They Knew How to Move Mountains

As I thank those who are congratulating HispanicAd.com on our 25th Anniversary, I’m taking this opportunity to celebrate the lives of some industry pioneers who have left us over the last few days. People like Venezuelan TV mogul Gustavo Cisneros. People like Omar Marchant. People like Carlos Barba. True giants.

My thanks to Combined Sources for the recap obituaries of Marchant and Barba. It’s impossible to read them without taking into account the audacity of these individuals who dared move mountains.

Every now and then I “bitch and kvetch” about what I call a certain passivity on the part of our industry. Are we moving mountains? Are we daring ourselves to advance and defend our Hispanic Market as it deserves?

Reading the stories that follow, I hope, will make us think. —

Gene Bryan – CEO  / HispanicAd

OMAR MARCHANT: HISPANIC MARKET LEADING PIONEER

Omar Marchant, an award-winning music, radio and television figure in the United States Latino scene, passed away in Miami, Florida last week. He had been a forerunner of U.S. Latino communications. “It’s impossible to speak about Hispanic television without mentioning Omar Marchant,”said Emilio Estefan. “He was a force of imagination and creativity who even helped Gloria and me move our careers forward.”

Marchant started his career in his native Cuba as a radio announcer in Matanzas and, later on, at the age of 23, at the seminal CMQ Television. Once an exile, his voice opened him doors to the early Hispanic radio industry. He became the head programmer for the then famous and now defunct, WFAB, La Fabulosa, a staple of early Little Havana communications, under Sergio Vidal Cairo. His programming formula and style with featured hits known as “Los Pegaditos”, soon became the model to follow by Spanish-rooted stations nationwide.

The early beginnings of Hispanic television saw Marchant develop as master of ceremonies of Miami’s Channel 23 “Solo Para Bailadores.” A popular personality with a loyal fandom base, he soon gravitated to production and management positions alongside his friend, Chilean TV pioneer Joaquín Blaya, a leading force in U.S. Hispanic communications.

With the explosion of Hispanic television, Marchant went on to develop and lead some of the UNIVISION (then SIN) key productions like “Premio Lo Nuestro” that would signal the maturity of the U.S. Hispanic Market which quickly grabbed the attention of American advertisers and the pocketbooks of U. S. brands. According to industry experts, Marchant was a precursor, under Blaya’s leadership at UNIVISION, of the first big-budget shows that would help solidify “El Mercado Hispano.” Among those, he played a role in the introduction of Latin America’s super star Mario Kreutzberger (Don Francisco) when Blaya invited the legendary TV mogul from Chile to create a version of his show for Latino audiences in America. The show, “Sábado Gigante,” became a smashing success for many years. “He came up with some of the concepts, ideas and catch-words for the show,” Kreutzberger says.

The big productions Blaya and Marchant introduced were revolutionary in the sense that they gave the industry a national first-class status as they conveyed a pivotal sense of growth. “It was like a coming of age for our Hispanic Market that was now ready to be taken seriously beyond the proven numbers,” says Daisy Expósito-Ulla, head of d expósito & Partners, and an American Advertising Hall of Fame inductee.

“I would go to (Joaquín) Blaya and tell him the show will cost us so much to produce and he wouldn’t blink an eye,” Marchant remembered on a recent TV interview in Miami. “Blaya would alert head of sales Raúl Toraño that the sales effort would need to be aggressive and Toraño would help make it happen with the support of growing agencies and people like Gloria Constanza (Media head at The Bravo Group at the time.)”

Marchant had his hand on a number of important talent discoveries at UNIVISION, including a young Sofía Vergara. Again, with Joaquín Blaya, he would later on move to TELEMUNDO for a brief stint, and, somewhat later, would help in the formation of Radio Unica. “In the case of UNIVISION, it was a pioneering contribution of gigantic proportions,” says industry executive Eduardo Suárez. “In the case of TELEMUNDO, he helped in transitioning it from underdog to a first-rate competitor,” added Suárez. Marchant helped create and produce “Nuestra Belleza Latina”, “TV & Novelas Awards”, “Latin Grammy Awards”, as well as charity telethons. Together with Jorge Ulla, he helped create an “anthemic jingle” for the American Cancer Society, that would be used for many years by Miami’s Liga Contra el Cáncer. “He was a uniquely generous friend and a true powerhouse of creativity,” added filmmaker and ad executive Ulla. “While generations apart, Omar radiated youth and a contagious positive energy. We collaborated on an Emmy-winning production and he won a great number of those for having a great eye for what audiences wanted. You can’t learn wisdom and that’s part of what Omar had,” Ulla remarked.

Marchant had also played an important role in the career of international star Julio Iglesias and in the development of the coveted Latin American Music catalogue of the powerful Peer International, where he was a talent scout and high-level executive for the music-prolific Latin America region, working side by side with the legendary Monique Peer.

Marchant was the recipient of many industry awards, including several Emmy Awards and the top Lifetime Emmy recognition. “He was a humble genius,” said Blaya. “But he wanted to be seen simply as un hombre dichoso, nothing more.”

Marchant was 88.

CARLOS BARBA: THE MIDAS TOUCH AND A SHOWBUSINESS FLAIR

Carlos Barba, the Cuban-Venezuelan television entrepreneur who had his hand in many of the ventures that helped develop a Hispanic television industry in the United Sates, passed in West Palm Beach, FL last Saturday. He was 89.

With the looks of a matinee idol, a young Carlos Barba became an actor in Havana while his love of baseball and his ability to play that sport caught the attention of talent scouts. A shoulder injury cut that career short and brought Barba back to acting becoming a star of Havana’s CMQ’s television show “De fiesta con los Galanes.”

After becoming a political exile in Caracas, Barba left the thespian behind him for a career turn that saw him at high-level managerial posts at VENEVISION and later on in New York, Puerto Rico and Miami. His professional journey had him at the head of WNJU-Channel 47 in Linden, New Jersey where his programming strategy multiplied sales and ratings adding new talent like Puerto Rican singer Mirta Silva, and helped groundbreaking discoveries such as Grupo Menudo. A highlight of his career took place in 1984 when the legendary Norman Lear (the creator of All in the Family) and billionaire Jerry Perenchio acquired the Spanish station and created NetSpan. The move helped make Barba a millionaire when Saul Steinberg, the well-known corporate raider acquired, through Reliance, WNJU for 75 million dollars, nearly 70 million dollars over its original acquisition value.

By that time, Barba’s famous “Midas Touch” (according to FORBES Magazine) had been established: he had already revamped famous WAPA-TV of Puerto Rico, owned at the time by Columbia Pictures, had developed projects for Lear -and Perenchio-owned Embassy Productions and proven, at a local level, that promotions were as important as programming and sales.

It was then that he called the attention of TELEVISA’s Emilio Azcarraga, René Anselmo and Emilio Nicolás, who formed a virtual Mexican bridge to SIN and to what would later on be named UNIVISION. Barba would in fact move laterally throughout his career playing leadership roles at TELEMUNDO and then, once again, with Perenchio, at UNIVISION.

Barba’s mantra was as bold and exuberant as his style. “We are in showbusiness,” he used to say. “No show, no business!” he would engagingly remark. Banging his own drum was a strategy that worked for him, according to those who knew him. But in April 10, 1994 an article by journalist Kathleen Murray in The New York Times was probably the cause for his departure from UNIVISION. The story, titled “Banging the Drums as Spanish TV Comes of Age,” apparently trespassed one of Perenchio’s golden rules of not allowing UNIVSION executives to speak to journalists.

True or false, Barba left the network but remained friends with the mogul who would years later sell the network for more than 12 billion dollars.

Energetic, approachable, with a flair for life and a popular sense of humor, Barba remained active in business and a few years ago helped launch CaribeVision with Alejandro Burillo Azcárraga and Carlos Vasallo.

Barba was also developing digital platforms and consulting for broadcasters in Latin America until his health took a dive around 2020.

Bigger than life, as he was described by many, a very young Carlos Barba was on board the airplane from which CMQ-TV executives and technicians managed to broadcast the first baseball game from the United States. “It was a lot of fun and quite intrepid. There were no satellites at the time: We were the satellite,” said Barba.