Telemundo (Spanish pronunciation: [teleˈmundo]) is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision.
Telemundo reaches 58 percent of Hispanic and Latino American households in 142 markets via over-the-air, cable, and satellite television. An average of 1,035,000 total viewers (aged 2 and older) tuned in for its weekday prime time lineup during 2007. Telemundo is the only Spanish-language network that produces most of its telenovelas. Unlike Univision, which only has Spanish captions, many programs on Telemundo air with closed captions in both Spanish and English.
Telemundo airs its 7–11 p.m. (ET/PT) weekday programs (usually telenovelas) using a form of the Turner Time scheduling strategy used by TBS from 1981 until 1997. That is to say, each program starts a few minutes after its officially scheduled time, typically three or four minutes after the hour. Shows also bleed over into the next time slot. This encourages viewers to stay tuned to Telemundo instead of joining another channel’s program in progress.
The 11 p.m. news broadcasts (both those aired by local stations and those aired by the network itself) start at the conventional time, however. The reverse is the case on weekends when football matches are aired, when all programs airing prior to the game are aired five minutes before the hour or half-hour; on weekend days when football matches are not aired, regularly scheduled programming is aired in their conventional timeslots.