Yahoo!, Telemundo, and the NBC Universal Television Group will launch Yahoo! Telemundo, pooling their resources to create a Hispanic online portal. The site, http://telemundo.yahoo.com, replaces both Yahoo! en espanol and Telemundo.com.
Yahoo! and Telemundo.com will combine staffs and share ad-revenue, but neither company will buy an equity stake in the other. The new site will merge Telemundo’s original online programming with Yahoo!’s search, e-mail, and message services.
Telemundo, the NBC Universal-owned Hispanic network, has invested heavily in its web site over the past year. The network is an underdog in the Hispanic arena to powerhouse Univision, but has an advantage online in that it owns most of the popular content it airs and thus has greater flexibility in repurposing it for different platforms.
Telemundo relaunched its site several weeks ago to include broadband video of its popular telenovelas as well as original online novelas.
Although Univision claimed 75% of the $1.2 billion ad spending from last year's Hispanic upfront, some 80% of its prime time programming comes from Mexico's Grupo Televisa, dramatically limiting how easily the network can put content on new platforms. If Televisa takes control of Univision, as it is trying to do, then Univision can more readily put its hot novelas online.
