NBC Expands Into Mexico

After attempting for several years to establish Telemundo in Mexico, NBC was finally able to make a deal this week with Televisa, Mexico's largest television company . While the specific financial details of the deal have not been disclosed, some NBC executives involved in the deal explained that Televisa has agreed to air some Telemundo programs on one of its own broadcast channels and will also permit a new channel of all Telemundo programs to broadcast throughout Mexico.

Initially only a limited amount of Telemundo programs will air on the Mexican broadcast channel, such as a select few of the company's telenovelas. However, once the new channel for Telemundo is established there will be the opportunity to include other types of programming such as news for the Mexican audience.

The new deal is huge for NBC and Telemundo as one of their prime strategies for future growth relies on increasing their international reach, and Mexico remains the most important markets for Spanish-language programming. Also, NBC recently declared a new goal for the next two years, to increase the international portion of their revenue to account for 30% of total revenue by the year 2010 (a growth of 10%). Not a far fetched goal considering that Telemundo has been able to increase its revenue as well as its ratings consistently for the past five quarters.