Striving to become Fox News en español, Miami-based Americano Media runs out of money

Americano Media, a Miami-based conservative media network that aims to become a Spanish-language version of Fox News, has run out of money and has been unable to pay employees for months as it seeks a new investor to stay afloat.

The radio, online news and online TV network has not been able to pay salaries since May, employees told the Miami Herald, with the company admitting that many if not all of its 100-plus staffers have been working without pay, hoping to be compensated once the company finds an investor willing to throw it a lifeline.

Sources familiar with the company’s situation said that founder and CEO Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo is expecting an offer from Texas-based Voz Media — owner of Miami and Puerto Rico TV stations Mega TV — that would allow Americano Media to continue operations.

The offer, which sources said was expected within hours and that would include provisions that would “make the rank and file employees whole”, was yet to be presented Thursday afternoon.

Garcia-Hidalgo told the Herald that challenging economic conditions made it difficult for Americano Media to reach its goals before the company’s funding ran out.

“Americano Media is establishing a new multimedia platform during an historic recession, where attracting investment has turned out to be more challenging than we expected,” Garcia-Hidalgo said in a brief statement to the Herald. “As a result, our company grew faster than our fundraising. Like any startup, we are making adjustments to move forward. We are committed to paying our obligations, especially back salaries of our team, and to moving forward resolutely into the future.”

Americano Media launched in March 2022 with $20 million from investors backing Garcia-Hidalgo’s vision to build a Fox News-like network in Spanish. The company sought to own 50 radio stations in key political markets nationally ahead of the upcoming 2024 elections. In Miami its programs air on 790 AM.

Speaking to the Washington Post in April, Garcia-Hidalgo said that he aimed to have those stations running by the end of the year to potentially reach 10 million listeners and boost the percentage of Latinos voting Republican in the 2024 presidential election.

While agreeing that there is still potential for the development of a conservative network for the Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S., Americano Media employees told the Herald there were flaws in the plan’s execution.

“What happened in Americano is due to bad management on the part of its president, and not, whatsoever, on the idea that conservative news media does not have potential in Spanish,” said Alfonso Aguilar, former senior vice president and political director of the company who said that he resigned a few days ago because he was not satisfied with the media group’s business plan and the CEO’s vision.

“This is a great tragedy because we have here more than 100 employees who have not received salaries for more than two months and the problem during all that period is that we kept on being told to relax because the money was about to come in,” Aguilar added.

Several Americano Media employees who spoke to the Herald asked that their names not be used for fear that commenting publicly would hurt their chances of collecting the wages they’re owed. They all agreed that overspending and mismanagement were behind the company’s troubles and not the market conditions, which they feel still provide a strong opportunity for a well-run conservative news outlet in Spanish.

Among the complaints from staffers is that a number Garcia-Hidalgo’s family members work for the company, but others said this was not a sign of mismanagement but rather that the company was initially a family business that grew into an attractive startup once the investors came in.

Employees said the radio and online news operations were doing well, with the website getting about 200,000 unique visits per month. They said the radio station was slowly gaining ground after hiring well-known talent from other stations that had changed format and were no longer conservative outlets.

The company began running into trouble, one staffer said, when it attempted to build out an online TV division.

“They began to spend millions and millions, betting on traditional TV content, that turned into an operation that was expensive and slow to start and that was having trouble establishing an audience,” the staffer said.

The situation was made worse by the technology platform chosen for the TV operation, which required potential viewers to subscribe through an app that seemed cumbersome in comparison to news programs readily available through social media, he said.

Other employees agreed that the company spent way too much resources on the TV side of the operation, entering into the project at full speed without first establishing a solid revenue stream through the other divisions.