About América TV

América TV

América TV is one of Argentina's five national free-to-air television networks, broadcasting as LS 86 TV Canal 2 from La Plata, Buenos Aires Province. Owned by Grupo América as its flagship television property, it competes with Telefe, El Trece, El Nueve and Televisión Pública for the national audience from a distinctive position: it is the only one of the historic Buenos Aires networks licensed outside the capital itself, in the provincial capital of La Plata. Its studios and offices are in the Palermo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, while its transmitter stands in Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires Province, a geography that shaped the channel's history from its first day on air on 25 June 1966.

Known for most of its life simply as Canal 2 and originally as Tevedos, the station built its identity around news, current affairs and live studio programming. In the modern era it has typically competed for third and fourth place in the Buenos Aires ratings behind Telefe and El Trece, and it anchors a multimedia group that includes the A24 news channel, regional stations in Mendoza, San Juan and Tucumán, radio stations and newspapers.

Overview

América TV broadcasts on analogue VHF channel 2 and digital UHF channel 36, in Spanish, with a general-interest schedule combining news bulletins, current-affairs and panel programmes, talk and entertainment shows, and films. Outside Greater Buenos Aires it is available nationally on cable and satellite, and its programmes are rebroadcast by two stations owned by Grupo América, Canal 7 in Mendoza, branded El Siete, and Canal 8 in San Juan, plus affiliates including Canal 10 in Junín and América Tucumán in Tucumán.

The channel's official website is americatv.com.ar, which streams the signal live and publishes programme and news content. Its sister channel A24 provides the group's continuous news service, and the two operations are closely integrated: América TV's news structure draws on the same journalistic resources that sustain A24, much as El Trece draws on Todo Noticias.

History

Channel 2 in La Plata was launched on 25 June 1966 as Tevedos, under the ownership of Rivadavia Televisión S.A., whose proprietors also held radio stations and the El Mundo newspaper. La Plata lies close to Buenos Aires, and the two cities can receive each other's broadcasts, so Tevedos targeted the much larger capital market from the outset. The handicap was technical: with transmission facilities at Florencio Varela to the south, northern parts of the metropolitan area received a weak signal, unlike the four Buenos Aires stations transmitting from within the city. Ratings were measured in Buenos Aires, and the channel's poor coverage showed. Comedians joked about its small audience share, dubbing the station James Bond in reference to the 007 code and a market share said to be around seven per cent.

At the start of the 1970s Peru's Panamericana Televisión acquired Tevedos, and programmes were produced for the wider Spanish-speaking world from studios in Martínez. In 1976 the Province of Buenos Aires took control of the station, and in 1979 it passed to the provincial Ministry of Economy and was renamed simply Canal 2. Colour broadcasts began in 1980, making it the third Argentine station to convert to colour and the first outside Buenos Aires itself to do so. After democracy returned, the channel was privatised in the 1980s under Radiodifusora El Carmen, and low-cost, largely externally produced programming continued through the decade. Its names changed repeatedly: Tevedos from 1966 to 1979 and again from 1988 to 1991, Canal 2 from 1979 to 1987, Teledos from 1987 to 1988, then América Te Ve from 1991 to 1994 and América 2 from 1994 to 1995.

The América era began when businessman Eduardo Eurnekián purchased channel 2 and relaunched it as América Te Ve on 15 April 1991. In 1994 the channel's production operations moved to new facilities in Palermo in Buenos Aires, where they remain. Eurnekián later sold his media interests, finishing with the network's sale to Torneos y Competencias, the sports rights company of Carlos Ávila, under whom programming emphasised sport and news and the channel carried events including the 2002 FIFA World Cup. The 2001 to 2002 economic crisis nearly bankrupted the channel; under a reorganisation linking it to Grupo Uno, the Mendoza-based group of Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano, it emerged from bankruptcy and kept its licence. In 2007 Francisco de Narváez bought a majority stake. The group that resulted, today Grupo América, still owns the station.

Ownership

América TV is owned by Grupo América through América TV S.A. Grupo América, formerly associated with the UNO Medios name, is controlled by interests linked to Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano, with Claudio Belocopitt also listed among the group's principals in standard references. The group is a genuine multimedia operator: alongside América TV and A24 it holds regional television stations including El Siete in Mendoza and Canal Ocho in San Juan, the América Tucumán operation, radio assets and newspaper interests rooted in Mendoza's Diario UNO.

For the channel itself, group ownership means its news and current-affairs identity is shared across television and digital properties, most visibly A24 and the a24.com news site, which Grupo América relaunched in March 2018 as a major digital news bet built on the television brand. The group's Mendoza origins also distinguish América from its Buenos Aires-centred rivals: its owners built their media position from the interior of the country before taking control of a capital-market network.

Programming

América TV's schedule is built around live studio programming to a greater degree than its fiction-led rivals. Weekdays are dominated by news, current affairs, panel discussion and magazine programmes that run from the morning through prime time, mixing political reporting, interviews, show-business coverage and lifestyle material. The channel became known for an irreverent, fast-moving house style in its entertainment journalism, and for talk and panel formats in which presenters and commentators debate the day's politics and celebrity news live on air.

Historically the channel's limited budgets, a consequence of its weaker signal and smaller audience share, pushed it toward cheaper formats, imported programming and outside productions, and at low points in the 1970s it even simulcast Canal 13 at times. The stronger periods reversed that pattern: under Torneos y Competencias, sports rights and event television lifted the schedule, and in 2015 the channel broadcast its first reality format, Gran Hermano Argentina 2015, taking on the country's most famous reality brand. In 2011, facing intensified competition among cable news channels, América reoriented its strategy toward news, current affairs and live programming under the slogan La Vida en Vivo, living life live, a positioning that still describes the channel's emphasis on live output over recorded fiction.

The arrival of Marcelo Tinelli's production operation in the 2020s, after his long association with El Trece ended, gave the channel a new prime-time entertainment anchor and brought established Artear personalities with it, in a strategy consciously echoing Tinelli's earlier role at Canal 9. Current titles rotate by season and are listed on the official website.

News operation

News is the backbone of América TV. Its bulletin brand, América Noticias, airs in multiple daily editions, and the channel's daytime schedule is effectively a rolling sequence of news and current-affairs programmes covering politics, the economy, crime, courts and social issues. Because so much of the schedule is live, the channel can break into programming instantly when major stories develop, a flexibility its fixed-schedule rivals match only through their separate news channels.

The group's continuous news capacity sits in A24, which shares presenters, reporters and editorial resources with the flagship. Political interview and debate programmes on América TV draw on the same journalistic pool, and major investigations and interviews are cross-promoted between América TV, A24 and a24.com. The model mirrors the Clarín group's pairing of El Trece and TN and reflects a settled Argentine pattern: a general channel for mass-audience bulletins and a news channel for continuous coverage, fed by one newsroom culture.

Distribution and reach

América TV's terrestrial signal covers Greater Buenos Aires and La Plata from its Florencio Varela transmitter, with repeaters listed at Dolores, Las Flores, 25 de Mayo and Roque Pérez in Buenos Aires Province. National reach comes primarily from cable and satellite carriage, which places the channel in homes across Argentina, and from the group's owned and affiliated stations in Mendoza, San Juan, Junín and Tucumán, which rebroadcast its programmes with local content.

The early signal disadvantage that shaped the channel's first decades has largely been erased by this distribution model: in a market where most households receive television by cable, satellite or digital platforms, a capital-market licence's terrestrial footprint matters far less than its pay-TV position and brand. Live streaming through americatv.com.ar completes the picture, making the Buenos Aires schedule available anywhere in the country and abroad.

Digital presence

The group's digital flagship is a24.com, relaunched in March 2018 with a deliberate strategy to rank among Argentina's strongest news sites, using explanatory formats rather than the traditional inverted-pyramid news story, fast technology and newsletter products on politics, justice and sport. América TV's own site streams the channel live and distributes programme clips and entertainment content, and the group's presenters and programmes maintain large social followings that feed audiences back to the linear channels. The integration of television, the A24 channel and the news site into one digital operation is central to Grupo América's stated strategy.

Audience and significance

América TV has generally occupied fourth place in the Buenos Aires ratings in recent decades, competing with Canal 9 for third, well behind the Telefe and El Trece duopoly but comfortably ahead of the remaining services, a position references on the channel have recorded consistently. Its significance exceeds that ranking. It proved that a network licensed to La Plata could compete in the capital, it pioneered a live, news-heavy, lower-cost model of general television that influenced its rivals, and it is the flagship of one of Argentina's principal multimedia groups.

From Tevedos in 1966, through provincial state control, colour conversion, repeated renamings, near-bankruptcy in the 2001 crisis and rebirth under Grupo América, the channel on VHF 2 has survived every upheaval of Argentine broadcasting. Its live-first identity, summarised in its La Vida en Vivo slogan, remains its clearest distinction in a five-network market, and its partnership with A24 gives Grupo América a news footprint that rivals groups many times its size.