30 March/April 2017 V I D E O A G E acquired John Blair & Co., which in Puerto Rico owned WKAQ-TV, at that time branded as “Telemundo Canal 2.” Ironically, “Telemundo” was the brand name of Cuba’s CMBA-TV, Canal 2, established in 1953 and later affiliated with the CBS TV network. Steinberg and Silverman also purchased WNJU-TV in 1986 and the following year the owner decided to rebrand WNJU’s NetSpan — which then was in effect a TV network — as Telemundo. When Steinberg and Silverman bought WNJU-TV from Perenchio and Lear for $75 million, Barba’s five percent stake in the station netted him $3.75 million. In 1989, Barba became Telemundo’s senior vice president of Programming and Promotions and a board member of the Telemundo Group. He remained with Telemundo until 1991, when he joinedGustavoCisneros’ Venevisión International as president of the content distribution company. Let’s move now to a parallel development with competing Hispanic TV network, Univision, which was created in 1987, the year after the Spanish International Network (SIN) was sold to a group headed by Hallmark Cards. SIN was formed in 1963 as a sales representative for a group of U.S. TV stations that included KWEX and KMEX. It was the first TV network in the U.S. to broadcast in a language other than English. SIN’s founders —Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta of Telesistema Mexicano (that later became Televisa), Rene Anselmo and Emilio Nicolas, Sr. — had originally acquiredSanAntonio’s KWEX in 1961 and Los Angeles’ KMEX in 1962 (in 1968 the partnership also acquired WXTV, Channel 41 in Paterson, New Jersey, which was later managed by Barba). But, due to U.S. foreign TV ownership restrictions, in 1986 Televisa’s interest in SIN’s TV stations had to be acquired by American entities, such as the Hallmark group, which in 1987 also purchased the SIN Network and renamed it Univision. Televisa (which since 1972 had been under Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s son, Emilio Azcárraga Milmo) was contracted to provide programming. In 1992, Perenchio, Televisa’s Azcárraga Milmo and Venevision’s Cisneros purchased the Univision network from the Hallmark group. In 1993, Perenchio called Barba to serve as general manager of Univision’s New Jersey’s WXTV Channel 41 station. When former Chilean actor Joaquín Blaya resigned as Univision’s president, Perenchio appointed Barba as president and COO (Blaya was then hired by Telemundo to serve as its president). Barba’s mandate was to turn around the operations ofthestationgroup,includingthenetwork’sflagship station KMEX (in Los Angeles), which generated a large portion of the company’s revenue. Under Barba, KMEX became the first Spanishlanguage television station ever to outperform English-language network stations. In 1996 Barba went back to Puerto Rico to, once again, manage WAPA-TV (which at that time was owned by Pegasus Broadcasting) for just one year, before returning to Miami to run ad sales rep Petry Latino. When New York-based Marlin Entertainment and Miami-based NetSpan acquired Petry Latino from Petry Television, Barba became a co-chairmanof the new entity named NetSpan Latino. Just as he’s not bashful about his “Midas Touch,” Barba is equally enthusiastic about his daughters, Maria and Carolina, working with him. After graduating from American University in Washington D.C. in 1997, Maria went to work for her father, who was then at Univision. She followed Barba in 1991 when he became president of Gustavo Cisneros’ Venevisión International, in Miami, and was head of Marketing and Public Relations. In addition, when, in 1999 Barba went solo and founded UnoDosTres, one of the first Internet TV companies, Maria joined her father as promotion manager. When Barba founded Spanish-language TV network CaribeVision in 2007, he gave Caroline a job hosting a halfhour entertainment show. In 1992, the Cuban TV Organization exhibiting at MIPTV (a market he’s said attended from the beginning up until recently) invited him to Havana to negotiate a package of Cuban baseball games to be sold in the U.S. That was the first time he’d returned to Cuba. (Continued from Page 28) Véonet congratulates international TV distribution pioneer Carlos Barba for an extraordinary career at the service of Spanish-speaking TV shows and viewers! Int’ l TV Distribut ion Hal l of Fame
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