About Canal 10 Río Negro

Canal 10 Río Negro

Canal 10 Río Negro is the public television channel of the province of Río Negro, Argentina. It broadcasts free-to-air from General Roca, in the Alto Valle del río Negro, under the call sign LU 92 TV, and is owned by the Government of the Province of Río Negro and operated through the state company Radio Televisión Río Negro Sociedad del Estado. The station began regular transmissions on 20 March 1982 — initially on channel 11, moving to channel 10 soon afterwards — and reaches the Alto Valle and much of the province through an extensive repeater network.

Canal 10 is an affiliate of El Trece of Buenos Aires, whose programming it retransmits, combined with its own provincial production headed by its news service Noticias 10, and with content from the national public channels Encuentro and Pakapaka. Its history is distinctive among Argentine provincial channels: a state broadcaster that was managed for a decade, between 1999 and 2009, by Artear, the Grupo Clarín company that operates El Trece, under a temporary union of companies, before returning to full provincial control. Its studios are at 25 de Mayo 458 in General Roca, and its slogan is "Con vos".

Overview

Canal 10 is a public generalist channel. Its schedule is built from three sources: the programming of El Trece, which Artear supplies and for which Artear has retained the national commercial representation of the channel; content from the public channels Encuentro and Pakapaka; and local production from General Roca, including news, sport and community programmes. The station broadcasts in Spanish, in high definition in the 1080i format, and ended its analogue transmissions in June 2023 as part of the digital terrestrial transition in southern Argentina.

History

The legal origin of the channel dates to 13 May 1975, when the National Executive, through Decree 1272, granted the Government of Río Negro a permit to operate an official, non-commercial television station in General Roca. On 4 August 1981 the Federal Broadcasting Committee called a tender for the licence of channel 11, and the licence began regular transmissions on 20 March 1982 as LU 92 TV Canal 11 of General Roca, from a purpose-built building of more than 850 square metres in the north of the city. By April 1984 the licence was already broadcasting on channel 10. On 7 March 1985 the Río Negro legislature sanctioned Law 1952, authorising the creation of the state company Radio Televisión Río Negro Sociedad del Estado LU 92 Canal 10 to exploit the licence, and on 4 April 1990, through Decree 643, the National Executive authorised the province to provide an open television service on Canal 10. In its first decades the station was known successively as Canal 11, then TV 10 between 1985 and 1999.

The Artear management era

On 14 December 1998, Radio Televisión Río Negro and Arte Radiotelevisivo Argentino (Artear), the Grupo Clarín subsidiary, agreed to form a temporary union of companies — controlled 85 per cent by Artear — to operate Canal 10 and its 21 repeaters from 1 January 1999 for a minimum term of ten years, while the licence itself remained in the hands of the state company. The provincial legislature ratified the agreement through Law 3276, promulgated on 14 January 1999, and the joint venture assumed operations on 10 March 1999, renaming the channel AireValle. Canal 10 thus became the first Artear television channel in the Argentine interior.

The arrangement endured difficulties: in 2001 the emission of Canal 10 on its 21 repeaters was cut because of a debt of 1.4 million pesos owed by the joint venture to Telefónica, which provided the microwave link carrying the signal from General Roca to the repeaters. In 2004 the provincial state decided to regularise the debt and restore the signal via satellite; by April 2005 the signal had returned to 18 of the 21 repeaters, and by December 2006 it had returned to all of them, with six more installed in other parts of the province. On 2 May 2005 AireValle took back the name Canal 10 as part of an image change. In November 2008 it became known that the Río Negro government would not renew the management contract with Artear; the contract ended on 10 March 2009, and the channel returned to provincial control, although Artear retained the national commercial handling of the station.

Return to provincial control and digital transition

Back under state management, the channel went through further identity changes: in April 2014 its management renamed it Televisión Rionegrina, and in 2016, with Rodrigo Buteler as its president, it returned to the name Canal 10. In August 2016 Canal 10 joined the other public channels of Patagonia in forming the Red Patagónica de la Televisión Pública, created to offer viewers a regional Patagonian newscast. On the technical side, the Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services had assigned the station UHF channel 31 for digital terrestrial television in June 2011; on 9 December 2019 Canal 10 began broadcasting its programming in HD, and on 29 June 2023 it ceased analogue broadcasting to complete the transition to digital terrestrial television in the Argentine south, in compliance with ENACOM Decree 156/2022.

Ownership

The owner of Canal 10 is the Government of the Province of Río Negro, and the operator is Radio Televisión Río Negro S.E., the state society created by provincial law in 1985. The provincial law authorising the company set as its object the provision and exploitation of broadcasting and television services and the production and emission of programmes, and required its statute to guarantee freedom of expression and the production and diffusion of national and regional knowledge and culture, with an advisory editorial council representing the social, economic, cultural, political and scientific sectors of the Rionegrine community. The channel's public character has been a recurring theme of provincial debate, including controversies over its programming decisions: in 2012 the journalist Jorge Lanata accused the channel of censorship for not transmitting his El Trece programme Periodismo para todos, an accusation denied by provincial figures; the programme was incorporated into the channel's schedule in 2016. The same year, 2012, the channel replaced El Trece's Telenoche with the TV Pública newscast Visión Siete in its central slot, a decision its management described as non-political while channel workers attributed it to direction from above.

Programming

The programming of Canal 10 combines the contents of El Trece and of the public channels Encuentro and Pakapaka with local production. Among its own programmes are Cipo Corazón, a football programme focused on the activities of Club Cipolletti, the emblematic club of the neighbouring city of Cipolletti; Juntos para Sumar, a solidarity programme that was declared of interest by the Argentine Senate; and Patagonia Telebingo, a bingo game programme also broadcast by Canal 6 of Bariloche and Canal 7 of Neuquén. The channel also produces documentary and cultural content on the province, such as its three-part documentary series on the total solar eclipse visible from Río Negro.

News operation

The news service of Canal 10 is Noticias 10, focused on provincial and national news, with three editions from Monday to Friday, at 8:00, at 13:00 and at 20:00. During the Artear era the newscast was called Aire Valle Noticias and was produced from the city of Neuquén until late November 2004; since 29 November 2004 it has been made in General Roca. In May 2005 it took the name Noticiero 10, and in mid-2016 it became Noticias 10. Since 17 September 2016 the channel has broadcast the weekly Resumen Patagónico de Noticias, the shared news panorama of the Red Patagónica de la Televisión Pública. Provincial reporting has described Canal 10 positioning itself among the media with the largest regional audiences, with growing followings across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter reported by the channel itself.

Distribution and reach

Canal 10 reaches the Alto Valle del río Negro and a large part of the province through a network reported as 50 repeaters, serving localities from Viedma, the provincial capital, on channel 10, to Catriel, Choele Choel, El Bolsón, Ingeniero Jacobacci, Los Menucos, Maquinchao, Río Colorado, San Antonio Oeste, Sierra Grande and Valcheta, among many smaller settlements of the Río Negro steppe and coast. Reaching Bariloche, the province's largest city, has historically been a technical challenge: the channel has no over-the-air signal of its own there, but under an agreement, from 6 July 2020 the Bariloche station Canal 6 began broadcasting some Canal 10 programmes, including the midday edition of its newscast — an arrangement the president of Radio Televisión Río Negro described as a lower-cost "plan B" for reaching the city.

Digital presence

The channel's official website is canal10.ar, and it maintains active social media accounts whose growth the station has publicly reported, alongside its HD digital terrestrial signal. Its presence in the Red Patagónica de la Televisión Pública links its newsroom with those of the other Patagonian public channels for regional coverage.

Audience and significance

Canal 10 is the television institution of the province of Río Negro: created by the state in 1982 to give the province its own screen, it has been, successively, a purely public channel, the first interior channel managed by Artear, and again a provincial public channel with a national network affiliation. Its repeater network — restored by satellite after the 2001 cut and expanded afterwards — embodies its founding purpose of provincial integration, carrying a single signal from the Alto Valle orchards to the Atlantic coast and the southern steppe. With its news service produced in General Roca since 2004 and its participation in the Patagonian public network, Canal 10 remains the reference broadcaster of Río Negro more than four decades after its first transmission.