Bustos Media CEO Amador Bustos

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Media Gusto

By Stephanie Flores

Sacramento-based Bustos Media LLC owns dozens of Spanish-language radio stations in nine markets and is launching its first TV station. This is CEO Amador Bustos’ second performance at media-empire building in less than a decade.
     Not bad for a Mexican immigrant who saw his first TV at age 10.
     The son of a bracero, or farm laborer, and oldest of seven siblings, Bustos was born in the rural town of Aguililla, Mexico. At age 12, his family moved to California, and a short time later, Bustos’ English was good enough to keep up with his Redwood City classmates. Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to earn bachelors’ degrees in philosophy and ethnic studies and a master’s degree in school administration from UC Berkeley. Bustos served on the Redwood City School Board from 1981-1986, while his father, Amador Palafox Bustos, was a janitor for the school district.
     A modest man with few trinkets of success in evidence, Bustos’ office displays only two hanging pictures: a leadership poster from his staff and a Sacramento Bee profile on the Maloof family. Bustos says he draws from their success as a family business. And although Bustos Media is a family-business varietal (managing investor money and executing a prescribed business plan), Bustos says the Maloof family formula “gives hope to the idea that a family like mine can come here from Mexico and accumulate wealth ourselves. If the Maloofs can (be successful), why can’t we?”
     In 1992, Bustos and his youngest brother, John, used $3 million in investor money to launch Z-Spanish Radio Network Inc. In 2000, the chain sold for $475 million. Three years later, the brothers launched a second company, Bustos Media, with a goal of owning 50 Spanish-language stations in four years. They started with $100 million more than the first time and planned to grow “twice as big in half the time.” Bustos Media broadcasts locally with four stations from Yuba City to Modesto.
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