Telemundo was originally founded by Angel Ramos, a Puerto Rican media entrepreneur, in 1952. It was Puerto Rico's first television network. Known as Telemundo Canal 2, it has been up until today a leader in Puerto Rican television. Its success eventually spawned the creation of a new, North American-based network to capture the growing Hispanic media market in the United States.
Saul Steinberg and Henry Silverman founded Telemundo Group Inc. in 1986 in the attempt to penetrate the Spanish language market of the United States. They purchased television stations in Los Angeles, California, Miami, Florida, and New York City. "Noticiero Telemundo/HBC" with Jorge Gestoso and Lana Montalban began broadcasting out of a warehouse in Hialeah.
The staff was made mostly of former Spanish International Network (now Univision) employees who defected the network when it was announced that Mexican television news anchor Jacobo Zabludosky would be heading north to anchor the newscast. This never happened, as Zabludosky stayed back in Mexico, but the cornerstone of what would become the second Hispanic broadcast network in the United States was laid. A year later "Deportes Telemundo", a two-hour sports show, began airing nationally.
Between 1988 and 1991, the network expanded their distribution signal to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Washington state. The network then decided to outsource their news division in 1988 and hired CNN to produce 2 newscasts under the name of "Noticiero Telemundo CNN". It was anchored by transplanted to Atlanta, Jorge Gestoso and Miami native Maria Elvira Salazar.
In 1992, Telemundo went through another management change this time under former Univision president Joaquin Blaya. Blaya brought in his Univision team in hopes of beating his former employer to death with a Piñata stick. Television shows were cancelled or merged. Longtime Telemundo executives were released and in 1993, Telemundo branded themselves with the campaign, "Arriba, Telemundo, Arriba."
Bolocco saw her show merged with newsmagazine Ocurrió Asà anchored by Enrique Gratas. Contacto, an afternoon women's magazine, was revamped as Club Telemundo. Two of its original anchors were fired. It kept Mexican soap star Rebecca Rambal as main hostess alongside new arrival Pedro Luis Garcia, a radio disc jockey from New York.
Gratas, Bolocco, Rambal and Guerra are no longer with the network; Gratas is now anchoring Noticiero Univision, Ultima Hora and Bolocco went back to her native Chile after starring in a soap opera Morelia and married former Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem. She gave birth to the couple's son in 2003. Rambal lives in Los Angeles and Garcia went back to NY to work for Telemundo affiliate WNJU-47.
Blaya and his employees incurred astronomical expenses without the much anticipated revenue, and then were terminated. Telemundo now found itself trying to reinvent themselves now under the leadership of Roland Hernandez.
In 1998, Telemundo was bought by a partnership between cable's Liberty Media and entertainment conglomerate Sony Pictures Entertainment Helmed by yet another management team under the leadership of former CBS executive Peter Tortoricci, hopes of attracting the bilingual market were explored. "Lo mejor de los dos Mundos" ("The best of both worlds") campaign was launched. Several billboards went up in cities such as Miami and San Francisco heralding a "new era" for Telemundo.
This new executive team Peter Tortoricci, Rachel Wells, Alan Sokol and controversial programming executive Nely Galan. They decided to get away from the warehouse atmosphere of the production facilities base in working class Hialeah, FL, and moved their corporate offices to a posh address in at the Waterford Complex Santa Monica, California. At the time it was decided to produce Latino versions of popular American television shows owned by Sony. These included Charlie's Angels, One Day at a Time, and Starsky and Hutch.
The network also tried its luck by having a priest anchor a talk show. "Padre Alberto", Father Alberto Cutie, a Miami priest was tapped in to host this program. Sadly, this venture also failed. If Telemundo had any traces of ratings this experiment was the last nail on its coffin. Telemundo became the laughing stock of the industry. Ms. Galan's ideas nor shows were successful in fact viewers left the network in droves. Local stations lost the little audience share they had and heads began to roll once again. The Tortoricci team was out and Jim MacNamara a former Universal Pictures executive born in Panama was hired to preside over embattled Telemundo.
MacNamara not only set up shop back in Hialeah, but also knew what he was doing. He went back to program what Hispanics wanted to watch: telenovelas. Under his leadership, Telemundo bought alternative programming from distributors from Brazil , Colombia and Mexico.
His strategy worked and U.S. Hispanics saw a new Telemundo emerging with hits such as "Xica de Silva", a Brazilian soap, and the most popular export from Colombia Soy Betty, la Fea. Pedro el Escamoso "El Clon", "Terra Nostra", followed and it seemed for a time that the network finally was able to compete. Local stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York added morning and weekend newscasts to be more competitive.
In 2001, Telemundo was purchased by NBC and is now a part of NBC Universal. Jim MacNamara, helmed the network during and after the sale. On February 27th, 2006, it was announced to NBC hired Nely Galan yet again to helm a division for the network based on the success of Hispanic soaps for the NBC Network.
In 2004, Telemundo began subtitling the telenovelas into English in the hopes of getting Hispanic Americans that did not speak Spanish to tune in. Subtitles are broadcast by using closed captioning. All of Telemundo's telenovelas are also closed captioned in Spanish. However, in order to activate the captions in English, viewers have to tune the caption to CC3, a closed-caption channel widely available on most newer-model televisions less than five years old, though typically not available on older-model televisions.
