Tuning In The Global Village : Powerful Signals: A Look at Four Global Media Moguls : EMILIO AZCARRAGA

If there was any doubt about who is Latin America’s most powerful media baron, Emilio Azcarraga has done his best to clear it up over the past couple of years.

After buying out his longtime partners in Televisa--Mexico’s four-channel broadcast television network--chairman Azcarraga put the company on the stock exchange to raise funds. He used the proceeds for a regionwide buying spree. Today, Televisa’s empire extends from Chile to San Francisco.

Besides the network’s acquisitions of television and radio stations, Azcarraga has been making his own print media buys independent of Televisa. He now controls Miami-based Grupo America, a major Spanish-language magazine distributor, and Ovaciones, a Mexican newspaper known for its entertainment and society coverage.

That puts billionaire Azcarraga--by all accounts a hands-on manager--in a strong position to form the opinions of Spanish-speaking viewers, listeners and readers throughout the Americas.

Azcarraga is accustomed to wielding influence. At 62, he is a striking man, over six feet tall with a streak of white in his black hair and a direct--some say confrontational--manner that has earned him the nickname el Tigre, the Tiger.

His family’s high-power radio stations boomed throughout the region in the 1930s and 1940s, making hits and stars as the “Voice of Latin America from Mexico.”

Televisa’s near-monopoly in Mexico has allowed the network’s news coverage to shape public opinion for decades. That opinion is almost always pro-government. Azcarraga is friendly with Mexico’s top politicians, including President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and generally shares their views, at least publicly.

The corporation has extended its reach internationally through the “Network of the Stars,” a news and musical variety channel offered to local broadcasters in most Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain.

More recently, Azcarraga has been developing the “Network of the Americas,” which would link 22 countries. Details of the plan have not been made public, but the corporation’s extensive use of satellite transmissions can be expected to expand further as its international network grows.

Also, Televisa obviously plans to take advantage of its position as the world’s largest producer of export programming to fill its newly acquired airwaves.