About Argentina/12

Argentina/12

Argentina/12, styled Argentina|12 and also shortened to Ar/12, is an Argentine news television channel owned by Grupo Octubre through Telearte S.A., the company that operates the free-to-air network El Nueve. The channel broadcasts nationally on Argentina's digital terrestrial television platform on channel 24.5 and is the television extension of the group's best-known media brand, the newspaper Página/12, whose name it adapts. It took its current name on 12 November 2025, when the news channel previously known as IP, Información Periodística, was renamed in order to create a synergy between Página/12, the all-news radio station AM 750 and the television service. Its web presence sits inside the newspaper's site, at pagina12.com.ar/argentina12.

The renaming made explicit what the channel's ownership had always implied: that the television news service of Grupo Octubre belongs to the same editorial family as Página/12, the progressive Buenos Aires daily founded in 1987, and AM 750. Under the Argentina/12 name, the group's print, radio and television journalism share a single recognisable brand built around the number 12.

Overview

Argentina/12 is a Spanish-language news channel broadcasting in 1080i high definition, downscaled for standard-definition feeds, in the Rioplatense dialect of Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires and the River Plate region. Its owner of record is Telearte S.A., its parent is Grupo Octubre, and its sister channel is El Nueve. Its broadcast area is Argentina, and its terrestrial home is channel 24.5 on the national digital multiplex, the position the channel has occupied since its original launch.

The channel covers politics, the economy, culture and current affairs from Buenos Aires, drawing on the journalistic resources of a group that includes a national newspaper, a news radio station and a broadcast television network. Programmes identified with the channel in its current form include commentary and analysis formats presented by journalists associated with the group, among them the column of Víctor Hugo Morales, the Uruguayan-Argentine broadcaster long associated with AM 750 and Página/12, whose programme on the channel addresses the politics and economics of the day.

Background: the IP years

The channel that became Argentina/12 was launched on 17 October 2020 as IP, Información Periodística. The project had been announced on 13 July 2020, produced at El Nueve's studios, after Grupo Octubre, the group owned by businessman and labour leader Víctor Santa María, acquired El Nueve from Albavisión's interests. With the launch of IP, Grupo Octubre sought to create a hybrid between C5N, owned by Grupo Indalo, and TN, owned by Grupo Clarín. Santa María told La Nación in an interview that there was going to be no political contamination and no editorialised content, like that of Página/12 or AM 750, a positioning that presented the channel as a straight news service within a group whose other outlets have declared editorial lines.

IP began at 8 p.m. on 17 October 2020, its inaugural presenters being Diego Iglesias, Noelia Barral Grigera and Gabriel Sued, and its goal was described as bringing news back to the centre. It launched on the digital terrestrial platform on a national multiplex at channel 24.5 in standard definition, and on 17 July 2021 it launched on Telecentro, extending its carriage into pay television. The channel entered an Argentine market that the Reuters Institute counted as having eight news networks for 45 million people, with low ratings across the sector.

Rebrands and changes of management

The channel changed its branding on 20 March 2023, becoming IP Noticias, a simplification of its name and logo that emphasised its news function. In September 2024 a group of investors led by businessman Ariel García Furfaro entered into the ownership of the channel, and under the new administration the channel unveiled a new logo and new programming on 17 October 2024, during the fourth anniversary of the channel. On 1 June 2025, according to brand histories of the channel, Grupo Octubre recovered the ownership of the channel and reverted to the logo used in 2023.

That sequence matters to understanding the 2025 rename. The return of the channel to the full control of its founding group cleared the way for a rebranding that tied the channel openly to the group's flagship newspaper, something that made less sense while outside investors shared its ownership. Within months of recovering the channel, Grupo Octubre gave it the name it now carries.

The Argentina/12 rename

On 12 November 2025 the channel was renamed Argentina/12, stylised Argentina|12, to create a synergy between sister newspaper Página/12 and all-news radio station Radio AM 750. The name works on several levels: it keeps the 12 of Página/12, Argentina's most recognisable newspaper numeral brand; it adds the country, presenting the channel as a national service rather than a Buenos Aires one; and it mirrors the naming of the group's other properties, in which the number 12 and the word Argentina both carry the group's identity.

The rename also represented a change of positioning. IP had been launched with a promise to stand apart from the editorial identities of Página/12 and AM 750. Argentina/12 does the opposite: it embraces the family identity, inviting the newspaper's readers and the radio station's listeners to find the same journalism on television. The channel's website presence was folded into the newspaper's domain, reinforcing the integration: the television channel now lives, digitally, inside pagina12.com.ar.

The Página/12 connection

Página/12, sometimes stylised Página|12, is a daily newspaper published in Buenos Aires, founded on 25 May 1987 by journalists Jorge Lanata and Ernesto Tiffenberg, with its first issue dated the following day in some accounts. Since 2016 the newspaper has been the property of Grupo Octubre, the multimedia company created by Víctor Santa María. The newspaper's political alignment is described as progressivism and Kirchnerism, and its readership, according to in-house surveys cited in reference sources, is concentrated in the 18-to-52 age range and in the medium and medium-high socio-economic groups. It also publishes Rosario/12, a supplement covering the Rosario area, distributed since 1991.

For the television channel, the association brings a defined audience and a defined editorial reputation. Página/12 is known for political journalism, human rights coverage and cultural writing; a channel carrying its name signals to viewers the perspective from which its news is gathered, in the same way that LN+ signals the journalism of La Nación and TN that of Clarín. In Argentina's group-based media system, that legibility is itself a form of positioning.

Programming

Argentina/12's programming is news and current affairs: live news programmes, political analysis, economic coverage and commentary, continuing the schedule structure built under the IP name and refreshed at the 2024 relaunch. The channel's own promotional material and programme listings associate it with commentary from Víctor Hugo Morales, whose column on the channel has addressed the economic policies of the government of President Javier Milei, the university conflict, the situation of Cristina Kirchner and international affairs, in the combative style that has made him one of Argentina's best-known broadcasters. Such programming places the channel clearly within the Argentine tradition of opinion-led news television, in which strong presenter voices anchor the schedule.

The channel also functions as the television outlet for the group's journalism more broadly, able to draw on Página/12's reporters and AM 750's broadcasters, and to cross-promote with El Nueve. That multimedia circulation of journalists and stories is the practical meaning of the synergy invoked at the rename.

Distribution and reach

Argentina/12 broadcasts on a national digital terrestrial multiplex on channel 24.5, the position it inherited from IP, giving it free-to-air reach in digital terrestrial coverage areas, and it is carried on pay television systems, having joined Telecentro in 2021 under its former name. Its live signal is also streamed through the Página/12 website, where the channel has its own section. Audience measurement in Argentine news television is limited, and no specific ratings for the channel are asserted here; reference works and audience reports list the signal among Argentina's national news channels, which is the standing the channel claims in the market.

Within Grupo Octubre's portfolio, reference listings describe the group as owning two over-the-air television channels: El Nueve, its main generalist channel, launched on 9 June 1960, and Argentina/12, its news channel, dating its launch to 17 October 2020. The pairing gives the group both a mass-audience broadcast network and a dedicated news service, the same combination held by its larger competitors.

Significance

Argentina/12 is significant as an experiment in brand architecture as much as in journalism. In five years the same channel carried three names: a neutral promise of pure information, IP; a functional label, IP Noticias; and finally the name of a newspaper, Argentina/12. The trajectory runs from distancing the channel from its owner's editorial identity to embracing that identity completely, and it reflects a broader truth about Argentine media: in a market organised around a few groups with strong editorial brands, a news channel's most valuable asset may be the newspaper name on its logo. As the television face of Página/12, Argentina/12 gives one of Argentina's most distinctive newspapers a live, national, free-to-air voice.