Being the Consummate Hispanic Entrepreneur

A man of many talents Jeff Valdez’s rich and fruitful career made an indelible mark on what Hispanic entertainment is today

By all accounts Jeff Valdez accomplished a lot in his career. He is a consummate Hispanic entrepreneur, a media pioneer who co-founded the Hispanic cable channel Sí TV, co-created of a TV show and has won a string of awards.

Some of Jeff’s achievements include“One of the Top 50 People Who Matter,” CNN, “The Racial Harmony Award,” Center For Ethnic Understanding, “Top 50 Minorities In Cable,” Multichannel News and was also named one of “The Top 50 Marketers in America” Advertising Age.

Mr. Valdez watched his brainchild Sí TV become the forerunner to Nuvo TV in 2011.

Sí TV was ground breaking in 2004 . The new cable network served Latinos ages 18 to 34 with a full slate of English-language programming, Sí TV generated quite a bit of buzz  immediately off its launch that February.

Although it started 2004 with virtually no advertisers, Sí TV had 34 by year’s end. The network the quickly grew to 60, including Burger King, Suzuki, and General Motors. It’s also saw its audience share grow in excess of 40 percent to more than 10 million viewers.

In September of that year, Sí TV received five first-place awards for marketing and communications programming during the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications’ 19th annual conference in New York. That same month, the network announced promotional deals with XM Satellite Radio, Universal Motown, The New York Latino Film Festival, Fuego magazine, and Vidagirl.com.

Not bad for a venture that had been roundly dismissed as a conceptual nonstarter by a succession of broadcasting executives and investors.

Mr. Valdez resisted self-congratulatory remarks for what he accomplished because he realized that in some cases his doubters had good reason to bet against him. Truth be told, Sí TV had an unusually long gestation period. When he and partner Bruce Barshop founded the company to develop, produce, and distribute English-language programming for Latinos eight years prior, the pair expected to have a network up and running within six months.

Then there’s the matter of being politic in a town where connections are exceedingly valuable commodities. A show-business veteran, Mr. Valdez knows all too well that success has a way of making allies of erstwhile detractors.

From Pueblo Colorado to Europe

The youngest of nine children, Mr. Valdez was born and grew up in humble circumstances in Pueblo, Colorado. After high school, he ventured to Europe, where he drummed for a variety of bands over the course of a few months, before relocating to Colorado Springs. There he worked in mobile-home and drill-bit factories, in between doing a stint as a janitor. Convinced his destiny lay with music, he soon headed back out on the road, however, touring the country with a couple of bands for the better part of the next decade.

Upon returning to Colorado Springs, Mr. Valdez had designs on being an entrepreneur opened Comedy Corner, a club that would go on to help launch the careers of Roseanne Barr, Sinbad, and others. By this time, Mr. Valdez himself had begun to dabble in stand-up—at the urging of band mates—and he honed his act at the club.

From Colorado to Los Angeles

He headed to Los Angeles in 1993, intent on making it as a stand-up comic but ultimately working as a TV writer. That year he began producing “Comedy Compadres,” a showcase of young Hispanic comedians that aired on Los Angeles’ KTLA-TV in 1993 and 1994. The success of that program took him to San Antonio, site of the inaugural Latino Laugh Festival, and into the orbit of Mr. Barshop, an investment banker and real estate developer, in 1996.

The two collaborated on the latter event—a multi-day showcase of Hispanic comedic talent that was soon picked up by Showtime—and the following year, after Mr. Valdez spent time developing pilots for Tri-Star Television, they founded Sí TV.

Their timing seemed impeccable. Demographic indicators at the time clearly pointed to an emerging Hispanic presence nationwide. Yet the idea of a network to serve the Hispanic community’s younger segment elicited barely a yawn in television and investment circles.

“It seemed like such a logical thing to do given the market, and it was just bizarre how everyone couldn’t be convinced. It was a very difficult sell to begin with,” Mr. Valdez says.

To demonstrate the viability of his concept, he created “The Brothers Garcia” for the Nickelodeon children’s network. A family comedy narrated by John Leguizamo, the program began airing in 2000 and became a hit. Mr. Valdez went on to produce and write 48 episodes of the series, which still airs in reruns. (Ironically, Mr. Valdez recently had to turn down an opportunity to run old episodes of “The Brothers Garcia” for the reason that the show doesn’t fit his network’s target audience.)

Sí TV also produced the talk show “Cafe Olé with Giselle Fernandez” and the stand-up comedy showcase “Funny is Funny!” for Univision’s cable outlet, Galavision. The latter remains a part of Sí TV’s programming lineup.

All the while, Mr. Valdez continued telling journalists and anyone else who would listen that the launch of Sí TV—the network—was imminent. In fact, however, it was still years off. The problem, he now says, was that broadcast operators wouldn’t agree to carry his channel if he didn’t have funding, and investors wouldn’t provide capital without a distribution agreement.

“I never lost confidence in the concept. All we needed was a chance. I knew it would fly as soon as we could arrange financing and distribution,” he says.

Things finally came together last year, with the company receiving more than $60 million in operating capital from EchoStar, Time Warner, Syndicated Communications Ventures, Columbia Capital, Rho Ventures, DND Capital Partners, Llano Partners, and company co-founder Barshop Ventures.

Sí TV had already completed affiliation agreements with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cox Communications, and EchoStar’s DISH Network. Earlier this year, the network announced a distribution agreement with Verizon, which will carry the channel on its newly launched Verizon FiOS TV service.

“Our first outside investor was Syndicated Communications Ventures. Then we got Rho and Time Warner and the others. Interestingly, not 1 red cent came from Hollywood. Instead had to go to places like Austin, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., Boston, New York, and Denver,” says Mr. Valdez.

Original programming accounted for about 60 percent of the network’s schedule, with the balance being acquired fare such as reruns of “Resurrection Boulevard,” “American Family,” and “Dark Angel.”

Sí TV also aired the syndicated program “American Latino TV,” a half-hour, magazine-style show that highlights U.S. Latino culture. That program and others with a clear youth emphasis, such as the music variety show “The Drop,” are more indicative of the network’s overall tone, though. In press materials, Sí TV touted its hip and irreverent programming.

“You have to remember that this was not a broadcast model. It’s cable and therefore more narrowly focused. We needed to stay focused on 18-to-34 demographic. That’s why we didn’t do news or sports. It was lifestyle entertainment, and the focus is on comedy. That’s my background after all,” says Mr. Valdez.

He was particularly excited about “Laugh Out Loud,” for which he’s written a few sketches. “Just to make sure I haven’t lost my chops,” he says. He also occasionally performs in area comedy clubs.

These days, however, Mr. Valdez’s days were mostly devoted to supervisory duties. As chairman, he oversaw everything that was  produced at the network’s 106,000-square-foot facility in Los Angeles. Sí TV has about 65 full-time employees.

Further bolstering its profile, the network had began to attract big-name executive talent. Over that summer Michael Schwimmer was named Sí TV’s first CEO. He also served as executive vice president of programming and marketing for DISH Network. Carl Vogel, vice chairman of EchoStar, was named to Sí TV’s board of directors.

Mr. Valdez was the public face of the network and its heart soul, though. In July 2005, Sí TV announced a $600,000 contribution to La Raza Development Fund, for instance, it was Mr. Valdez who handed over the check.

Not surprisingly, he’s collected more than his share of professional honors.

“Quite Simply, the market has gotten to the point where the numbers can no longer be ignored,” he says.

Appendix

In April 2006, Valdez stepped down as head of programming of Sí TV. Edward R. Leon, the network’s senior vice president of production, assumed the additional role of acting head of programming.

According to Wikipedia: During the 2008 United States presidential election, Sí TV teamed up with voter registration organization, Voto Latino, to mount a “Crash the Parties” contest to pick two Latino “political junkies” to serve as reporters for the channel at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Video entries were judged by the public and a panel, including CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez, actress Rosario Dawson, Craiglist’s Craig Newmark, former Texas congressman Henry Bonilla, YouTube’s Steve Grove andDanny Vargas, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.^[9> The contest awarded Sí TV national impact.^[6> Sí TV and Voto Latino also hosted a series of registration events in Chicago, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego. According to SNL Kagan estimates, in 2009, the network took in more than $15 million in net ad sales revenue.

On January 18, 2011, Telemundo ad sales veteran Craig Geller assumed the role of svp, advertising sales at Sí TV. Of his move, Geller stated that: “It’s the right time in the right market and Sí TV is the right network. The marketplace is poised for explosive growth and the 2010 Census will validate the fact that bicultural Latinos are absolutely the fastest-growing demo in the U.S.” He further stated that the job “was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up”. He commented: “Having been a student of the marketplace for as many years as I have, I recognized that the network is ready to take a huge leap forward. At the same time, our audience is growing tremendously. The time has come for advertisers to embrace these consumers, in a culturally relevant way, and the place to do that is Sí TV”.^[10>

Mr Valdez currently resides in Beverly Hills with his wife Ana and sons Alex and Max.