About Canal 10 Mar del Plata

Canal 10 Mar del Plata

Canal 10 Mar del Plata is an Argentine free-to-air television station broadcasting from Mar del Plata, in Buenos Aires Province. It transmits under the call sign LU 82 TV and serves the south-east of Buenos Aires Province, reaching viewers beyond its home city through repeater stations. The station is owned by Grupo Olmos and operated by TV Mar del Plata S.A., the licence holder, and is based at Av. Independencia 1163, Mar del Plata. Its official website is canal10mardelplata.tv. Broadcasting in Spanish, it is a generalist channel combining programming relayed from El Trece in Buenos Aires with productions made in Mar del Plata itself.

It began regular transmissions on 22 November 1965, as part of the first generation of provincial stations created after Argentine television expanded beyond Buenos Aires. In November 2025 it marked its sixtieth anniversary, which the General Pueyrredón city council formally declared to be of interest in recognition of its journalistic, cultural and social work in the region.

Overview

Canal 10 is a general entertainment and news service rather than a specialised channel. Its transmission area is the south-east of Buenos Aires Province, a region that includes Mar del Plata itself, the Atlantic coast resorts to its north and south, and inland cities such as Tandil and Necochea. Its picture format is listed as 1080i high definition, downscaled to a 16:9 standard-definition feed. Its on-air slogan in recent branding has been A tu lado, and the station is also known informally as El Diez, a name reflected in its news branding.

Its position is defined by a dual identity. It is the local voice of Mar del Plata, the principal city of the Argentine Atlantic coast, producing its own newscasts and programmes about city and regional life. It is also an affiliate of El Trece, the Buenos Aires network operated by Artear, which also represents Canal 10 commercially, according to reference accounts, and whose national programming fills much of its schedule. That combination is the standard model for major provincial stations in Argentina.

History

The licence behind Canal 10 predates its launch by two years. On 10 October 1963, by Decree 9064, Argentina's national executive awarded TV Mar del Plata S.A., a company then in formation and made up of ten people, a licence to operate the channel 10 frequency in Mar del Plata. Regular transmissions began on 22 November 1965 as LU 82 TV Canal 10 de Mar del Plata. Local histories record that it has been based on Avenida Independencia since its founding era, and the address remains its home today.

On 11 December 1981 the Federal Broadcasting Committee, COMFER, authorised by Resolution 407 the La Costa municipality to install repeaters in Mar de Ajó and San Clemente del Tuyú, on channels 32 and 13 respectively, extending the signal along the coast north of Mar del Plata. Local accounts also record that Canal 10 began colour transmissions in 1981. On 27 January 1983, by Decree 194, the national executive renewed its licence.

Ownership and network changes

Canal 10's ownership changed repeatedly during the consolidation of Argentine television in the 1990s. On 12 April 1996, Decree 406 authorised Alejandro Romay and Rogelio Pianezza to enter TV Mar del Plata S.A., and they took the majority shareholding. On 25 November 1997 the Australian company Prime Television Ltd. announced the purchase of the Canal 9 network and its stations, including Canal 10, for approximately 150 million US dollars; the transaction was completed the following month. By January 1998, 50 per cent of the network had passed to Torneos y Competencias, and by March 1999 that half was co-owned by Torneos y Competencias with Atlántida Comunicaciones through AC Inversora.

The next change tied Canal 10 to Azul Televisión in Buenos Aires. On 30 November 1999 it was announced that Telefónica would buy 50 per cent of Azul Televisión and its three interior stations, among them Canal 10, while also acquiring Telefe and its interior stations, including Canal 10's local rival, Canal 8. The deals were approved on 19 April 2000 on condition that Telefónica sell its stake in Canal 10 or the whole of Canal 8 within 180 days, and were completed on 19 May 2000. In August 2001 Prime sold the remaining 50 per cent of Azul Televisión to JP Morgan Chase for 67.5 million US dollars. On 28 November 2001 COMFER ordered Telefónica to sell one of the two Mar del Plata channels within twelve months. On 4 July 2002 Telefónica divested channels 9 and 10 by selling its Azul stake to HFS Media, led by Daniel Hadad and Fernando Sokolowicz, which also bought the JP Morgan share. That same year, reference accounts say, Canal 10 was acquired by the Neomedia group.

The most recent change came on 3 August 2022, when Grupo Olmos bought the station, as reported by Infobae. It has remained part of Grupo Olmos since then, as both the city council's 2025 anniversary filing and coverage of its sixtieth birthday describe it. TV Mar del Plata S.A. remains the operating and licence company in reference listings.

Affiliation with El Trece

For much of its earlier history Canal 10 was linked to Canal 9 in Buenos Aires, and during the Azul Televisión period, 1999 to 2002, it branded itself as Azul Televisión Mar del Plata. The decisive affiliation change came on 1 May 2004, when Canal 10 began to broadcast exclusively the programming of Canal 13 of Buenos Aires, the flagship of Artear's El Trece network. It has remained an El Trece affiliate since then.

The affiliation shapes the daily schedule. Network fiction, entertainment and national content from Buenos Aires fills much of the broadcast day, while Canal 10 inserts its own news editions and local programmes around the feed. For viewers in its region, the station is therefore both the local channel and the free-to-air route to El Trece's national output.

Programming

Canal 10's own production sits alongside the El Trece feed. Reference listings highlight El Diez Noticias as its news service, ADN, a programme focused on disability issues, and Comunidad Portuaria, devoted to the activity of the port of Mar del Plata. English-language listings have also credited it with local programmes on rural news, food and wine, travel and motoring.

ADN has been reported as a winner of a Martín Fierro Federal award in the medical themes category, recognition reported in 2019. Together with the newscasts below, such programmes distinguish Canal 10 from a simple relay of a Buenos Aires network.

News operation

Local news is the centre of Canal 10's own production. Its modern news service began as Telediario, which first went on air on 17 March 2003 with a main focus on news from the south-east of Buenos Aires Province and national news. On 8 November 2021 the bulletin changed its name to Ahora Noticias. A morning news programme, Arriba Mar del Plata, was created on 22 August 2022, presented on its launch by Laura Desuá and Germán Lagrasta. On 15 May 2023 Ahora Noticias was renamed again, becoming 10 Noticias, with three editions broadcast from Monday to Friday, at 13:00, at 20:00 and at midnight.

That structure was still being described in 2025, when coverage of an honour from APTRA, the Argentine television journalists' association, noted that the station combines three daily news editions and an early-morning programme with Canal 13 and Artear's national programming. The city council's filing that year credited it with sustaining four daily news editions without interruption over 22 years, reaching back to Telediario in 2003.

Distribution and repeaters

Historically, Canal 10 relied on repeaters to cover its region. Reference listings based on its public access documentation record five repeaters in Buenos Aires Province: Barker on channel 4, Necochea on channel 5, Pinamar on channel 13, Tandil on channel 6 and Villa Gesell on channel 15. In May 2003 COMFER authorised further repeaters in Azul, Dolores, Maipú, Nueve de Julio, Olavarría, San Carlos de Bolívar and Tres Arroyos, although ENACOM declared that authorisation lapsed in May 2016, so those relays should not be assumed to operate today.

Beyond terrestrial reception, the station is carried on cable in its region, and the city council's 2025 filing describes it as distributing its signal today by air, cable and digital platforms, 24 hours a day. The same filing puts its potential reach at more than 1.9 million people in the centre and south of Buenos Aires Province. That figure is the council document's description of potential coverage, not an audience measurement, and no verified ratings figures are asserted here.

Digital transition and high definition

Canal 10 was an early participant in Argentina's digital television transition. In February 1999 the Secretariat of Communications authorised it, by Resolution 3453, to test digital terrestrial television under the ATSC standard, Argentina's original choice, on channel 11 in the VHF band. After Argentina changed its standard to ISDB-T, the regulator authorised tests under the new system by resolutions in November 2010 and August 2011, assigning channel 43 in the UHF band.

On 13 August 2012 Canal 10 began broadcasting in high definition, becoming the first channel in Mar del Plata to do so, according to contemporary local reporting. The city council's 2025 filing makes a related claim, describing it as the first channel in the Argentine interior to transmit in HD with its own equipment. On 31 March 2015 the regulator assigned it channel 27.1 for regular HD digital terrestrial broadcasting. Its present HD format is listed as 1080i, with a downscaled standard-definition feed.

Identity and names

The station has kept the number 10 throughout its life, but its on-screen name has changed with its affiliations and ownership eras. Reference listings record it as Canal 10 from 1965 to 1999 and again from 2002 to 2004, as Azul Televisión Mar del Plata from 1999 to 2002, as 10 Televisión from 2004 to 2006, as Canal Diez MDP from 2006 to 2010 and as Diez MDP from 2010 to 2021. The branding El Diez, used in English-language listings and in its news service name, expresses the same identity in everyday form.

Logopedia's record notes that the design introduced on 21 November 1996 showed the 1 in yellow and the 0 in blue, representing the sand and sea of the seaside city.

Place in the region

Canal 10's significance is local and regional rather than national. Mar del Plata has two historic free-to-air stations, Canal 10 and Canal 8, and for sixty years Canal 10 has been one of the two television voices of the city and its region. Its history touches most major chapters of Argentine television outside the capital: the provincial licence grants of the 1960s, the network consolidations of the 1990s, the interventions that forced Telefónica to choose between the city's two channels, the switch to El Trece in 2004, and the digital and HD transition of the 2010s.

The station marked its sixtieth anniversary on 22 November 2025, with celebrations reported by the Grupo Olmos newspaper BAE Negocios and formal recognition from the city council. Under Grupo Olmos, with TV Mar del Plata S.A. as operator, an El Trece affiliation and its own newsroom producing multiple daily editions, Canal 10 continues in the role it has held since 1965: Mar del Plata's channel 10, made in the city and watched across its region.