Eduardo Caballero, pioneer of US Hispanic TV, radio and marketing, dies

More than 50 years ago, Eduardo Caballero had the vision of betting on the US Hispanic audience and on young people, an almost quixotic adventure, which laid the foundations of the robust media industry in Spanish that today has an important position in the US market. Now that he passed away, the industry is paying its tribute to this outstanding entrepreneur.

The Cuban businessman is considered a pioneer of Hispanic radio and TV in the US. During his career he set several milestones in the conquest of Spanish-language content in the US market. In 1973 he created his first company, Caballero Spanish Media, after having taken his first steps as a salesman for a local radio station in New York, recently arrived from Havana and shortly after joining the original executive team (as executive VP and director of Sales) of Spanish International Network (SIN), today Univision.

Caballero created the first syndicated Spanish-language program in the US, Lo Mejor del Cine en Español, on the air for five years, broadcasted on 29 North American television stations at a time when only seven stations in five cities aired Spanish-language television programs. Due to this program he received the National Television Hall of Fame Award from the Hispanic International Institute.

He was persevering and determined. He acquired the broadcast rights of CBS Radio Network, to distribute for the first time in the US, the Major League Baseball World Series in Spanish, as well as the radio rights to broadcast in Spanish three Olympics (South Korea, Barcelona and Atlanta).

In 1998 he founded a television network targeting the Hispanic youth market, Caballero Televisión, with 12 stations in California and Texas, and the MASMUSICA TeVe Network, a Spanish-language music video and entertainment network. It was a reference to understand this type of audience: in 2016 he told Ismael Cala on CNN En Español how the top singer of the moment, Pitbull, thanked him for screening one of his videos on television for the first time.

The success of Caballero’s video channel attracted the attention of Viacom, which bought his stations to create a new company with MTV, to which he ended up advising in its last years of activity. He created MTV Radio and also CNN Radio News.

“I am one of the few executives who are still active and who closely saw the beginning of Hispanic TV in the US and I want to capture my memories in this book. From that time until now the industry has changed a lot,” he commented to PRODU in 2006 when he was preparing a book on the history of Hispanic TV.