Amid all the talk of daytime sea changes, there’s been less attention to a greater change among the Spanish language channels, where Cristina, will premiere a new show on Telemundo this fall, after 21 years at Univision.
“I left because the upper-echelon management changed,” the Cuban-born Cristina Saralegui, 63, said of her departure from Univision last fall. “The new people that came in wanted to give, according to what they told me, the network a younger image, and it wasn’t about [me].”
“It’s their network, OK. It’s their job,” she said in a session at the TV Critics Association summer press tour Tuesday. “Basically they offered me specials. I don’t think that you do that to a person like me. So I talked to a friend at Telemundo who had been waiting for me for 10 years, and I crossed over. And here I am.”
To be clear, she said “My experience in Univision was awesome…they put up with me for 21 years.”
But she didn’t want to talk about her old “El Show de Cristina” as much as she wanted to discuss her Telemundo show, “Pa’lante con Cristina,” which will be two hours, incorporate English subtitles and include a lot more English actors and singers.
“My hope is to see Tom Cruise jumping on my couch,” she said.