MANO A MANO IN HISPANIC TV

摘要

Back in 1971, before he became the king of Spanish-language TV in the U. S., 71-year-old A. Jer-rold Perenchio was the boxing promoter who put together the first heavyweight bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Nowadays, Perenchio, chairman of Univision Communications Inc., is throwing a few punches of his own. Last year, when Univision started losing ratings to Telemundo, its top rival, Perenchio's response was a quick upper cut: Univision swooped in to sign an agreement with the Brazilian producers of Telemundo's hottest show, Betty La Fea ("Betty the Ugly"). That gave Univision the rights to the show's sequel. Perenchio then delivered another blow by signing a pair of long-term deals with two other Telemundo programmers.