Ruben Salazar, a former writer for the Los Angeles Times, was working for KMEX when he was killed by riot police in August 1970; the station's retrospective coverage of the event earned it its first of two Peabody Awards.

KMEX and its co-owned stations, owned by Spanish International Communications Corporation (SICC), spent most of the 1980s embroiled in a legal dispute over the permissibility of its partially foreign ownership.

In spite of the new competition, KMEX continued to be the leading Spanish-language local TV station in news coverage and began garnering higher ratings than its English-language counterparts in key demographic groups.

By 1953, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had received three applications for the channel, from Lawrence Harvey; Spanish International Television; and radio station KFWB (980 AM).

[5] Interest around the UHF allocation was revived in 1957, and in 1958, the FCC selected the application of Sherrill C. Corwin, movie theater operator from San Francisco, over a bid from Frederick Bassett and William E.

[7] However, this never was completed, and the FCC deleted the KMYR permit in November 1960 (along with another Corwin held for a San Diego outlet), leaving the door open for new applications for channel 34.

[8] On August 18, 1961, the Spanish International Broadcasting Company (SIBC) filed an application to build a new channel 34 TV station in Los Angeles.

[9] SIBC's principals reflected strong Mexican connections: Azcárraga was a 20-percent stakeholder, with the balance being held by a number of stockholders including movie theater owner Frank Fouce, the largest shareholder, and Julian Kaufman, the general manager of Tijuana's binational TV station, XETV.

[19] Joseph S. Rank, an account executive with sales representative Blair Television, became general manager in November 1964[20] and was promoted to station vice president in 1966,[21] also being a five-percent stockholder in the Spanish International Broadcasting Corporation.

[27][28] While still with the Los Angeles Rams, the team's kicker, Danny Villanueva, became a sports announcer for the station in 1964; he continued in this role even after being traded to the Dallas Cowboys.

After buying into New York City-area station WXTV and Miami's WLTV, in 1972, SIN made its first western expansion when it built KFTV, serving Fresno, with Villanueva as its general manager.

[33][34] The "SIN West" subnetwork also provided service to affiliated stations in Modesto (KLOC-TV) and San Francisco (KEMO-TV) and Telesistema Mexicano's XEWT-TV in Tijuana and XHBC-TV in Mexicali.

[35] Boasting a staff of 28 including 11 on-air talent, NFB featured John Harlan as one of its anchors and Bill Stout and Susan Stafford, as well as Villanueva, as contributors.

[35] However, it exceeded its budget by 100 percent, and when SIBC parent Spanish International Communications Corporation (SICC) could not obtain funding in a tight financial market, the program was pulled on October 26, having lost $300,000.

As a result, the Fouce interests sued SICC, Anselmo and other defendants in 1976, charging "self-dealing, mismanagement, waste, and breach of fiduciary duty".

In 1985, FCC staff recommended that the licenses of the SICC stations not be renewed,[39] a decision adopted by a commission administrative law judge as settlement talks began in the long-running Fouce suit.

This changed in late 1985, when KBSC-TV was sold to Saul Steinberg-backed Reliance Capital and relaunched as KVEA, a key moment in the formation of Telemundo in early 1987.

[45] The restructured Univision had a strong presence in Miami, and conflicts between Cuban Americans at the network level and KMEX's largely Mexican audience in Southern California bred internal concerns.

In 1989, channel 34 employees sent a letter to the network asking that the station's news director vacancy be filled by someone "who reflects the interests ... experience and culture of the Los Angeles TV audience".

One consultant noted that under Villanueva, who had recently left as general manager, the station made money but did little to reinvest in its news product compared to Miami's WLTV.

[55] However, the station was also criticized by Chicano activists for moving quickly to shift the station away from the movement within days of Salazar's death; even an anonymous journalist told Hunter S. Thompson in his 1971 Rolling Stone article "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan", "[W]ithin 24 hours after Ruben was murdered, [Danny] Villanueva started tearing up the news department.

[62] By 2005, what had been an achievement had become routine: a 2005 Univision press release trumpeted twelve straight years of ratings wins in the 18–34 and 18–49 segments for KMEX's 6 pm news.

In 2002, the Columbia Journalism Review graded the local newscasts in Los Angeles and gave KMEX the highest rating of any station in any language.

[66] A news feature, El 15% de los Estados Unidos, which reported about the impact of Latinos on the United States, won KMEX its second Peabody Award in 2005.

[67] In 2008, The Washington Post compared Southern California's English-language newscasts with KMEX's Spanish newscasts and concluded that "the sharpest coverage of state and local issues—government, politics, immigration, labor, economics, health care—is now found on Spanish-language TV", though it noted the criticism that KMEX's "advocacy journalism" style sometimes went a step too far on issues like immigration.