Barack Obama's immigration speech gets most viewers on Univision

As the lead-in to the Latin Grammys, US President Barack Obama's speech, announcing his sweeping immigration reforms, reached its largest audience on Spanish-language network Univision, according to figures released on Friday.

Obama's 15-minute speech was watched by an average of 4.8 million viewers on Univision, according to Nielsen data.

Univision, the largest Spanish-language US broadcaster, chose to delay the start of the Latin Grammys, one of its most-watched events, for the presidential address.

Its audience for the speech, which was broadcast with a live translation, beat Fox News' 4.3 million viewers, MSNBC's 1.8 million and CNN's 1.7 million.

Obama's speech received applause from the annual Latin Grammy awards audience in Las Vegas. Winners Enrique Iglesias and Carlos Vives both made reference to it while accepting awards.

"Tonight is not only an historic night for all Latino artists, but for all Latinos who live in the United States," said the Spanish singer Iglesias, who grew up in Miami.

The president's order could allow nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the country. The US immigration system, which Obama described as 'broken' in his speech, is a core issue for Hispanics in the United States.

National broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC chose not to air Obama's speech but many local affiliates of the networks cut into programming to show it.