Univision Seizes Viewer Milestone

Spanish-language television network Univision passed a new milestone, with its audience among people between 18 and 49 years old beating English-language broadcasting rivals for what it said was the first time.

About 2.1 million viewers between 18 and 49 years old watched prime-time programs on Univision for the week ended Sept. 5, according to Nielsen Co. That tally was up 12% from a week earlier, driven in part by new twists in love triangles on the network's two summertime telenovelas. Meantime, Fox, NBC and CBS each saw its prime-time average in that age-bracket tumble by over a quarter, dragged down by a flurry of reruns and holiday-weekend doldrums. Fox, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co., and CBS is a unit of CBS Corp. The victory for the Univision Communications Inc. network comes as the Hispanic audience in the U.S. continues to grow faster than the television audience as a whole. Last week, Nielsen said that the number of Hispanic TV households increased by 3.1% from a year earlier, while the number of non-Hispanic households had increased only 0.6%.

"We are now in a multicultural, multiethnic society," said Cesar Conde, Univision's president, in an interview Wednesday. "The Hispanic community has come of age."