsel of JPMorgan's Investment Bank. Schwartz will be based in New York. The move continues the consolidation of the media company's corporate functions on the East Coast.  The company's headquarters are in New York, and its TV network operations and studios are located in Miami.

Univision, formerly the Spanish International Network (SIN), announced this week that it will launch the West Coast's first nationally broadcast Spanish-language weeknight news program on Jan. 19. The program will be produced here at the KMEX-TV Channel 34 studios. The 50-minute newscast, to be seen at 11 p.m., will be produced by Univision's recently formed sister company, ECO (Empresa de Comunicaciones Orbitales).

Sometimes unwritten words are more potent than any printed on a page. That appears to be the case with the controversy that erupted after employees at all-Spanish KMEX-TV Channel 34 in Los Angeles recently submitted a petition to their incoming general manager requesting that he fill a news director's vacancy with a person "who reflects the interests . . . experience and culture of the Los Angeles TV audience." The petition's language seemed harmless enough. Few station managers would ever admit to hiring a news director without weighing local audience needs.

Wooing Hispanic voters was supposed to be a big component in this year's election, but according to a new study politicians are putting their money elsewhere. The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) said Spanish-language advertising is a small fraction of overall spending even in states with large Hispanic populations such as California and Florida. "Political commentators from both sides of the aisle have said repeatedly that 2012 is 'The year of the Hispanic voter,'" said Javier Palomarez, USHCC president.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- President Obama's appearance Thursday at a town hall here completes a historic event for Latino voters in the U.S. - the first time both major party presidential nominees have sat down for an hourlong meet-the-candidate session with a Spanish-speaking television network. The session with Obama will be livestreamed and broadcast in Spanish and in English, with questions coming from Univision television news hosts. As he speaks, Obama's words will be simultaneously translated on earpieces for Spanish speakers in the live audience.