Dominance over Mexican Television

In 1968, a group of businessmen tied primarily to the ALFA corporation of Monterrey, Nuevo León, mounted a challenge to the dominance of TSM over Mexican television. Using videotape technology and imported American shows for much of its early programming, the upstart network, called Television Independiente de Mexico ( TIM, channel 8), made significant headway. Financial problems, however, pushed TIM to agree to a merger with Azcarraga's TSM in December 1972, leading to a new corporation whose logo became Televisa (encompassing channels 2, 4, 5, and 8). In the midst of the conclusion of this momentous deal, Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta died, leaving his son, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, to head Televisa.

In the ensuing years, the younger Azcarraga aggressively exploited Televisa's dominant position, as the company spread further into ancillary areas, such as satellite transmission, expansion into international markets, cable television, sports programming, video distribution, syndication, mediarelated publications, and movie production for television, among other activities. Protected by governmental policies that impeded foreign competition in the Mexican media market, Televisa established its contemporary dominance of Mexican mass communications in the decade following the death of the elder Azcarraga.

The retreat of the Mexican government from state-led development policies after 1982 offered the possibility of a weakening of Televisa's monopolistic position. Initially, the federal government moved slowly to open mass communications to foreign investors. Finally, the appearance in the early 1990s of U.S.-based video and record distributors, rival cable television networks, and foreign-generated television news services eroded Televisa's previous dominance of the Mexican media. On the other hand, much of the competition for Televisa at that time targeted the country's small though growing middle and upper classes, leaving the bulk of Mexico's television audience still dependent on Televisa's programming. The most serious challenge to Televisa in the 1990s came increasingly from political pressures, rather than from its economic competitors.