About Aunar

Aunar

Aunar is a federal public television signal in Argentina, launched on 17 October 2022 on digital terrestrial channel 22.3. Coordinated by the Secretaría de Medios y Comunicación Pública, the national Secretariat of Media and Public Communication, through Contenidos Públicos, it aggregates programming produced by Argentina's provincial and university public channels and gives that federal content national reach on the Televisión Digital Abierta, the free digital terrestrial platform. Its name is a verb — aunar, to join together, to unite — and its purpose is contained in the official phrase used at its launch: a federal signal to discover ourselves, meet ourselves and recognise ourselves. Instead of producing a new Buenos Aires schedule, Aunar assembles the country's existing public television — tourism, gastronomy, sport, education, science and technology, culture, children's programmes and documentaries made in the provinces — into a single national grid.

Why a federal signal was needed

Argentina is a federal country with a highly centralised media system. National television is produced overwhelmingly in Buenos Aires, while a rich layer of provincial state channels and university channels produces local programming that, before Aunar, rarely travelled beyond its home province. A documentary made by the public channel of Santa Cruz, a children's programme from La Pampa or a university magazine from Mendoza might be excellent and still be seen only within one provincial footprint. The federal signal was designed to solve that circulation problem, not a production problem: the content already existed, distributed across the Red de Televisoras Públicas de Argentina, the network of Argentine public broadcasters, and the Red Nacional Audiovisual Universitaria, RENAU, the national university audiovisual network.

Aunar was therefore presented at launch as the consolidation of joint work already under way between the Secretariat, the provincial public broadcasters and the university network to create spaces of convergence, where the cultural diversity of each province could reach everybody. Subsecretary of Public Media Rosaura Audi described it in exactly those terms, while Secretary of Media and Public Communication Juan Ross called the launch the product of intense work with all of Argentina's public television stations and promised, from that Monday, a true federal signal. In June 2022 the intention had been formalised at the Plenary of the Federal Council of Public Television in Tierra del Fuego, where the directors of the public signals and channels expressed, in a joint document, their intention to contribute content to the new terrestrial signal.

Predecessors: Acua Mayor and Mirador

Aunar was the third attempt to build such a signal, and it succeeded earlier ideas whose names chart the learning process. It succeeded the earlier federal signals Acua Mayor, launched in 2012, and Mirador, launched in 2019. Mirador, Lookout, was presented on World Press Freedom Day in 2019 as an innovative signal integrating broadcasters from twenty provinces, offering a diverse and plural view of Argentina — from Mesopotamia to Patagonia, from the Andes to the Litoral — and making visible cultural expressions through social, educational, cultural and informative content from provincial and university public media that reflected the customs, practices and languages forming a unique cultural heritage.

Aunar inherited that mission and its supplier networks, but with a firmer place in the national digital grid and the programme-supply machinery of Contenidos Públicos, the state company that also operates the national educational and children's signals Encuentro, Pakapaka, Cine.ar and Tec, with which Aunar shares the channel 22 multiplex. Where Mirador had been a collaborative project of the federal public-television network, Aunar was launched as a permanent channel of the national terrestrial platform, with a twenty-four-hour schedule and weekly premiere grids published by the national government.

Launch on 17 October 2022

Aunar joined the national Televisión Digital Abierta grid on Monday 17 October 2022 at 6 p.m. on channel 22.3. The date was symbolically Argentine — 17 October is a foundational date in the country's political calendar — and the launch was announced nationally by the Secretariat of Media and Public Communication four days earlier, on 13 October. The stated objective was to bring together the different local and regional expressions to enrich the view of Argentina, with productions generated in the different Argentine provinces and coordination by the Secretariat.

The opening grid showed what federal aggregation meant in practice. A single premiere week in late October and early November 2022 mixed, among many others, Animalitus and Vibra from Litus TV in Santa Fe; Extraños terrícolas, Arte zip and Universos from Señal U in Mendoza; Punto de Encuentro and Oficios from Canal 3 La Pampa; Pequeños relatos from San Luis TV; Casas del Fin del Mundo from TV Pública Fueguina; programmes from Xama TV in San Juan; Nuestra Lengua from Santa Fe; Creadores from Chaco TV; series from Canal 10 Río Negro; Palabras que trae el viento from Canal 7 Chubut; Versiones from RTN Neuquén; and Nuestro Agro from Canal 12 Misiones. No Buenos Aires producer could have assembled that map; only a federation of provincial channels could.

How the channel works

Aunar is best understood as a curated federation rather than a conventional channel with its own studios and stars. Coordination sits with the Secretaría de Medios y Comunicación Pública through Contenidos Públicos, in Buenos Aires, but the programming is supplied by the provincial and university channels, which select and contribute productions from their own schedules. The Universidad Nacional del Litoral's launch coverage is typical of the mechanism: nine Litus TV productions — among them Animalitus, Cíclope, Desborde, Diálogos, El Paraninfo, En Territorio, Torre de Sonidos, Trayectos and Vibra — were selected and included in the Aunar grid, giving the Santa Fe university channel more screens and a national audience.

By its first anniversary in October 2023, the contributing family listed by the national government included Acequia in Mendoza, Canal 3 in La Pampa, Canal 7 in Chubut, Canal 9 in Santa Cruz, Canal 10 in Córdoba, Canal 10 in Río Negro, Canal 10 in Tucumán, Canal 12 in Misiones, Canal 12 in Trenque Lauquen, Catamarca TV, Chaco TV, Lapacho in Formosa, Litus in Santa Fe, Radio y Televisión Riojana, RTN Neuquén, San Luis TV, Santa Fe Canal, Señal U Mendoza, TV Pública Fueguina in Río Grande and Ushuaia, TV Universidad de La Plata and Xama TV in San Juan. That list — provincial state channels and university channels side by side — is the channel: Aunar is the sum of Argentina's public television, edited into one signal.

Programming: territories and their people

Official descriptions of Aunar's programming are consistent from launch onward: a varied schedule, broadcast twenty-four hours a day, with content about tourism, gastronomy, sport, education, science and technology, culture, children's programming and documentaries, in which territories and their people are the connecting thread. Later summaries add environment and natural heritage, fiction, stories and customs, and childhoods to the same list. The emphasis is deliberate. Aunar does not compete with national entertainment or rolling news; its distinctiveness is geographic and cultural, showing Argentine viewers parts of their own country that national television seldom visits except in a crisis.

This makes Aunar a useful measure of what provincial public television actually produces. Prime-time in Buenos Aires rarely includes Fuegian houses, Pampean trades, Misiones agriculture or San Juan music, yet all of these were in Aunar's premiere grids within its first fortnight. The channel's curatorial task is balance: no single province should dominate, genres should rotate across the day, and children's, educational and documentary content from university channels should sit alongside provincial magazines and cultural series. When it works, the viewer experiences the schedule as a journey around the country rather than as a Buenos Aires programme with occasional regional inserts.

Position in the national public multiplex

Technically, Aunar occupies channel 22.3 in the Buenos Aires digital terrestrial multiplex operated for the national public educational signals: 22.1 Encuentro, 22.2 Pakapaka, 22.3 Aunar, 22.4 Cine.ar and 22.5 Tec, all public signals operated by Contenidos Públicos. Television-in-Argentina listings accordingly classify Aunar as a public channel owned by the Government of Argentina and operated by Contenidos Públicos S.E., launched 17 October 2022. It is also listed among the sister channels of the national public broadcaster's family. Its headquarters function is national coordination from Buenos Aires — the batch data for this profile places it in Buenos Aires, in the Autonomous City — even though almost everything on its screen is produced elsewhere.

At its first anniversary, officials framed the next task as carriage: strengthening the signal and getting every cable operator to incorporate it. Juan Ross said the team was proud to consolidate a true federal signal produced by intense work with all Argentine public broadcasters, and Rosaura Audi called Aunar what they had set out to build — an audiovisual space showing Argentina's cultural diversity and connecting the country's different points through valuable, representative productions from each province — adding that the path was to strengthen the signal and have all cable operators carry it. Free terrestrial availability gives Aunar a national floor; cable carriage determines how many urban viewers habitually find it.

The federal idea in Argentine public media

Aunar belongs to a long Argentine argument about federalism and culture. The 2009 Audiovisual Communication Services Law encouraged pluralism and federal production, provincial channels multiplied under it, and university channels such as TV Universidad de La Plata, Litus, Señal U, Xama and UniRío built substantial local catalogues. But plurality of production without national circulation leaves the Buenos Aires centre as dominant as ever. Aunar addresses the circulation half of the problem, using the national digital platform — itself a public investment — to give provincial work a national window at almost no marginal production cost.

Critics of state media design can reasonably ask whether a government-coordinated federation can be fully plural, and whether selection from Buenos Aires reintroduces the centralism the signal exists to correct. The channel's own history offers a partial answer: its grid is not made by a central producer but selected from what autonomous provincial and university channels already broadcast at home, under their own provincial governments and university authorities of differing political colours. That structure does not remove the coordinating power of the Secretariat, but it makes Aunar structurally more federal than any previous national signal — its content is governed in twenty places before it is scheduled in one.

First anniversary and consolidation

On 17 October 2023 Aunar celebrated one year on screen, continuing to add new audiovisual content from provincial and university public channels across the country with the stated interest of enriching the view of Argentina. The anniversary coverage listed an expanded subject range — sport, environment and natural heritage, gastronomy, science and technology, fiction, documentaries, histories and customs, childhoods, culture and tourism — and the full roll of contributing channels quoted above. A birthday is a small fact, but for a third-generation federal experiment it marked something its predecessors had struggled to achieve: continuity as an ordinary, permanent part of the national grid rather than as a special project.

Continuity matters because the value of a federal signal compounds. Provincial producers plan series knowing a national window exists; university channels can justify production budgets with national reach; and viewers who find a Patagonian documentary or a Litoral music programme once can return to a known channel number, 22.3, for more. Aunar's launch grid, its premiere weeks and its anniversary slate all show the same editorial machine working as designed — selection, scheduling and national distribution of other people's excellent local work.

Assessment

Aunar is one of the most conceptually distinctive channels in Argentina precisely because it originates so little. Launched on 17 October 2022 on channel 22.3, coordinated by the Secretaría de Medios y Comunicación Pública through Contenidos Públicos, and built from the programming of provincial and university public channels, it turned Argentina's scattered public-television production into a single federal service, succeeding Acua Mayor and Mirador. Its limits are the mirror of its design: it depends on the quantity and quality its suppliers produce, on continued public funding for the whole public-media system, and on carriage decisions beyond its control. Its achievement is equally clear. On any given day, Aunar shows a more geographically complete Argentina than any other national channel — a signal whose very name states its method, joining together what the country's public broadcasters make, so that Argentines can discover, meet and recognise themselves.