Biography: Angel Ramos
One of the first truly successful Hispanic entrepreneurs was Angel Ramos. He is best known for founding Telemundo, now the second most watched Spanish language television network in the world. This was just one of his many achievements however. Ramos managed to found a large number of businesses around Puerto Rico and has played a very important part in the development of the island. This is work that his wife carried on many years after his death.
Angel Ramos was born just after the turn of the twentieth century in a small town in Puerto Rico. His family was poor and the situation became worse when his father died when he was three. At the age of fifteen Ramos realized that his future was limited if he stayed in the small town so headed to San Juan to finish high school. While he was there he got a job as type setter at a newspaper to support himself. He continued to work there after he finished high school and at the age of twenty two was made the administrator of the paper.
Angel Ramos would continue to work at the paper for the next twenty years acquiring stock in the holding company that owned it. He would eventually be able to take over the company entirely and as the sole owner publish his paper. Not long afterwards he would also buy a struggling radio station in San Juan and then bought another one a couple of years later. He turned this into the most successful station on the island with over eighty percent of the listeners tuning into one of his stations.
It didn't take Ramos long to realize that the future lay in television so he set up Puerto Rico's first station in 1954. He named it Telemundo mainly because the newspaper that he owned was called Mundo; he used that as an ending of all his businesses. The television station became hugely popular in particular the soap operas. Telemundo was one of the first stations to show them and it was the first to produce them in Puerto Rico. These are the forerunners of the modern telenovelas that are so popular on Spanish language television these days.
Sadly Angel Ramos would die in 1960 at the relatively young age of fifty eight. Following his death his wife would take over running the company and it thrived. She held on to the company until 1983 before selling it. After being sold a couple of more times Telemundo would be sold to NBC where it would become one of the most popular Spanish language stations in the world. After the selling the company Ramos widow would create a philanthropic fund in her husband's memory. This fund is now the largest in Puerto Rico and has been involved in many charitable activities on the island.