After a 21-year run, Azteca América ceased operations in the United States.
The network, born from a joint venture between Harry Pappas’s Telecasting and Grupo Salinas’s TV Azteca in 2000 and launched the following year on Los Angeles station KAZA-TV with the goal to compete with Univision and Telemundo, ended its rocky run today December 31, 2022.
TV Azteca cashed out its investment in 2017, when it sold its share of the network to HC2 Network, renamed Innovate Corp in 2021.
The new owners maintained a licensing agreement to broadcast Azteca’s daily shows and other programming, as well as U.S.-based staff, but started shedding many executives and employees along the way, and the exit of top leadership, amid downsizing.
HC2 sold several full power Azteca América affiliated stations in 2021 “to reduce HC2 Broadcasting’s debt.”