The Televisa Playbook: The art of failing upwards

There’s no understanding Latino media’s swing to Trump without knowing how Mexico’s TV titan operates.

In November 2023, one year before the US presidential elections, the Democratic Party establishment began to worry. Journalists from the country’s largest Spanish-speaking media outlet, Univision, were seen at Mar-a-Lago accompanied by new figures: executives from Televisa, Mexico’s own largest media conglomerate and the world’s largest Spanish-speaking outfit.

The year before that Mar-a-Lago interview, Televisa had acquired 45% of Univision and people started noticing changes in coverage. Journalists went from shouting down Trump in his first term over his treatment of migrants to un-factchecked TV appearances in the lead up to the 2024 election.

There were many reasons behind the substantial Hispanic swing that got Donald Trump elected a second time. Many believe a big one was Univision’s turn from hard-core opponent to a pro-Trump “propaganda project”. They specifically blamed the merger that resulted in TelevisaUnivision in 2022, pushing Univision away from confrontation and towards the self-interested compromise with the powers that be that for decades had defined Televisa.

This interpretation is oversimplified. True, Televisa had been created as a blindly pro-government outlet during the one-party rule of the PRI. But that hadn’t been the case since the twentieth century. Since then, business, rather than political considerations, took the wheel.

Back in 2023, it was not obvious Trump would win, let alone by a substantial margin. What Televisa executives brought to the table can’t have been a blind subservience to power, but rather a page out of their broader business playbook. One that ruthlessly turned the way the market winds were blowing, and one that dictates the company’s practices to this day.