About América Tucumán

América Tucumán

América Tucumán is a digital terrestrial television station serving San Miguel de Tucumán and its metropolitan area in Tucumán Province, Argentina. Operated by V.P. Inversora, a company of Grupo América, it broadcasts on channel 28.1 of the Televisión Digital Abierta, the Argentine digital terrestrial system, and carries programming from the group's national services together with a growing slate of local production in high definition. It is the youngest of Tucumán's television stations, born from a 2015 public contest for a commercial digital licence, and its arrival gave the province a third television voice alongside the two historic analogue channels, Canal 10 and Canal 8, that had divided the market since 1983.

The station's history is short but well documented, and it is emblematic of Argentina's digital transition: a licence created specifically for digital broadcasting, awarded to the only bidder, launched from offices on Calle San Martín in the provincial capital, and distinguished, when it added local programming in May 2018, as the first channel in the province to broadcast local production in HD. Where its rivals began in the analogue 1960s and 1980s, América Tucumán began in the file of a regulatory resolution, and its growth since then charts the maturing of digital terrestrial television in the Argentine interior.

Overview

América Tucumán can be seen across Greater San Miguel de Tucumán and surrounding areas on TDA channel 28.1. It is operated by V.P. Inversora, whose shareholders are recorded as Sergio Ceroi and Sergio Rez Masud, and which forms part of Grupo América, the multimedia group of Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano that controls América TV, the news channel A24, radio stations, newspapers and digital media. The station's studios are at San Martín 1064 in San Miguel de Tucumán. Within the national structure it is one of América's two broadcast affiliates, alongside Canal 10 of Junín, extending the group's open-signal presence into the north-west.

History

On 27 February 2015 the Autoridad Federal de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual, AFSCA, by Resolution 39, called a public contest to award a commercial digital television licence in Tucumán Province, to be broadcast on channel 28.1. When the envelopes were opened in May, only one company had presented itself: V.P. Inversora, part of Grupo América, formerly Grupo UNO. On 19 October 2015 AFSCA awarded channel 28.1 to V.P. Inversora for a period of ten years, counted from the start of its regular transmissions.

In 2017 América Tucumán installed itself in the provincial capital, at San Martín 1064, and began transmitting on the TDA through channel 28.1. The decisive step came in May 2018, when it incorporated local programming broadcast in HD, becoming at that moment the first channel in the province to emit in that format. For a market whose two established stations dated from 1966 and 1983, the newcomer's high-definition local production was a genuine competitive marker, and it signalled that the digital licence would be used for a real local station rather than a bare relay.

Ownership

The licensee, V.P. Inversora, belongs to Grupo América, one of Argentina's principal multimedia groups. The group was historically known as Grupo UNO and is associated with the Mendoza entrepreneurs Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano; it owns América TV in partnership with Claudio Belocopitt and controls channels, newspapers, radio and digital platforms throughout the country. América Tucumán gives the group a directly held open station in the largest city of the north-west, a region where its presence had previously depended on cable carriage of its national signals.

Programming

Originally, a large part of the station's programming consisted of relaying the contents of Canal 2 of La Plata, the head station of the América TV network, whose studios are in Buenos Aires. Later, by decision of Grupo América, the station began instead to relay programming from A24, the group's news channel, which it continues to carry. Around that national news backbone, the station built its local grid. Its local productions include Buen Día América, a morning news service; Más Noticias, a morning news magazine; Los Primeros HD, the midday newscast; Todo Pasa, an afternoon magazine; Más Deportes, a Sunday sports news programme; and América Tucumán Noticias, the station's news service. Among its notable earlier programmes was A las 7, a morning magazine that had previously aired on Canal 8 Tucumán until its cancellation in March 2018, whose migration to the new station illustrated the competition for local formats and presenters that the third channel brought to the market.

News operation

News is the centre of América Tucumán's identity, reflecting its A24 backbone. América Tucumán Noticias, known by the initials ATN, is its flagship news service, with daily editions whose complete programmes are published on the station's video channels; recent editions are presented, according to the station's own programme descriptions, by Cecilio Lampasona and Guillermina Fernández Luaces. Los Primeros HD carries the midday news, historically presented by Omar Noblega according to programme listings, while Buen Día América opens the morning from 6:30 with the day's first information, a format launched in September 2020. The combination of a national 24-hour news feed with several local news windows a day gives the station a news weight beyond what its youth would suggest, and positions it directly against the established newscasts of Canal 10 and elocho TV.

Distribution and reach

The station exists only in digital: its home is TDA channel 28.1, received across Greater San Miguel de Tucumán and nearby areas by households with digital tuners, and extended by the cable and online distribution normal for Argentine stations. That digital-only birth defines both its limitation and its modernity. It has no analogue legacy audience, but it was built from the start for the transmission standard, the HD picture format and the multiplatform habits of contemporary viewers, with complete programmes posted to video platforms as a routine part of its operation.

Digital presence

América Tucumán maintains an active presence on video and social platforms under its own name, publishing full editions of América Tucumán Noticias and programmes such as Tucumán con Todo and Todo Pasa. For a digital terrestrial station, these platforms are not an accessory but a principal shop window, particularly for younger audiences who encounter local television first on a phone. The station's output there documents its daily local production in a way that also serves as a public archive of its development since 2018.

Audience and significance

The station's significance is structural. For half a century Tucumán had exactly two open television channels; América Tucumán's licensing in 2015 and local launch in 2018 made it three, and made the province an early interior example of the new stations the digital transition was supposed to create. Its HD first in the province showed that a digital licensee could outpace analogue incumbents technically. Within Grupo América, it is one of only two broadcast affiliates of the network in the whole country, which gives a young digital station in Tucumán an outsized place in the group's open-television map.

América Tucumán today

Today América Tucumán continues on channel 28.1 from San Martín 1064, relaying A24, producing its morning, midday and evening local news and magazine programmes, and publishing them online. A decade after its licence was awarded to the sole bidder in a digital contest, it has become a settled third force in Tucumán television, proof that the digital terrestrial system could still create new local stations in the Argentine interior long after the analogue map had frozen.

The station's development can be read as a test of the promise made for digital terrestrial television in Argentina: that new frequencies would mean new local voices rather than only new technology for old ones. In Tucumán that promise was kept. A province that had two channels for fifty years gained a third, locally staffed and locally programmed in high definition, and the audience gained a further newsroom competing for its trust every morning, midday and evening.