About Chaco TV

Chaco TV

Chaco TV is the provincial public television channel of Chaco Province, in northeastern Argentina, broadcasting from the provincial capital, Resistencia. It is the television service of the Government of Chaco, generated by ECOM Chaco, the provincial state telecommunications and media company, and it forms part of a public media system that also includes Radio Provincia and the Agencia Foco news agency. Chaco TV was born in 2010 under the framework of the Audiovisual Communication Services Law 26.522; AFSCA Resolution 155/2011 assigned it channel 28 in Resistencia, and the signal was on air by June 2013. It is distinct from Canal 9 of Resistencia, the province's older commercial station. In March 2024 the provincial public channel was relaunched with a renewed identity under the name Somos Uno.

Creation under the 2009 media law

Chaco TV is one of the clearest products in Argentina of the Audiovisual Communication Services Law 26.522 of 2009, which reserved one open television frequency for each provincial state. The province acted quickly: the signal was created in 2010, and national records document its holder — the Government of the Province of Chaco — acting under provincial Decree 904/10, the instrument by which the channel was organised. Academic studies of Argentine provincial state television list Chaco TV of Resistencia, dated 2010, among the seventeen open channels operated by provincial states, and describe it explicitly as born under the 2009 law. That origin distinguishes it from the older generation of provincial channels founded in the 1960s and 1970s: Chaco TV was not an analogue-era station later regularised, but a public service designed from the start within the digital-era legal framework.

The channel 28 authorisation

The service's legal foundation is AFSCA Resolution 155/2011. Citing the reservation that article 89, clause b, of Law 26.522 establishes for provincial states — one AM frequency, one FM frequency and one open television frequency, with the repeaters needed to cover the provincial territory — and a technical feasibility report from the National Communications Commission confirming that channel 28 could be assigned, the resolution authorised the Government of the Province of Chaco to install, operate and exploit an open television service in the city of Resistencia, assigning it channel 28, subject to coordination among the MERCOSUR countries. The channel was on air by June 2013, as documented in peer-reviewed research on the province's public media (Pajoni, Question, 2018) and in national government sources.

Registration and carriage obligations

Chaco TV's status as a provincial state signal carries concrete legal consequences for its distribution. It was duly inscribed in the Registro Público de Señales y Productoras, the public registry of signals and producers, with the Government of Chaco as its holder — a fact recorded in AFSCA Resolution 1481/2014, which dealt with the ordering of cable grids. Under Law 26.522 and its regulations, non-satellite subscription television services must carry, unencrypted, the signals generated by the provincial states located in their service area, and grid-ordering rules place the provincial state signal immediately after the designated national signals. In other words, Chaco TV is not merely available in its province: cable operators in its area are legally required to carry it and to place it in a privileged position in the grid. That must-carry status is the practical mechanism by which a young provincial channel, without the audience history of its commercial competitors, reaches the homes of its province.

ECOM Chaco and the provincial public media system

The signal is generated by ECOM Chaco S.A., the provincial state company through which Chaco organises its telecommunications and public media. Discussing the province's public media policy at a national plenary of public television, Governor Jorge Capitanich dated the components of the system: Chaco TV created in 2013 as an on-air service, Radio Provincia in 2015 and Agencia Foco in 2020 — a television channel, a radio station and a news agency built in sequence as the pillars of a provincial public communication system intended, in his words, to strengthen and preserve the province's identity. ECOM's media direction manages the three outlets together, an arrangement that lets television draw on the agency's newsgathering and the radio's local presence.

The system's national integration was illustrated by a collaboration agreement between Radio y Televisión Argentina (RTA) and ECOM Chaco, under which RTA ceded non-exclusive exhibition rights, free of charge, to a catalogue of its programmes for broadcast on Chaco's public media — Chaco TV, Radio Provincia and Agencia Foco — including titles such as Variaciones Walsh, Teatro Abierto, Belgrano, Revolución, Doce casas, Desiguales and FIFA Gate, with up to four broadcasts of each permitted. The framework agreement, in force since the end of the previous year, also covers joint production of audiovisual and sound content, exchange of material, public-good campaigns and exchanges of experience and personnel. For a small provincial channel, such agreements are how national-quality documentary and fiction programming reaches its screen.

Programming

Chaco TV's own production reflects the cultural calendar of its province. When the renewed public channel was presented in March 2024, the provincial media authorities set out its commitments: coverage and live transmission of provincial sport, including rugby and basketball championships; first-division football through an arrangement with the national public television; special programmes and live presence at the Bienal Internacional de Esculturas, the great open-air sculpture biennial that is Resistencia's signature cultural event, and at the Encuentro de Escultores del Impenetrable; broadcasts of national music festivals; and coverage of provincial manifestations such as the Cabalgata de la Fe and the Festival de la Chacarera del Monte Impenetrable. The authorities promised content produced entirely locally, in a current format, showing the attractions of Chaco and building a new link with the province's tourism providers. National federal grids have also carried Chaco TV productions — the federal Aunar schedule, for example, listed Chaco TV titles such as Cable a Tierra and Descubriendo Sabores, evidence of the channel's content travelling beyond its own province through the public media system.

Somos Uno: the 2024 relaunch

On 4 March 2024, at the Casa de las Culturas in Resistencia, the provincial government presented the renewed provincial public television under the name Somos Uno — "We are one" — with the governor framing the relaunch as a new stage centred on the democratisation of information and on hearing all voices. The public media authorities announced a renewed image for the channel, with new figures, programmes and visual identity, alongside the sporting and cultural coverage commitments described above. The name itself states the channel's editorial premise: a single provincial community — "fusionarnos como chaqueños", to merge as Chaqueños, in the launch's words — addressed by a public signal that belongs to the whole province rather than to any locality or party within it.

Federal exchange

Chaco TV also participates in the exchange circuits of Argentine public media. The programming grid of Aunar, the federal public signal that aggregates content from provincial and university channels for national distribution, listed Chaco TV productions including Cable a Tierra, Descubriendo Sabores and De Matete among its scheduled titles. Inclusion in the federal grid means that programmes made in Resistencia about Chaco's food, territory and daily life are broadcast nationally alongside the output of much larger provincial channels — the practical fulfilment, for a small and young channel, of the federal purpose for which the provincial signals were created.

Distinction from Canal 9 and place in the province

Chaco TV is frequently confused, in listings and in conversation, with Canal 9 of Resistencia, the province's established commercial station; the two are entirely separate services, one public and provincial, the other private and commercial, and researchers documenting the province's television take care to distinguish them. Chaco TV's role is the public one: to give the province of Chaco — its government information, its Indigenous and creole cultures, its sculpture biennial and its festivals in the Impenetrable — a television presence of its own in a national system dominated by Buenos Aires production. Born in 2010 on paper, authorised in 2011, on air by 2013 and relaunched as Somos Uno in 2024, it is among the youngest provincial public channels in Argentina, and one of the few created entirely within the legal world of the 2009 media law.