Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta (2 March 1895,

Tampico, Tamaulipas Tampico is a city and port in the southeastern part of the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. It is located on the north bank of the Pánuco River, about inland from the Gulf of Mexico, and directly north of the state of Veracruz. Tampico is the fift ...

– 23 September 1972,

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

) was a Mexican businessman who built an entertainment conglomerate. The son of Basque immigrants Mariano Azcárraga and Emilia Vidaurreta, his primary education was in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, middle school in

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_ ...

, and high school in

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

Early career

Aged 17, he was employed at a shoe store while he studied trade and economics by night. He obtained distribution rights for a shoe manufacturer in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and, at age 23, he created the car distribution company, ''Azcárraga & Copland''.

Radio broadcasting industry

In 1923, Azcárraga obtained a license to distribute radios from the

Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidi ...

. Around the same time his brother Raúl Azcárraga Vidaurreta had created a radio station with Mexico City's

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

'' El Universal''. While working at the "Mexico Music" division of

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

) he became more interested in the radio broadcasting industry. On 19 March 1930 the radio station

XET-AM XET-AM, nicknamed La T Grande, is a commercial AM radio station on 990 kHz at Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. It is part of Multimedios Radio's Monterrey station cluster. The transmitter is located in San Nicolás de los Garza, near Monterre ...

was founded in

Monterrey Monterrey ( , ) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the third largest city in Mexico behind Guadalajara and Mexico City. Located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the city is ancho ...

. And on September 18 Azcárraga created the

XEW-AM XEW-AM is a radio station in Mexico City, Mexico, broadcasting on the AM frequency of 900 kHz; it is branded as ''W Radio''. XEW-AM serves as the originating station for other "W Radio" stations around Mexico that carry some of its program ...

with Mexico Music Corporation as major stockholder. The station was also part of the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

division of RCA.

Television industry

Azcárraga Vidaurreta established

Estudios Churubusco Estudios Churubusco is one of the oldest and largest movie studios in Mexico. It is located in the Churubusco neighborhood of Mexico City. History It was inaugurated in 1945 after a 1943 agreement between RKO and Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta ( ...

in the 1940s and created the first TV station in Mexico, Channel 2, in 1951. He became the first president of Telesistemas Mexicanos in 1955. His entertainment conglomerate was composed of 92 different business units by 1969. He died on 23 September 1972, before establishment of Televisa, S.A., a television production company on 1 January 1973.

Family

Emilio married Laura Milmo Hickman, daughter of Patricio Milmo Vidaurri, an American citizen, and Laura Hickman Morales. She was the granddaughter of Patricio Milmo O'Dowd (né Patrick Milmo (1826–1899), son of Darby and Sarah (née O'Dowd) Milmo of Lisaneena, Collooney, County Sligo, Ireland), a major stockholder in th
Milmo National Bank of Laredo
and his wife, María Prudenciana Vidaurri Vidaurri (a descendant of the Vásquez Borregos, who helped to found

Laredo, Texas Laredo ( ; ) is a city in and the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Laredo has the distinction of flying seven flags (the Flag of th ...

). Emilio Azcárraga and Laura Milmo had three children: Emilio, Laura, and Carmela. In 1899 ''Patricio Milmo and Sons'' was established as a bank to invest in such interests as railroads and mines. After the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

the company focused on safer investments, like the then-recently-developing radio industry.Patricio Milmo O'Dowd biodata
/ref>

References

External links

Biography
at the Revista Mexicana de Comunicación of the Manuel Buendía Foundation.
Biography
at the Salón del Empresario en México ("Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in Mexico").
History
of the