Reynold "Rene" Anselmo (January 14, 1926September 20, 1995) was a Boston native and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

veteran A veteran () is a person who has significant experience (and is usually adept and esteemed) and expertise in a particular occupation or field. A military veteran is a person who is no longer serving in a military. A military veteran that has ...

who founded

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...

Biography

Anselmo was the son of the postmaster in

Quincy, Massachusetts Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Greater Boston, Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 1 ...

. At 16 years of age he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and flew 37 missions as a tail gunner on a

dive bomber A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact througho ...

in the

Pacific Theatre of Operations The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...

. He graduated from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1951. Anselmo travelled to

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, where he was hired by

Televisa Grupo Televisa is a Mexican multimedia mass media company. A major Latin American mass media corporation, it often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. In April 2021, Televisa and Univision Communications announce ...

to produce television shows for Mexican television. He wed his wife Mary during his residence in Mexico. Anselmo returned to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to help run the Spanish International Network

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...

(the current day

), and later to co-found

PanAmSat The former PanAmSat Corporation founded in 1984 by Reynold (Rene) Anselmo, was a satellite service provider headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. It operated a fleet of communications satellites used by the entertainment ind ...

. PanAmSat gained a foothold in the television market by providing

satellite service A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisoto ...

s for private commercial

communication network A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, messag ...

s, such as those used by international conglomerates to connect far flung

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

operations around the globe or provide data connections between a large number of

retail outlet Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and th ...

s and

corporate headquarters Corporate headquarters is the part of a corporate structure that deals with important tasks such as strategic planning, corporate communications, taxes, law, books of record, marketing, finance, human resources, and information technology. Corpor ...

. He was a man with "unflinching self-confidence and willingness to risk all in his fight to upend the status quo," ''Space News'' stated in a tribute to Anselmo. He challenged the

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

in satellite provision held by

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly INTEL-SAT, INTELSAT, Intelsat) is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States. Originally formed as In ...

in the 1980s, taking out full-page ads in the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' asking political leaders, including former U.S. President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

, to open up the satellite

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

market. He picked up the cause of planting daffodils in

Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich (, ) is a New England town, town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Conne ...

, and left PanAmSat to his wife,

Mary Anselmo Mary Anselmo is the philanthropist widow of Rene Anselmo, the founder of PanAmSat, the first privately held satellite communications company in the United States. Career Rene Anselmo died in 1995, two days before the public offering of his company. ...

Personal life

Anselmo was survived by his wife

and three children, daughter Pier and sons, Rayce and Reverge.

Reverge

Reverge Anselmo owned Anselmo Vineyards before selling it in 2014, after a publicized battle with Shasta County, California. In 2020, Reverge Anselmo, who lives in Connecticut, contributed more than $100,000 to Patrick Jones' Shasta County District 4 Supervisor successful election campaign, "believed to be, at that time, the largest individual dollar contribution ever, to a local political campaign". In 2020, the Shasta County District Supervisor salary was $54,948 or $53,508. In addition, he has contributed more than a half-million dollars to Shasta County political committees, including $400,000 in November to ''Shasta General Purpose Committee/Recall Shasta'', a group for the recall of three supervisors, after giving them $50,000 in August.

References

External links

* 1995 deaths American television executives United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II United States Marines Businesspeople from Boston 1926 births 20th-century American businesspeople American expatriates in Mexico University of Chicago alumni Child soldiers in World War II Univision people {{US-tv-bio-stub