Televisa

Televisa is Mexico's largest television network. It was created in 1973 as Televisión Vía Satélite, when Telesistema Mexicano (established in 1955) and Televisión Independiente de México (established in 1968) merged.

Televisa largely dedicates itself to the production of soap operas (or telenovelas), specials, talk shows, and movies. Televisa sports shows boxing and wrestling, but its main sport is soccer. The company's main competitor is TV Azteca.

Televisa is listed on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores and the New York Stock Exchange.

Target audience

Harsh criticisms are frequently leveled at Televisa for its apparent glorification of the banal and its unsophisticated programming. Such impressions are indeed borne out by the regular Televisa diet of celebrity gossip, brash variety shows, sport, repetitive comedy series in which the same actors – year in, year out – dress up as children and go through the same tired old comedy routines, and, of course, the morning-noon-and-night serving-up of telenovelas.

In response to these accusations, company president Emilio Azcárraga explained: "Mexico is a country where the working class is fucked [Spanish: una clase modesta muy jodida] and is going to remain fucked... One obligation of television is to bring some fun to those people and to separate them from their sad realities and difficult futures" (quoted by Carlos Monsiváis). Again, in his last public appearance (3 March 1997), Azcárraga elaborated on his company's target audience: "We can't avoid the very wealthy, but really, they don't interest us much. Our programming has always been and always will be for the popular classes."

Indeed, the financially more comfortable and better educated sectors of the Mexican population largely ignore Televisa's domestic programming, preferring to watch foreign programs over cable or satellite tv systems.