About Acequia

Acequia

Acequia, also known as Acequia TV, was the provincial public television channel of Mendoza in western Argentina. Launched officially on 26 March 2014, it was described by the Government of Mendoza as the first public channel of the province, and later accounts described it as Mendoza's first and only provincial public channel. Owned by the Government of Mendoza and based at the Espacio Cultural Julio Le Parc in Guaymallén, in the Mendoza metropolitan area, it was a Spanish-language generalist service built around provincial culture, news, education, children's programming, documentaries, fiction and local production. It broadcast for a little over a decade before it ceased operating in 2024, and the trust that administered it was formally extinguished with effect from 1 January 2026.

What Acequia added, while it was properly funded and producing, was a screen made specifically in and for one province: correspondents across Mendoza, programmes made by local production companies, coverage of the Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia and provincial sport, and stories from Mendoza's departments as the subject rather than a regional insert in a Buenos Aires bulletin. That purpose was written into its name, taken from the irrigation channels that have shaped Mendoza for centuries.

Overview

Acequia was a public, generalist channel rather than a single-genre service. Government descriptions listed news, children's and youth content, educational and cultural programmes, sport, documentaries, films and fiction. At launch the province said 45 per cent of programming was local, and a year later described Acequia as the Mendoza channel with the most local production. Those were the owner's claims, but the titles, co-productions and awards recorded in those years confirm substantial local production did take place.

In reference listings, Acequia appeared among Mendoza's services alongside private stations such as El Siete and Canal 9 Televida and the university service Señal U. Its distinctiveness was its ownership and remit: it was the state provincial channel, created under Argentina's audiovisual services law framework, and intended to widen the range of voices and reflect Mendoza identity on screen.

Origins and launch

The groundwork predated the launch by more than a year. According to the Government of Mendoza, on 23 November 2012 President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner handed the province the licence to transmit on channel 29 of the TDA, Argentina's open digital television system. In December 2012 the national planning ministry delivered the certificate for a CEPA production centre, which the province said would give Acequia a full high-definition studio. Before the formal launch, the government reported a test transmission centred on the Vendimia celebrations.

The inauguration took place on 26 March 2014 at the Espacio Cultural Julio Le Parc. Governor Francisco Pérez took part in Mendoza, while President Fernández de Kirchner inaugurated the channel by videoconference, with AFSCA head Martín Sabbatella and Radio y Televisión Argentina president Tristán Bauer also associated with the launch. Pérez linked Acequia to media-law federalisation and thanked the national planning ministry for an investment of 10 million pesos. The province said the project involved work for around 150 people and more than 70 local production companies.

The name and Mendoza's acequias

The name was a deliberate statement of identity. Alejandro Biondo, director in its first period, explained in 2014 that Acequia emerged because an acequia is incorporated into the province's landscape and part of the identity of all Mendocinos. The aim was a modern, fresh screen on which provincial viewers would see themselves represented.

An acequia is an irrigation channel, and in Mendoza the system is foundational rather than decorative. Research on Mendoza's water heritage, including work by CONICET researcher Jorge Ricardo Ponte, traces it to the Huarpe culture before the arrival of Spanish conquerors in the mid-sixteenth century, with links also to the Inca presence in the region. The acequias originally supplied drinking water and watered gardens and orchards, extending into the surrounding agricultural oasis. In modern Mendoza they run beside pavements and tree-lined streets, carrying Andean meltwater through an arid environment. The name cast broadcasting as a distribution system: just as acequias carry water across the oasis, the channel was meant to carry Mendoza stories to every department.

Location, ownership and organisation

Acequia belonged to the Government of Mendoza. Its studios and offices were in the Espacio Cultural Julio Le Parc in Guaymallén, where the launch was also held. Government accounts named a founding team including director Alejandro Biondo, Rocío Gálvez, Jorge Sevilla, Gaspar Gómez and Cristian Pellegrini. In 2016, after several months without a director, Alejandro Pelegrina, then in charge of cultural production and Vendimia, took over as director, replacing Biondo.

Administratively, in its later years the channel was sustained through the Fideicomiso de Administración del Servicio Audiovisual Acequia, a trust administered by Mendoza Fiduciaria S.A., a structure that later had to be rescinded and liquidated to close it. During its active life the province noted content agreements with BACUA, TV Pública, Canal Encuentro, PakaPaka, DeporTV and the INCAA film institute, and membership of the Consejo Federal de TV Pública, whose eleventh national meeting Acequia hosted days after its launch.

Programming and local production

Local production was the centre of Acequia's claim to exist. Early schedules mixed its own productions, co-productions with independent Mendoza companies and content from national public-media agreements. Titles in launch and anniversary announcements included Memoria, Verdad y Justicia, on the legacy of the last civic-military dictatorship in Mendoza; A la vuelta de la esquina, travelling to little-known corners of the province; Video Delivery, filming a band or solo artist in a single uncut shot; and children's programmes Leo y Nardo and Cototo y su choco. Other titles included Juego de Turistas, Cápsula del Tiempo, Cueste lo que cueste, Back Vendimia, Confines, Rock N Board and A 1000 kilómetros de casa, about Mendocinos in Buenos Aires.

Later launches added the live magazine La pregunta en el desierto, music programmes La Estafeta, Ringoteca and MIMM Presenta, and the fiction series Animadores, presented as a national premiere on Acequia. The province said Acequia was the first Mendoza channel to co-produce with national television, citing the documentary Reconstrucción. Los años de San Martín en Mendoza, with Canal Encuentro, and its association with TV Pública for the 2014 Champions Trophy hockey tournament in Mendoza. National services also took its programmes: PakaPaka selected La cápsula del tiempo and Canal Encuentro began showing Pueblos de Fiesta.

News, sport and public events

News was the other pillar. At the first anniversary the province said its service, Noticias Acequia, broadcast nine editions a day and was the only newscast with correspondents throughout the province, describing it as young, professional and without sensationalism. Later retrospectives described five daily newscasts, three of an hour and two of half an hour. The figures belong to different moments and sources, but together they show live provincial news was a major commitment, not a token bulletin.

Sport and public events gave Acequia visible assignments. In June 2014 it transmitted Argentina's matches at the field hockey World Cup in The Hague, on channel 29 of the TDA. Retrospective accounts also record Torneo Federal A football transmissions when three Mendoza teams were competing. As the provincial channel it was also the originating signal for televising the central act of the Vendimia, distributing an event whose theatre holds only a fraction of the province's population to viewers at home.

Distribution and digital presence

Acequia began on digital terrestrial television, on channel 29, later presented as 29.1, and was also carried on channel 11 of Supercanal, with carriage by CTC, serving the Uco Valley, San Rafael and Malargüe, announced as forthcoming at launch. Its programmes could also be watched through its website, acequia.tv; the seed record lists no current official website, consistent with a service that no longer operates. On its first anniversary, in 2015, the province announced that Acequia was joining the open-air channels, transmitting from Cerro Arco on channel 2. A music spin-off on 29.2, Acequia Múzica, was also announced at launch; the record consulted here does not establish how long it operated.

Recognition and place in Mendoza media

The clearest national recognition came from the FundTV awards. At the 21st edition, in Buenos Aires, Acequia won three prizes, for Diseño sin fronteras, A la vuelta de la esquina and Cueste lo que cueste, from five nominations. The province reported this made it the only Mendoza channel honoured that edition, the second-most awarded nationally on the night, and the only state public channel among the winners. Memoria, Verdad y Justicia had also been selected for the Nuevas Miradas awards.

Within Mendoza, Acequia was the alternative screen. Private television was dominated by established commercial stations, while Señal U served the university sector. Acequia alone was charged with representing the whole province as a public service, showing what happened in each department, tracing provincial history and giving work to local producers. Whether it fully achieved that ambition is politically argued in Mendoza, but its early grids and the reaction to its closure indicate it occupied a place no other outlet performed in the same way.

Decline and closure

The ending was gradual and then formal. Retrospective accounts agree that in its final years local productions disappeared, live programmes were reduced to a minimum and the screen filled with acquired, canned content. In April 2024 finance minister Víctor Fayad told the legislature the executive would dispose of Acequia's assets and assess a transfer to private hands, arguing in reported remarks that it did not make sense to spend taxes on a channel and citing a government-estimated monthly cost of about 30 million pesos. Days later Mendoza Fiduciaria dismissed the entire staff, put at about 30 employees in later accounts. The Mendoza press union, SiPreMza, repudiated the dismissals. Provincial Law 9550 then authorised liquidation of the trust's assets, including its equipment by public auction.

Broadcasting ceased in that 2024 process; one detailed retrospective states that from April 2024 the channel remained closed and without emissions. The legal extinction took longer. By Decree No. 3032, signed on 30 December 2025 and published in the Boletín Oficial de Mendoza, the province approved the rescission agreement for the trust and authorised an extraordinary contribution of 135 million pesos for the final liquidation. The agreement, signed on 18 December 2025, provided that the trust would be extinguished from 1 January 2026, ending remaining contracts, cancelling obligations and returning the remaining patrimony to the province. Some shorter summaries misdate that decree to the end of 2024; detailed accounts based on the Boletín Oficial place it at the end of 2025.

Legacy

Acequia demonstrated for roughly a decade that a small Argentine province could sustain its own public television service, with daily news, programmes by dozens of local companies, national co-productions, Vendimia and sport coverage, and national awards. Its central studio was named in 2014 for Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino, the Mendoza-born creator of Mafalda, after a tribute at the channel.

Its history also shows how dependent such a service is on the government that owns it. Created under one administration as a product of media-law federalisation, and then defunded, emptied and closed by decision of the Cornejo administration, Acequia left Mendoza, on the accounts cited here, without a provincial public channel for the first time since 2014. Its programmes and awards remain the record of an experiment that carried Mendoza's acequia idea into television: a shared channel, maintained in common, meant to reach every corner of the oasis it served.