About Canal 13 Río Cuarto

Canal 13 Río Cuarto

Canal 13 Río Cuarto is a free-to-air television station serving Río Cuarto and the south of Córdoba Province, Argentina. Broadcasting as LV 86 TV Canal 13, it is operated by Imperio Televisión S.A. and is a Telefe affiliate, combining the Buenos Aires network's programming with a substantial block of local production headed by its long-running newscast Telediario. The station brands itself as "La televisión abierta del sur de Córdoba" — the open television of the south of Córdoba. Its history is unusually deep for an interior city: it began life as a closed-circuit channel in 1964, making it the first television channel Río Cuarto ever had, and it converted to an open signal in 1978.

Beginnings as closed-circuit Canal 2

The station was born as Canal 2, a closed-circuit television service. Its formal inauguration took place on 14 June 1964, when the channel began transmitting over a closed circuit with free connection, operated by Imperio Televisión; the launch of regular service was then postponed to August, and the licence began regular transmissions on 15 August 1964. Closed-circuit systems, in which the signal travelled by cable to connected homes rather than through the air, were the way television reached many Argentine interior cities before open licences were granted, and Río Cuarto's Canal 2 was the city's first experience of the medium.

The early operation was technically inventive. In 1968 Canal 2 began receiving programming by microwave link instead of celluloid film, in order to incorporate videotape, and the first recording was made on 9 August of that year. In 1973 the operators formed a sociedad anónima to continue the enterprise on a more formal corporate footing.

Conversion to open television

In June 1978 the licence adopted the call sign LV 86 TV and moved to channel 13 as an open, over-the-air signal, succeeding the closed-circuit Canal 2. The company behind it, Imperio Televisión S.A., was then in formation and made up of some twenty people. The transition from closed circuit to open signal was the defining transformation of the station: what had been a service for connected subscribers became a general broadcast service for the whole city and its rural hinterland.

The licence was then regularised through the state processes of the period. On 23 August 1979, Decree 2063 empowered the Federal Broadcasting Committee to call a competition for the award of the Canal 13 licence, and the call was issued by Resolution 269 on 5 May 1981. On 8 March 1982, by Decree 481, the national state adjudicated the licence to Imperio Televisión. The company at that point had six partners, among them Gabriel Yenaropoulos, Carlos Alfredo Dalmasso, Eladio Alfonso Pittaro and Roberto Américo Casali. Yenaropoulos in particular is remembered in the city as the businessman who drove almost all of Río Cuarto's television ventures, beginning with the first channel in 1964.

Colour, new studios and changing ownership

Canal 13 began broadcasting programmes in colour on 1 May 1980. New capital in 1982 made it possible to build the station's long-term home: in February 1983 the studios moved from the corner of Venezuela and Laguna Blanca to a site opposite the Mercado de Abasto, and transmissions from the new facilities began on 17 January 1984, initially with the plant half enabled. In 1986 the open channel was joined by a closed-circuit signal under the Imperio Televisión name, an arrangement that lasted four years. In 1987 the company changed owners. The station's visual identity evolved with the decades; its 1994–1999 logo is among the versions documented in its institutional history.

Coverage and repeaters

Canal 13's signal is received across part of southern Córdoba Province through a network of repeater stations. The documented repeater list runs to thirteen localities, including Berrotarán, Canals, Corral de Bustos, Del Campillo, Etruria, General Deheza, General Levalle, Jovita, Laboulaye, Vicuña Mackenna and Suco, with repeaters retransmitting a signal sent from the station's own teleport via the ARSAT-2 satellite since April 2016. A further repeater at Adelia María, on UHF channel 25, was authorised by COMFER Resolution 384 of 30 March 2004. The repeater network has not been immune to economics: the stations are recorded as installed but switched off because of maintenance costs. Beyond the province, the channel's own published coverage information lists carriage by air and cable in places including the city of Mendoza, San Miguel de Tucumán, Ushuaia and Marcos Paz, with satellite availability across Argentina.

The digital transition and satellite carriage

On 27 December 2010 AFSCA, through Resolution 529, authorised Canal 13 to carry out digital terrestrial test transmissions under the ISDB-T standard adopted by Argentina, assigning it UHF channel 29. In May 2014 the channel began broadcasting in high definition. On 29 September 2015, AFSCA Resolution 890 assigned it channel 29.1 for regular HD broadcasting on the digital terrestrial platform. On 23 October 2018 the signal joined the DirecTV grid in Río Cuarto after years of litigation — an arrival the local press noted came at the cost of its analogue VHF frequency. The analogue inheritance could still bite in the digital age: in February 2026 a lightning strike knocked out the station's antenna and left the city without open television until the signal returned on the TDA platform the following month.

Programming

As a Telefe affiliate, Canal 13 retransmits part of the programming of Canal 11 of Buenos Aires, the head of the Telefe network, which also represents the station commercially. Around that network backbone it maintains a local schedule that is the real core of its identity. Documented local programmes include Bien temprano, a morning news programme; Sabores con humor, a cookery show; Vivir mejor, a health programme; and Todo para vos, a general-interest format. Audience research reported locally has repeatedly found Canal 13 and its newscast to be the city's preferred source of daily information, a position few Argentine interior stations hold against national media and social platforms.

Telediario

The station's news service, Telediario, has existed under a succession of names that map the channel's whole history. It began with the station as Sucesos Teledos, became Telex 13 during the closed-circuit era up to the 1978 frequency change, was renamed Noticias ITC with the arrival of colour on 1 May 1980, and from the new studios in 1984 was called Telemundo. It adopted its current name, Telediario, on 18 August 1992, and marked thirty years under that name in 2022. It currently airs two editions from Monday to Friday, at 13:00 and 20:00, focused on local, regional and national news. Since 12 September 2016 the station has also produced Telediario Federal, a national version of the newscast — an unusual outward step for a city station, exporting Río Cuarto journalism rather than only importing Buenos Aires content.

Significance

The station's longevity is itself part of the record: in August 2024 Río Cuarto marked six decades of television in the city, counted from Canal 13's 1964 closed-circuit origins, with local journalists and historians reconstructing the story from the channel's own archived institutional history and the recollections of its pioneers. That a station founded to serve connected subscribers in one city now distributes its signal by satellite, is carried on DirecTV and broadcasts in HD on the national digital platform, while still producing two daily local newscasts and a federal edition from Río Cuarto, explains why it is treated locally not as a relay of Buenos Aires but as a civic institution in its own right.

Canal 13 Río Cuarto matters because it is one of the interior stations that grew up with its city. Río Cuarto is the second city of Córdoba Province and the centre of a rich agricultural region, and for six decades its open channel has been locally owned, locally staffed and locally programmed to a degree that distinguishes it from repeater outlets. From a closed-circuit experiment with free connection in 1964, through colour in 1980 and HD in 2014, Imperio Televisión's station has carried each technological generation of Argentine television into the south of Córdoba while keeping its editorial centre in the city it serves.