Cynthia Hudson-Fernández has left her job as Chief Creative Officer and Executive VP of SBS-owned Mega TV. She had been at the helm of the Miami-based station since Jan. of 2006.
Prior to working for SBS, she was Sr VP and Editorial Director of Cosmopolitan TV. She was previously VP of Programming and Creative Services for MGM Latin America. She has also held a series of jobs at Univision and Telemundo.
Rumors of her joining CNN en Español had been circulating for over 2 weeks. Today CNN officially announced that she is the new Sr VP and General Manager of CNN en Español as well as of Hispanic strategy for CNN/US. She will be relocating to Atlanta and will report directly to Tony Maddox, EVP and Managing Director of CNN International.
She replaces Chris Crommett, who left CNNE in September of last year.
Le quiero desear a esta dama todo lo mejor.
He de esperar, que su gestion se diferencie de la anterior (Discriminacion, contratacion por "amistades", hostigamiento, etc,etc,etc) y que termino como todos sabemos.
Suerte Senora!!!!
¿quién la reemplaza en Mega, sabes?
Cynthia Hudson Fernandez is the right measure to fix many of the problems CNN Spanish has from the beginning: There is Not Discipline.
Patricia Jainoit, ex-Miss Colombia, manipulates many of the stories and people. There is not a formal and qualified editorial board.
Beside the poor ratings and few advertisers, CNN Spanish have a problem, Juan Carlos Urdaneta use this network to hire his friends.
Rolando Santos did not hire journalists, he made of CNN Spanish his "dream team of friends" from Telemundo, and the rankings never grow. Years Later, Chris Crommett, expend money like running water in marketing and new studios, but he never looks for investigative reports that lead the Public Opinion of Latin American. English media made more and detailed stories about the polemic and some corrupt politicians.
If you compare CNN Domestic, with CNN Spanish, CNN Spanish is like a Mount Blank pen with the different brand ink tube, CNN Spanish has the prestige of Domestic but they do not made an effort to lead Latin America public opinion.
The other problem CNN Spanish has is Juan Carlos Urdaneta decides on who is going to be a host for some of the shows to privilege his friends. In fact CNN Spanish do not hire journalists; they hire a group of friends and relatives. CNN Spanish Newsroom have an army of "atorrantes" producers, writers and anchors, that their poor experience covering news in Latin America, obligate them to became a "desk reporters" translating stories from CNN domestic.
Do not go too far; remember one of the presidential debates was done between CNN and Univision. Was evident at that time Univision has a better anchors and coverage about the political scene en the USA.
Another conflict is that they do not neutralize the Spanish as is. This group of pseudo-journalists uses a lot of "modismos" and in sometimes cubanize, colombianize, mexicanize or newyoricanize (New York Ricans) the rich Spanish Language.
Several times, Michael Hessing, and Ted Rubinstein, Producers of CNN domestic, invited me to help them on stories about Latin America, and my question was why not you call Rolando Santos, and both of them told, me "with all our respect Rolando has a "Chicano" mentality and they are not experience covering news on the field".
Congratulations Cynthia is time to use your experience to reorganize CNN Newsroom but do not cubanize the tendencies. Not only Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Spain have good writers in Spanish; Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Ecuador and Guatemala, have talent also. Open the spaces to all ideologies.
Latin American countries are thirsty to know the true about their own governments.
Be brave and expose the corruption behind those mafias that are killing people every day with bullets and drugs. As the news never sleep, so do the same way you did when you cut Jaime Bayly, from his live show on Mega TV, CNN needs leadership from somebody who lives the news, and works hard to find the true. Otherwise if you are going to work from 9 am to 5 pm, and air bad translations of CNN domestic, and keep that desk reporters in Atlanta, nothing will be change.
Those producers and reporters need to be on the field, on the Latin American countries, living and reporting the true every hour. I understand is not easy, but you have a big goal, made of CNN Spanish not only a 24/7 network, is change the "show and tell" style to cover the news and made it part of the CNN tagline "The Must Trusted Name in News". Good Luck
My name is Charlie and I use to work for Cynthia at MEGA TV as Director of Scenery from it's beginnings and Cynthia was a very wonderful person to work for. I wish her all the best and I hope I get the chance to work with her again someday, I'm looking forward to seeing all the changes that are coming to CNN. I'm sure she will make it the #1 news station in the nation