Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp., manages private investments through Cascade Investment.

Cascade looks to compete with a Televisa group, which has pooled its resources with four buyout concerns--Bain Capital Partners LLC, Blackstone Management Associates V LLC, Carlyle Investment Management LLC, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P.--and Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros.

After Univision put itself up for sale in early February, bids for the company initially came in at a slow pace.

Many traditional media companies--Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, CBS--openly balked at the high-cash-flow multiple the company wants. At its current stock price, Univision's total price tag would mean a price just south of $11 billion. Univision is looking for as much as $14 billion, or north of $40 a share. Univision shares rose slightly on Friday, up 0.8 percent to $35.92.

Univision, based in Los Angeles, gets a third of its programming from Televisa, which holds a 16.5 percent stake in the company as of April. Federal rules bar Mexico City-based Televisa from owning more than 25 percent of a U.S. broadcaster.

Univision Communications' first-quarter profit rose 21 percent to $53.9 million. Its Univision and TeleFutura broadcast networks account for about 80 percent of the Spanish-speaking television audience.

Univision's prime-time audience--among the key groups of viewers 18-49--grew 17 percent in 2005, much more than ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox, the company reported in March.

Starting in a few weeks, Univision--as well as other Spanish-language networks--will for the first time be part of the upfront buying season, in which advertisers will buy commercial time derived from Nielsen Media Research's Nielsen Television Index--the main measurement of TV viewers for the traditional English-language networks. Univision executives expect that the network, along with its impressive viewership gains, will ink big advertising revenues as a result.

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