Univisión newsmagazine show Aqui y Ahora boasts a formidable ratings base and explores controversial political topics for an audience that sometimes uses the show as its only source of news. This weekend, the show tackled the topic of “gay reparative therapy,” interviewing subjects and providing expert opinion. Except the subjects they interviewed were “success” stories who were now heterosexual (or, in one case, a “failure”), and the “experts” were mostly “psychologists” who denied the existence of homosexuality.

A sign of the times? The most comprehensive, mature, and convincing conversation Newt Gingrich has had with the media so far about his dubious personal history comes to us from Univisión, where their top journalist, Jorge Ramos, sat down for an extensive interview with the candidate released today. Ramos went where few journalists have gone before with Gingrich– a comparison of his second known affair with President Clinton’s– and got a fair and long answer.

While CNN New Year’s Eve host Anderson Cooper was waiting for his special with Kathy Griffin to begin, he wandered over to the Univision set and shared a few moments with Raúl De Molina and Laisha Wilkins. And proved, once again, why he’s one of the most likable people in television:

The world of the telenovela may still be a mystery to many people, but, to millions of viewers on Monday night, it was one of the most anticipated events on all of television. La Fuerza del Destino (“The Power of Destiny”) brought in an estimated 6.2 million viewers, with 3.4 million of those viewers coming in the 18-49 year-old demographic. Those demo ratings were enough to give the show’s finale a win for the night, as it took down shows on CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX.

Several Republican candidates are planning on boycotting Univisión’s proposed January 29th debate in Miami after a report surfaced that the network allegedly tried to blackmail Florida Senator Marco Rubio into an exclusive interview. Governors Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, and Rep. Michele Bachmann have announced they will boycott.

Rep. Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist, but when it comes to one provision of the 14th Amendment, he doesn’t think it is currently being properly interpreted. Discussing immigration during an interview with Jorge Ramos on Univisión’s Sunday morning politics show Al Punto, Rep. Ron Paul hesitated on whether he believed birthright citizenship should be a given, noting that he wasn’t sure if the 14th Amendment applied to children of illegal immigrants.

Can you be a good guest on a network morning show if you don’t really speak the language? Tom Hanks gave it a stellar effort on Univision’s Despierta America, gamely pretending to know what was going on, catching the words in Spanish he did know, and then jumping at a chance to help do the weather, which has become something of a movie-star-on-news-show cliche. But in Spanish, hey, it felt fresh–especially when Hanks wisely asked for music and began dancing.

In a town hall meeting put on by the Spanish language network Univision, anchor Jorge Ramos asked the president if he had an iPad (he does) and, in a somewhat regrettable follow-up, if, well, the president has his own computer–really his, not like, a shared computer or something. The question put President Obama into standup comic mode, asking “I mean, Jorge, I’m the president of the United States,” Obama said to the laughter of the crowd at an education town hall broadcast by Univision. “You think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer? … ‘Hey, man, can I borrow your computer? … How about you? You’ve got one?’”

The continued rise of Spanish-language Univision was on display in February, as the network passed NBC to become America’s fourth network–regardless of language. And on Friday nights in February, Univision was the country’s top-rated network among the coveted demographic of viewers 18-34. “We are thrilled that Univision continues to deliver season-to-date growth while solidifying its position as a top five network in the U.S., competing head to head with ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC,” said Cesar Conde, president, Univision Networks, in a statement.

With family vacation budgets sliced and even the weekend trip to the movies suddenly seeming like a luxury, it’s perhaps no surprise that in 2010, Americans watched more TV.

According to viewership figures reported today by The New York Times, the average American watched 34 hours of television a week in 2010–the most ever.

You didn’t really think NBC’s SNL Presents: A Very Gilly Christmas was the big draw, did you? Creo que no.

Gilly got beaten by the powerhouse soap you may not have heard of: Soy Tu Duena, the most-watched show on Spanish-language Univision in twenty years–and driving the network to first place ahead of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

Univision has named Isaac Lee as president of news, replacing Alina Falcón, a 26-year vet of the network who will become a consultant on special projects.

Univision CEO Joe Uva announced the moves Thursday–including the appointment of Alexander “Sandy” Brown as sports president–a major restructuring for the network, which is considered the biggest name in Spanish language media.

A controversial new ad from the conservative group Latinos for Reform has been pulled by Univision shortly after it debuted in Nevada area markets. It’s been removed from Univision’s Spanish-speaking radio stations and will never air as planned on the company’s television channel. The ad argues that Democrats failed in their promises to introduce immigration reform and then gives viewers a simple instruction on how to “punish” them: Don’t vote.

With the illegal immigration debate still raging in Arizona, new statistics are showing that there are 1,100 undocumented convicted felons in only one of the state’s counties– statistics that have Bill O’Reilly concerned about the federal government’s opposition to the state’s new illegal immigration law. O’Reilly invited Univisión’s top anchor Jorge Ramos on the Factor, who opposes the law, to ask him for a fair alternative solution.

As one would expect for a state dinner involving Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the White House guest list will look familiar to those who regularly get their news from Spanish-language media or who follow the schedule of the world’s richest man, New York Times investor Carlos Slim.

TV Week has released its annual “10 Most Powerful in TV News” list today, placing Roger Ailes, the NBC team, and the CNN team in the medaled positions, respectively. Jon Stewart is the top-ranked TV personality at #5, with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck taking the #7 spot together. Univisión and the Huffington Post did not keep their positions from last year. The takeaway? The TV industry has gotten much more competitive this year, and the collective panic attack over CNN’s ratings may have been premature.

HLN host and The View panelist Joy Behar and actress Cynthia Nixon received the top honors at the Gay an Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Awards handed out March 13 in New York. Behar won the excellence in media honors and Nixon received the Vito Russo Award for advocacy by an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender media person.

So what did President Obama say to Univisión? It was hard to tell.

As I began to watch the interview he gave to Jorge Ramos, I found myself moving closer and closer to the TV, as if I were deciphering a strange language. The premier Spanish network had made the awful choice of dubbing instead of subtitling the interview.

Media Decoder reports that last week, ABC averaged an abysmal 1.1 rating among 18- to 49-year-old viewers for the third time this summer, putting it behind CBS, NBC, Fox, and even Univision.

There’s no doubt that a lot of ABC execs have been getting stern talkings-to from their superiors lately, but Steve McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment Group, has to be sweating harder than most.

It started as a quiet radio talk show—a dialogue between two journalists from competing Hispanic television networks. Both were praising the way their stations had been covering the ongoing hearings of Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the usual display of Hispanic pride, respect for the accomplished judge and her mother, and [...]

Where is the Hispanic New Yorker? What would a Latino-oriented equivalent look like? Questions like these have haunted me ever since I started working for a local Spanish TV station four years ago. And while I am aware that “a Hispanic New Yorker” could be an oxymoron —it can be seen as a product of a white-dominated world— the idea may be useful to try to explain the lack of sophisticated national outlets for the largest minority in the country.