Univisión

Univisión is one of the largest Spanish language television channels in the United States.

Initially founded by the largest media company in Mexico (now known as Grupo Televisa) as a means to spread Spanish programming in the United States, Univision has grown to be the largest Spanish-language media outlet in the U.S. Its daily news program Noticiero Univisión, co-anchored by Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas, has in several occasions outdone (in number of ratings) major English-language network evening news programming such as CBS, NBC, and ABC's World News Tonight.

Although Grupo Televisa still owns a large stake in Univision stock holding's, Grupo Cisneros of Venezuela purchased a large amount of shares becoming it's largest shareholder.

Univisión and Telemundo USA have been competing for the top spot among Hispanic viewers for many years, often imitating each other's programming.

Univisión however has constantly maintained a lead in ratings due in large part to Mexican telenovelas, or soap operas, and other programming produced by Grupo Televisa. Telemundo has recently grown more competitive with Brazilian telenovelas and also in large part because NBC has equipped the network since it purchased it.

Univisión headquarters are based in Los Angeles, although much of its programming is filmed in Miami. Among its shows are El Show De Cristina (talkshow conducted by Cristina Saralegui) ,Don Francisco's Sábado Gigante, Despierta América (morning show), Primer Impacto (newsmagazine), Aquí y Ahora (premier investigative nightly newsmagazine), and Noticiero Univisión (news program conducted by Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas).

In addition to that, Univisión has for years shown live boxing fights and soccer matches, and also the World Cup.

Univision has contracts with Mexico's Televisa and Venezuela's Venevisión to showcase some of their telenovelas and tv shows, and in 2001 it acquired Puerto Rico's WLII-TV (former Tele_Once) and WSTE-TV (former Super Siete, now a TeleFutura affiliate).