• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 24, 2014

Hemisphere, a media company targeting U.S. Hispanic audiences, has entered into deals to acquire three Spanish-language cable TV networks serving the U.S. as well as abroad, from their previous owner, Imagina’s Media World, for a total of $102 million in cash. The transaction is expected to be complete by the end of the first quarter.
 
The deal includes Pasiones, a cable net devoted to telenovelas and series, with a total distribution of 3.8 million subscribers in the U.S., as well as 7.2 million subscribers across Latin America; Centroamerica TV, targeting U.S. Hispanics from Central American countries with news, entertainment, and soccer programming, reaching over 3.3 million subscribers in the U.S.; and TV Dominicana, targeting Hispanics from the Dominican Republic with news, entertainment, and baseball programming, reaching over 2.2 million subscribers in the U.S.
 
Hemisphere CEO Alan Sokol noted that these networks can help advertisers reach underserved subsets of the U.S. Hispanic population, which marketers have tended to treat as a homogenous group, despite its geographic and cultural diversity.
 
Hemisphere was formed by the merger of InterMedia, owner of Spanish-language media properties, including Cinelatino, WAPA America and WAPA TV, with Azteca Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, back in January 2013.
 
The last few months have seen sizable activity in Hispanic cable nets.

In October, ABC joined forces with Univision to launch a new cable and satellite TV network, Fusion, targeting millennial Hispanics with English-language content, including news, comedy and sports. Univision also invested in El Rey, a new English-language cable TV network created by Comcast and director Robert Rodriguez, launched in December .