Emilio Azcarraga Milmo; Mexican Media Tycoon

Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, one of the world’s major media tycoons and a fervent supporter of Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, died Wednesday after a long ailment. He was 66.

An announcement by the giant Televisa chain, which he headed for decades, said Azcarraga--known as “the Tiger”--died in Miami, but did not give details. He left Mexico in March to be hospitalized in Los Angeles.

“We have lost a great business leader in the field of communication, artistic entertainment and sports of international standing,” President Ernesto Zedillo said in a statement Wednesday night.

An Azcarraga-controlled partnership had provided the money for the National, which was the only daily sports newspaper in the United States when it was launched in 1990. The paper folded after nearly 17 months of heavy losses and distribution problems that kept it from reaching enough paying customers.

Tall and usually vigorous, Azcarraga looked tired when he went on the air last month to announce his retirement as president and chairman of Grupo Televisa SA, which produces the most Spanish-language television programming in the world.

He said it was time for a younger generation to take over the $1.45-billion media empire that he built up from a string of radio stations inherited from his father. Televisa is also a major player in publishing, radio, music recording, cable and satellite broadcasts.

Long criticized for delivering low-end TV fare--including tear-jerker soap operas, frenzied game shows and variety programs with scantily clad showgirls--Azcarraga was unapologetic.

“The only thing I have sought is to entertain,” he said.

Televisa’s close ties with Mexico’s ruling party made him a target of criticism at home.

But in 1993, when former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari asked prominent businessmen to contribute $25 million each to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as PRI), Azcarraga said, “I am a soldier of the PRI.”

“I’ve made so much money in recent years that I’m ready to give more,” he said--and pledged $70 million.

He probably was the last magnate to be so openly committed to Mexico’s ruling party. At a time when the PRI is slowly losing ground to the opposition, the billionaires who survive him are being increasingly careful about expressing their political preferences.

Azcarraga’s overriding lifelong passion was the media industry--especially Televisa, which for many years held a monopoly in Mexico.

It also promoted the arts--Mexican and foreign. Azcarraga owned Mexico City’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Televisa also has a stake in giant Aztec Stadium, and owns first division soccer champion teams America and Necaxa.

Often mixing business with pleasure, Azcarraga traveled the world in his jet plane and private yacht and kept a number of residences abroad.

He was married four times, but little is known about his private life, except that he, like his father, was always on good terms with successive Mexican presidents and other people in power.

His father, Emilio Azcarraga Vidaurreta, started as a shoe salesman, founded an RCA Victor dealership in Monterrey and then in 1930 helped start XEW, one of Mexico’s first radio stations. Others followed and eventually the network Telesistema Mexicana was set up in 1950.

Emilio Azcarraga started his high school studies at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana but never graduated. Instead, he went to work for his father and took over management when his father died in 1964.

He changed the network’s name to Televisa in 1973. His son Emilio Azcarraga Jean, 29, became president of the company last month.