Media consolidation at point where Univision buying The Onion makes sense

*By 2020 34 percent of Latinos will speak only English at home. This percentage isn’t lost on Univision executives who have been looking for a way to enter the bilingual/English market. They started the Fusion network with Disney and others, but it hasn’t been the success they expected – Disney is looking for a way out of the deal. So now they buy a controlling chunk of The Onion with the intent, some say, to bolster Fusion content. They’re after the coveted millennial market, in any language. VL

By Kyle Munzenreider, Miami New Times

Sure, it seems like a line out of a satirical article about media consolidation, but your abuela‘s favorite purveyor of telenovelas has bought a controlling stake in your hipster cousin’s favorite fake-news website. Univision announced this morning it has purchased a 40 percent controlling stake in the Onion, with the option of buying the company outright in the future. And, you know, it actually makes sense, especially considering that Univision’s own millennial news network, Fusion, continues to struggle.

Univision, which keeps its headquarters in New York but has much of its production and business operations in Miami, garners ratings that now compete with the major networks. It’s not uncommon for the company’s flagship network’s offerings to attract more eyeballs than some of its English-language peers. Though, TV ratings are down across the board, and Univision’s audience still skews older.

That’s a problem for Univision as its prepare to re-debut as a publicly traded company sometime later this year, especially as younger Hispanic Americans prefer to consume media in English. In other words, before returning to the stock market, Univision needs to prove to potential investors that it has a plan for the future.

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