Opinion for The Latino Newsletter

The reported forced sale of TikTok in the U.S. announced by President Trump this week is not the first time the U.S. government has intervened in media ownership.

In 1986, regulators compelled the shareholders of the Spanish International Network (SIN), now Univision, to relinquish their majority stake. The pressure came from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC): either sell the broadcast license or lose it.

The network, originally backed by the Mexican Azcárraga family with Reynold “René” Anselmo as their U.S. “frontman,” ended up in the hands of Hallmark Cards, the iconic Missouri-based greeting card company. And almost as soon as the FCC approved the deal, Hallmark rebranded the network: from SIN to Univision, the name we still know today.

The circumstances are different. Then it was broadcast television, tightly regulated by the FCC. TikTok, by contrast, has grown exponentially with almost no oversight or scrutiny from any government agency. But Washington’s logic is strikingly similar: both were mass media platforms seen as potential channels of foreign influence, and the remedy in both cases was the same: force a sale to “nationalize” control.

In my book Live from America: How Latino TV Conquered the U.S., I give all the details of why, what, and how Ronald Reagan’s government pushed the sale of SIN.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 5:

In the days following the historic meeting between Reagan and La Madrid, Judge Pfaelzer, known for her skills as a mediator and her effective resolutions, summoned all parties involved…

…SIN’s future hung in the balance, leaving up in the air the question of whether it would continue to be a bastion of Hispanic language and culture or be absorbed by the insatiable Anglo-American media market, which was clamoring for a fourth major television network.

In this high-pressure atmosphere, the judge proposed a solution that seemed to balance out the competing interests: the complete sale of SIN’s shares to a third party.

Although it sounds brief and straightforward, this 1986 “silent kind of media expropriation” was the culmination of 20 years of litigation, diplomatic encounters, and extensive negotiations — an effort to avert the tragic possibility of the FCC outright canceling SIN’s license. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ring, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and many others were circling, practically drooling, waiting to buy SIN’s remains and snatch the license to create a fourth national network to compete against ABC, CBS, and NBC.

One question that comes to my mind now is whether reported TikTok investors Larry Ellison and the Murdochs will repeat Hallmark’s move and erase the TikTok name to signal a clean break. In 1986, the mandate was clear: de-Mexicanize SIN with a new name. Today, the same logic could apply, erase the “Chinese aura” around TikTok by rebranding it under American ownership. SIN became Univision, and its new CEO was an Anglo-American, William Grimes, fresh off running ESPN in its early days. Will we now see the same kind of Elon-style rebranding that turned Twitter into X?

History helps us read today’s headlines with perspective and with less improvisation. The names and technologies change, but the actors and their decisions rhyme across time. In the book, I didn’t have the chance to make this parallel, but it’s worth doing now: examining what happened with Univision decades ago may hint at what could happen with TikTok, or whatever it ultimately becomes.

Javier Marin is a Hispanic entrepreneur, investor, and media proprietor. He serves as Executive Chairman of Tiempo Company, the media group behind El Planeta in Boston and Tiempo Latino in Washington, D.C., two of the most influential Spanish-language news outlets on the East Coast. Substack: @javierjmarin. 

ICE Detains Des Moines Schools Superintendent: From Iowa Public Radio, “Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts was detained Friday morning by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

According to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Roberts was arrested after fleeing ICE agents who initiated a traffic stop. The Department of Homeland Security said Roberts did not have work authorization and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May 2024.”

The Latino Newsletter welcomes opinion pieces in English and/or Spanish from community voices. Submission guidelines are here. The views expressed by outside opinion contributors do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this outlet or its employees.