Changing Channels

THE RISE OF SPANISH-LANGUAGE TELEVISION IN THE US, AND THE INSIDE STORY OF THE NETWORK THAT UNITED MILLIONS OF LATINOS.

When Joaquin Blaya took over a struggling Spanish-language TV station in Miami, few believed Hispanic media had a future in the United States. But one Chilean immigrant's bold vision helped transform a fledgling network into Univision. Under his leadership, Sábado Gigante, El Show de Cristina, and the newscast anchored by Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas grew into cultural touchstones for generations of Latinos while reshaping the landscape of American television.

Blaya understood that the real power of media wasn't simply to entertain, but to bring people together. Through programming created for Spanish-speaking audiences in the US, millions of viewers from more than twenty countries came to see themselves as a community. By launching the first Spanish-language voter-registration campaign, Blaya helped turn this growing audience into an emerging political force.

Filled with behind-the-scenes stories, hard-won leadership lessons, and firsthand accounts of television history in the making, Changing Channels is more than the memoir of a visionary executive. It is the untold story of how one immigrant changed what America watched, how millions of Americans saw themselves, and ultimately, how America saw them.