About A24

A24

A24 is an Argentine news television channel owned by Grupo América, broadcasting live politics, economics and current-affairs programming from Buenos Aires. It is the news sister channel of the free-to-air network América TV, and it carries one of the longest continuous lineages in Argentine news television: it began broadcasting on 15 April 1993 as CVN, CableVisión Noticias, is regarded in industry histories as the first news channel in Argentina, was relaunched as América 24 on 8 March 2005, and took its current name, A24, in 2011. Its website, a24.com, relaunched in 2018 as a major digital news operation, shares the brand.

A24 broadcasts as a free-to-air digital channel in Buenos Aires, on digital UHF channel 38.2, with a further terrestrial presence in Mendoza, and as a pay-TV channel nationally and internationally, in 1080i high definition. In a crowded Argentine news market led by TN and C5N, A24 competes with a schedule of live journalism built around Grupo América's presenters and the shared news resources of the América group.

Overview

A24 is a Spanish-language news channel whose schedule runs live for most of the day. Rolling news and current-affairs programmes cover national politics, the economy, courts and crime, social affairs and sport, presented by journalists who also appear on América TV, in keeping with Grupo América's integrated model. The channel's headquarters are in the City of Buenos Aires, alongside the group's other television operations, and its signal reaches the whole country through cable and satellite carriage and the Buenos Aires digital terrestrial platform.

The channel's history falls into three clear eras. As CVN, from 1993 to 2005, it pioneered continuous news in Argentina. As América 24, from 2005 to 2011, it was rebuilt by the Vila and Manzano group after CVN's decline. As A24, from 2011, it has operated under a short, digital-friendly brand matched by the a24.com news site, which the group developed into one of its principal digital assets.

History

The channel's original broadcasts began on 15 April 1993 at 7:00 in the morning, presented by Roberto Maidana and Cecilia Laratro under the direction of journalist Eliseo Álvarez, as a project of Corporación Multimedios América, the group of Carlos Ávila, founder of Torneos y Competencias. The channel was called CVN, and in 1996 it became CVN CableVisión Noticias. In 1994 it began sharing a set with América 2, the group's free-to-air channel. CVN is remembered in Argentine television histories as the country's first news channel, the service that proved a continuous news format could work in the market a month before Todo Noticias launched in June 1993.

CVN's later years were difficult. Following its sale by Ávila Inversora to América Multimedios, the channel progressively lost its identity, and by the early 2000s paid programming, time-brokered infotainment and advertorials filled most of its slots. Its final logo change came in August 2002, adopting a design similar to América Noticias. CVN ceased broadcasting on 8 March 2005 at 6:59 in the morning.

It was replaced the same day by América 24. The relaunch followed the purchase, two years earlier, of CVN together with América TV by the Mendoza businessmen Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano of Grupo Uno, from Carlos Ávila. The new channel's first presenters were Guillermo Andino and María Belén Aramburu, and its schedule added programmes from América's current-affairs presenters, including Antonio Laje, Mauro Viale, Dolores Cahen D'Anvers, Alfredo Leuco and Gustavo López. At first news aired only on weekdays, with weekends filled by paid programming and hourly headlines read in voice-over. The channel struggled initially to win recognition, because the news audience had already been absorbed by Todo Noticias and Crónica TV. In 2011 it was renamed A24 and launched weekend newscasts, which were later reduced as the channel carried some lower-profile matches from the government's Fútbol para Todos scheme. The A24 brand has been used ever since.

Ownership

A24 is owned by Grupo América, the multimedia group built by Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano, whose assets include América TV, regional stations El Siete in Mendoza and Canal Ocho in San Juan, América Tucumán, radio and newspaper interests and the a24.com digital operation. The channel's ownership history tracks the group's own formation: created within Carlos Ávila's América multimedios in 1993, it passed with América TV to the Vila-Manzano group in the early 2000s and was relaunched as part of that group's rebuilding of the América brand.

Within the group, A24 is the continuous-news layer of a two-layer system, exactly as TN serves El Trece within Grupo Clarín. América TV's bulletins and current-affairs programmes draw on A24's newsroom, and A24's presenters front programmes on the free-to-air channel. Group ownership also underwrites the digital strategy: a24.com was developed as a group-level bet on digital news, using the television brand's familiarity as its launch advantage.

Programming

A24's programming is live news and current affairs. The weekday schedule is a sequence of news programmes, each with its own presenters and emphasis, moving from early-morning news through political and economic coverage in the day to interview and analysis programmes in the evening. Politics and the economy dominate, reflecting both audience demand and the channel's inheritance: its founding presenters and its América 24 relaunch team were drawn from Argentine political journalism, and names associated with its early schedules, Antonio Laje, Mauro Viale and Alfredo Leuco among them, illustrate the calibre of presenter the channel has fielded.

Weekend programming, introduced in news form in 2011, mixes news bulletins with magazine and analysis formats. Sport has appeared on the channel at the margins, most notably the Fútbol para Todos matches carried in the early A24 years, but the channel's identity is journalistic rather than sporting. As with all Argentine news channels, major breaking stories displace the fixed schedule, and election nights, budget announcements, trials and demonstrations are covered live and continuously.

News operation

The A24 newsroom works as part of Grupo América's integrated news operation, sharing reporters, producers and presenters with América TV. Stories developed for the free-to-air channel's América Noticias bulletins feed A24's rolling coverage and vice versa, and the digital newsroom at a24.com works to the same agenda. This structure gives a mid-sized group a news presence across three platforms, free-to-air television, a news channel and a national news website, that rivals the architecture of the much larger Clarín operation.

The 2018 relaunch of a24.com was documented by the World Association of News Publishers. The project, led editorially by the group's digital team, aimed to place Grupo América among Argentina's strongest digital news sites. It differentiated the site by explanatory writing that broke with the traditional inverted-pyramid news story, by fast navigation technology, and by newsletter products including a sports agenda, a justice newsletter and a politics newsletter called La Jungla, which built subscriber audiences with direct access to the site. Audiences had first been built on social networks, which the group's digital leadership described as an important player but not the end goal, the goal being a loyal readership on the group's own platform.

Distribution and reach

A24 is available in Buenos Aires free to air on digital terrestrial channel 38.2, a distinction few Argentine news channels share, giving it an over-the-air presence in the capital alongside its national pay-TV carriage on cable and satellite systems. In Mendoza it is present on digital channel 31.2, reflecting the group's provincial roots. International distribution carries the channel to audiences abroad, and the live signal is streamed through a24.com and video platforms.

Its audience is smaller than those of TN and C5N, the two leaders of the news market, and it competes in the following tier with Canal 26, Crónica TV and LN+. Free-to-air availability in the capital, the América TV connection and the growth of a24.com give it a reach and visibility beyond what its linear ratings alone would suggest.

Digital presence

Digital is where A24 has grown fastest. The a24.com site, relaunched in March 2018, publishes breaking news, explanatory journalism, video from the channel and the group's newsletters, and it was designed from the start as a destination rather than a television companion site. Social audiences on the main platforms were cultivated before the relaunch and remain a major distribution channel for the brand's journalism and clips. The strategy reflects a calculation common to mid-sized news groups: the television channel supplies brand, presenters and video, while the website supplies scale, search and social reach and a direct commercial relationship with readers.

Audience and significance

A24's significance rests on its lineage and its role in the América group. Through CVN it descends from the first experiment in continuous television news in Argentina, launched in April 1993; few channels anywhere can claim an unbroken news lineage of that length through three names and two ownership regimes. Its near-death as a paid-programming shell in the early 2000s and its rebuilding under Grupo América also make it a compact history of Argentine media economics in the crisis era.

Today A24 matters as the news engine of one of Argentina's principal media groups, as a free-to-air news option in the capital in a genre otherwise confined to pay television, and as the television half of a digital news brand that Grupo América has built into a national contender. In the ecology of Argentine news channels, it is the América group's answer to TN: proof that every major group in the market now requires a continuous news channel of its own, and that the format CVN pioneered in 1993 has become the standard architecture of Argentine television journalism.