Broadcasting Company Sets Its Sights High

On a hot afternoon in May, Ron Gordon strides into the offices of WZDC Channel 64 in Arlington. He wears a blazer and khaki pants. He's not the three-piece-suit type. Gordon makes a point of poking his head in every office and saying hello to each of his employees. Knowing their names is a point of pride for him, given that his company has grown from three people to 160 employees, spread out over several states.

After making the rounds in the one-room advertising department and WZDC's two production suites, Gordon's last stop is the studio of WZDC's 6 p.m. news broadcast, a space the size of a large Persian rug. Inside are several desks, a green screen on one end and a counter on the other. Gordon points to the screen. "That's where we do the weather. And that," he says, pointing to the counter, "is our anchor desk."

In the center of the room are two cameras that spin around, creating the illusion -- at least on-screen -- of two rooms, which lends the show the polished look of bigger-budget, English-language competitors. "We do a lot with a little here," Gordon says.

Being resourceful has helped Gordon, 49, and his partner, Eduardo Zavala, 44, build a Spanish-language media operation that includes three radio stations -- one in Laurel and two in Tampa -- seven television stations along the East Coast and an advertising and marketing agency in Arlington.

Gordon's company, ZGS Broadcasting Holdings Inc., is the largest affiliate in the country of the Spanish-language Telemundo Network Group. In the wake of the merger of Univision Communications Inc. and Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. in 2002 and NBC's purchase of Telemundo in 2001, ZGS Broadcasting is one of a dozen small, Spanish-language broadcasters fighting for a future.

As a teenager, Gordon started a newspaper that listed soccer scores. Having emigrated from his native Lima, Peru, to Washington as a child, he wanted some way to keep up with the sport. But Gordon didn't aspire to become a media mogul. For one thing, he didn't have the hard-driving personality of a Michael Eisner or a Rupert Murdoch. Gordon was more of a mensch.

"You want to talk to him. He has a very contagious personality, very genuine," said Gordon's friend Armando Chapelli, longtime publisher of El Tiempo Latino, a weekly Spanish-language newspaper in Washington that Chapelli recently sold to The Washington Post Co.

After finishing college in 1977, Gordon worked on Capitol Hill and, briefly, for the Republican National Committee. In the early 1980s he landed a gig as an occasional host on "Revista," a bilingual weekend show on Washington ABC affiliate WJLA-TV.

At WJLA, Gordon met Zavala, an assistant director, and José Sanz, a producer. Zavala became the technical brains, Sanz was the writer and Gordon, with his affable demeanor, was "the PR/business man," Zavala said. (Gordon and Zavala bought out Sanz in the early 1990s.) In 1984, the threesome launched ZGS Communications. (The name combines the first initials of their last names.)

While Zavala and Sanz worked day jobs in television production and Gordon toiled as a communications director for the Greater Washington Ibero American Chamber of Commerce, they began to shoot, edit and produce stories for "Latin Tempo," an English-language program focusing on Latino stories that aired on NBC stations across the country. "We wanted to tell the story of our community, not just to our community, but outside as well," Gordon said.