| Type | Public (BMV: TVAZTCA) |
|---|---|
| Country | Mexico |
| Availability | National; also distributed in the United States (through Azteca América) and certain other North American countries |
| Founded | by Ricardo Salinas Pliego |
| Revenue | US$ 935.0 Million (2010) |
| Net income | US$ 187.5 Million (2010) |
| Key people | Mario San Román (CEO) |
| Launch date | (1968) |
| Former names | Imevisión (1968—1993) |
| Official website | www.tvazteca.com/ |
Azteca, of Mexico, is the second-largest Spanish-language television entertainment network.[1] It was established in 1983 as the state-owned Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión ("Imevisión"), a holding of the national TV networks channel 13 (1968, state-owned since 1972) and channel 7. In 1993, it was privatized under its current name, and now it is part of Grupo Salinas. Its flagship program is the newscast Hechos.
In Mexico, TV Azteca operates two networks: Azteca 13 and Azteca 7. Both have had near-national coverage, mostly via over the air TV, cable TV, DBS, and FTA. Both networks are available in HDTV. Azteca 13 can also be seen live online via Azteca's website.
The TV Azteca also operates Azteca 13 Internacional, reaching 13 countries in Central and South America.
TV Azteca owns part of the Azteca América network in the United States.
TV Azteca had been the owner of Todito.com and Unefon, but the former was liquidated in 2007, and the latter was merged with Iusacell, which is a property of the same group that owns TV Azteca.
TV Azteca reporter Inez Sainz was involved in an incident involving the New York Jets American football team, where Jets players were accused of making suggestive comments to Ms. Sainz while she was covering a practice session in New Jersey. The incident is being investigated by NFL and Jets team officials.
On March 7, 2011, TV Azteca changed the name to Azteca, for the subdivision simplification.[2]
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It was founded on July 18, 1993, after more than twenty years under the administration of the State. Before the change, the Channel 13 television goes back to the private sector. They are "disembodied" channels 7 and 13, together with its repeaters in the Republic and Channel 2 of Chihuahua. Although Imevisión also owned the channel 22 of the Federal District, it was not included at the privatization package by popular demand of intellectuals and was delivered to Conaculta.
To make the "divestiture" of the channels, the Mexican government had to regularize the legal status of the channels, as many of them, especially the network 7, have the status of permissions (in other words, the government allows normal people to work the signals, formally named individuals), which formally prevents its sale because the law says that only matter franchised channels (in other words, repeaters registered in the name of the company) may be transferred in sale transactions.
On July 18, 1993, the Mexico's Finance Ministry, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP) announced that Radiotelevisora del Centro, a group controlled by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, was the winner of the auction process to acquire the "state-owned media package" that included Imevisión. The winning bid amounted to US$645 million.
Rival bidders included:
On 5 January 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused TV Azteca executives (including chairman Ricardo Salinas Pliego) of having personally profited from a multi-million-dollar debt fraud committed by TV Azteca and another company in which they held stock.[1] The charges were among the first brought under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,[1] introduced in the wake of the corporate financial scandals of that year.
On April 28, 2005, the Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores[3] (CNBV), the Mexican Banking and Securities Commission, notified TV Azteca, Ricardo B. Salinas, Chairman of the Board, and Pedro Padilla L., Board Member of the Company concerning financial penalties being imposed in connection with administrative procedures that were brought by the CNBV in late January 2005, arising from alleged violations of the Mexican Securities Law as a result of transactions that occurred in 2003 among Unefon, Nortel and Codisco.[1] The aggregated amount of the financial penalties equals approximately US$2.3 million, of which the CNBV intended to impose upon TV Azteca a penalty equivalent to approximately US$50,000.
On April 30, 2005, Finance Secretary Francisco Gil Díaz asked prosecutors to bring criminal charges against TV Azteca Chairman Ricardo Salinas Pliego on allegations he used privileged information to trade shares, people familiar with the matter said.
Gil Díaz's fiscal prosecutor filed the 1,200-page request to charge Salinas Pliego, who controls the No. 2 broadcaster, with the Attorney General's Office (PGR) on April 27, said the people, who asked not to be identified. Regulators separately fined Azteca, its chairman and board member Pedro Padilla US$2.3 million for securities law violations.
The proposed criminal charges go beyond a civil suit brought by the SEC on January 4 that accused Salinas Pliego and his company of securities fraud for hiding a transaction that netted him over US$110 million.[1]
Just a few days before the charges were formalized, TV Azteca made a public accusation of a blackmail attempt by Gil Díaz to avoid the transmission of an investigation by Azteca's reporter Lilly Téllez of alleged corruption acts during the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico. According to TV Azteca, the charges made by Gil Díaz were in retaliation for the transmission of Téllez report. The rest of the media found the accusations incredibly weak and, given the timing, suspicious: their proof was an unsigned document printed on plain paper stating the terms of the blackmail, supposedly given to a TV Azteca representative by Gil Díaz himself in his own office. The case will test the country's insider-trading legislation for the first time since the government toughened the law in 2001 to criminally prosecute violators.
"There's recognition worldwide that until securities law violators are prosecuted criminally, civil enforcement will have a limited deterrence effect," said Jacob Frenkel, a former U.S. federal prosecutor and SEC enforcement lawyer who is now a partner at Shulman Rogers in Rockville, Maryland.
In 1998, TV Azteca had a commercial alliance with Javier Moreno Valle, who had serious financial problems with his enterprises, Televisora del Valle de México (Mexican Valley's TV, TVM) and Corporación de Noticias e Información (News and Information Corporation, CNI). The contract was to sell spots and advertising in TVM of TV Azteca's sponsors. TV Azteca invested 25 million dollars in TVM for re-estructuration and acconditioning of high TV technology in TVM's installations in Cerro del Chiquihuite in Mexico City as part of the contract.
In 2000, TVM unilaterally broke the contract and commercial relations with TV Azteca because, in words of Javier Moreno Valle, TV Azteca did not accomplish the contract clauses, reporting red numbers in its financial documents, and he took of new the channel signal to re-transmit their programs. TV Azteca launched a judicial demand against TVM and Javier Moreno Valle for fraud of 25 million dollars given to TVM, a verdict of an international court in Paris, resolved that TV Azteca can take the control and operation of the signal of channel 40 in UHF band, because TVM did not return 25 million dollars and did not accomplish the contract clauses, but later the signal was returned to TVM because the frequency of channel 40 was given to Javier Moreno Valle and Televisión del Valle de México in 1993, for the Mexican government and the Communications and Transport Ministry (SCT) of Mexico, have registered that Televisora del Valle de México is owner of the permission to operate the electromagnetic spectre of channel 40. Nowadays, Javier Moreno Valle have an apprehension and extradition orden by the Mexican government for fraud against the Mexican Treasury Department (SHCP), and continues the legal conflict for the control of Televisora del Valle de México and its installations, but 2008 ends the contract between both enterprises.
Illegally, TV Azteca nowadays operates completely the signal and installations of Televisora del Valle de México, because it never bought this enterprise and its permissions to operate the channel frequency.
Salinas Pliego, 49, made a US$109 million profit in 2003 after buying debt that TV Azteca phone unit Unefon SA owed to Nortel Networks Corp. for a discounted price, and then receiving repayment from Unefon at full value three months later, the SEC said in January. The SEC alleged Mexico City-based TV Azteca, whose shares trade in both Mexico and the U.S., failed to tell shareholders about the transaction.
The SEC requires companies to disclose so-called "related party" transactions because they may involve conflicts of interest.
Dan McCosh, a spokesman for Salinas Pliego and the companies he controls, declined to comment on the possibility of criminal charges. Salinas Pliego and TV Azteca denied any wrongdoing and said they would appeal the administrative fines imposed by regulators, according to a statement sent to the Mexican stock exchange.
In September, Salinas Pliego told reporters he wasn't concerned about the SEC investigation. "We are totally convinced we acted correctly, and we are going to defend ourselves," he said.
Mexican regulators started investigating Salinas Pliego and the companies he controls in December 2003, after TV Azteca's outside lawyers publicly expressed concern about the Unefon debt transaction. On January 5, 2005, Ricardo Salinas Pliego was charged with fraud by the SEC.[1]
Analysts from Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank reduced their recommendations on TV Azteca stock on January 8, 2004, after the company disclosed details of the Unefon transaction, sending the shares 11% lower that day to 5.52 pesos. TV Azteca fell 2.8% in trading today to 5.49 pesos, down 22.4% this year. Its American Depositary receipts fell 13 cents, or 1.6%, to US7.99.
Gil Díaz asked Congress last month to revise legislation to expand shareholder rights and facilitate company share listings to spur the stock market. The changes would add to amendments made in 2001 that defined the information controlling shareholders and companies must disclose to minority investors.
The bill that Gil Díaz is now proposing would replace Mexico's 30-year-old securities law and reduce by two-thirds, to 5%, the amount of stock shareholders must own to bring lawsuits against company executives, among other provisions. He said the new law won't be as strict as U.S. legislation.
TV Azteca is known for its attacks on Javier Corral (ex Congressman, PAN) for his opposition to the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión (LFRT), the Federal Radio and Television Law, a bill concerning the licensing and regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. The LFRT was favourable to both TV Azteca and Televisa (who together control 95 percent of all television frequencies) because it allowed them to renew their licenses without paying for them. Javier Corral, by leading the campaign against the LFRT, became the object of attacks by TV Azteca. These attacks were of such nature that the Permanent Commission of the Congress of Union had to vote an 'Agreement Point' (non binding resolution), condemning the overtly propagandistic campaign by the 'TV broadcasters' against Corral and another ex-Senator, Manuel Bartlett. However, in the original proposal of 'Agreement Point', only TV Azteca was mentioned, for Televisa did not attack either of the former.[4][5]
According to The Economist, the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión "raced through Congress confirming the country's longstanding television duopoly" and constituted a "giveaway of radio spectrum and a provision that allows broadcasting licenses to be renewed more or less automatically".[6]
The website tvtropes.org, in the section titled "Cowboy Bebop at his computer", claims that TV Azteca, through the series "Ojo de Huracan" claimed that "Pikachu" spelled backwards in Hebrew meant "More powerful than God" and that the TV series [[Pokémon is satanic.
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