About El Tres Rosario

El Tres Rosario

El Tres Rosario, branded on air as eltres TV and known for most of its life simply as Canal 3, is a private free-to-air television station broadcasting from Rosario in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. Operating under the call sign LT 83 TV, it is the flagship property of Grupo Televisión Litoral, whose legal company is Televisión Litoral S.A. It first went on air on 20 June 1965, making it one of Rosario's two historic local channels, alongside the station launched the previous year that is now Telefe Rosario.

The station combines two roles. It is the affiliate and commercial representative of El Trece, the Buenos Aires network operated by Artear, and retransmits part of that network schedule. At the same time it produces its own local news and regional programming from Rosario, so the city's stories appear on the same channel as national entertainment. That balance explains why its news programmes, rather than the network shows it relays, are the part of the schedule most closely identified with El Tres itself.

Overview

El Tres broadcasts in Spanish as a generalist channel. Its analogue position was VHF channel 3 and its digital terrestrial assignment is UHF channel 32, with a high-definition service in 1080i downscaled to 16:9 standard definition for the standard feed. The licensing authority is ENACOM. It is based at Avenida Juan Domingo Perón 8101 in Rosario, at the communications centre Televisión Litoral opened in 1994, and its transmission area is described as Greater Rosario and surrounding areas, extending into the north of Buenos Aires Province.

Within its group, El Tres sits alongside Radio 2 on AM 1230, FM Vida on 97.9, Frecuencia Plus on 93.1 and the news portal Rosario3.com, giving the group a daily presence across television, radio and online news in the same city. The Media Ownership Monitor Argentina has described Canal 3 as one of the two most-watched channels in Rosario, and recorded it as privately owned, free to air and regional in coverage.

History

On 23 April 1964, by Decree 2938, the national executive awarded Televisión Litoral S.A. a licence for the channel 3 frequency in Rosario. The company had 27 partners, among whom Alberto Gollán, Ernesto Juan Daumas, José Juan Bertagni and Rodolfo Pedro Dianda stood out in published accounts. Gollán, a Rosario businessman, became the founding figure most closely associated with the station and led it for almost five decades. Regular transmissions began on 20 June 1965 as LT 83 TV Canal 3 de Rosario, coinciding with Flag Day, an especially resonant date in Rosario, the city of the National Flag Memorial.

On 20 June 1966 the station moved to the Instituto Tráfico, now the Teatro Mateo Booz, and new facilities in western Rosario were inaugurated in 1973. It covered the matches played in Rosario during the 1978 FIFA World Cup and the visit of Pope John Paul II to the city in 1987, both cited in accounts of its local production. Colour arrived in 1980: English-language accounts date colour transmission from 1 May 1980 in the PAL-N system used across Argentina, while Spanish accounts date colour programmes from 20 June 1980. The licence was renewed by Decree 194 on 27 January 1983. In 1994 Televisión Litoral inaugurated its Centro de Comunicaciones at Avenida Presidente Perón 8101, a complex described by the group as covering four hectares and housing studios and production areas.

Digital transition followed the national pattern. Canal 3 was authorised in February 1999 to test digital terrestrial television, was authorised in 2010 and 2011 to test under the ISDB-T standard adopted by Argentina on channel 32, began high-definition programming on 27 May 2012, and was assigned channel 32.1 for regular HD broadcasting on 31 March 2015. In 2007 a storm destroyed its antenna, as it did its competitor's, leaving Rosario without free-to-air television; Canal 3 returned the next day with a poor signal and was at half its authorised power about twenty days later. In 2009 channels 3 and 5 inaugurated a new shared transmission plant improving on the pre-storm area. After a corporate relaunch on 8 September 2008, the channel was relaunched in September 2011 as El Tres, and renewed its image again on 2 September 2018 as eltres TV.

Ownership

El Tres is owned and operated by Televisión Litoral S.A., trading as Grupo Televisión Litoral, a private company headquartered in Rosario. The group was constituted in 1965 by Gollán with Daumas, Bertagni and Dianda to establish a free-to-air channel in Rosario, and later expanded into radio, acquiring the station that became Radio 2 in December 1982, launching the FM station now known as FM Vida in May 1984 and adding Frecuencia Plus in 2006, as well as launching Rosario3.com in 2005. Gollán was also a partner in Artear, a connection that helps explain the durability of the affiliation with El Trece, and created the regional cable operator Galavisión.

Gollán died on 24 November 2014, aged 96. In March 2015 a sale of 55 percent of Televisión Litoral was reported, and on 28 April 2015 Gustavo Scaglione and Josefina Daminato, a married couple from a Rosario family established in finance and tourism, were reported to have acquired that controlling stake in the company controlling Canal 3, Radio 2, FM Vida, Frecuencia Plus and Rosario3.com. English-language accounts valued the deal at around 13 million United States dollars, a press figure rather than an audited price. Adrián Gallo, previously commercial manager, became general manager on 11 April 2018. The group has since expanded beyond Rosario into other regional assets, but El Tres remains its original flagship.

Programming

Part of the schedule retransmits programmes from Canal 13 in Buenos Aires, the head station of Artear and El Trece, including prime-time entertainment. Published assessments have long noted that prime time is dominated by Buenos Aires productions, while the station's own identity is concentrated in news and a smaller number of local programmes. Since May 2010, to meet the media law then in force, the channel increased local output, its own and from independent producers, and launched the morning newscast that developed into Antes de salir.

Local programmes in recent schedules include the newscasts Antes de Salir, Cada Día, De 12 a 14 and Telenoche Rosario, plus El club del 3 (general interest), Sólo campo (agriculture), Televida con salud (health interviews), Cada domingo (entertainment), Zapping sports (sport) and Mesa política (politics). Agriculture matters because Rosario is a major port and agribusiness centre on the Paraná River, and sport because of its football culture. Viewers should check the current schedule, as local programmes outside news change more often.

News Operation

News is the core of local production. Published listings describe four newscasts from Monday to Friday: Antes de salir at 7:00, Cada día at 9:00, De 12 a 14 at 12:00 and Telenoche Rosario at 20:00. That sequence follows the city's viewing day, from early morning through the long midday news to an evening bulletin carrying Rosario's version of the Telenoche name familiar from El Trece.

The focus is deliberately close to home. Accounts note that local news concentrates on the Rosario metropolitan area, and the Media Ownership Monitor described the day, midday and night editions as the station's own productions with a localist character, supplemented by national coverage from Buenos Aires. Municipal politics, public safety, health, the port economy and Rosario football are therefore lead subjects, not footnotes to a Buenos Aires agenda. On 7 June 2016 the channel presented its first mobile studio, based in a van, intended to travel across Santa Fe Province.

De 12 a 14

De 12 a 14 is the station's emblematic programme. A midday newscast begun in 1966, a year after launch, it is described by the Media Ownership Monitor and programme references as the oldest newscast in Rosario television. Its title states its slot: two hours from 12:00, Monday to Friday, produced by Televisión Litoral for eltres TV.

Programme references describe live information working through the main local topics of the day, with national and international events, over its two hours, and credit Analía Bocassi as presenter. Teams change over a run measured in decades, so that name belongs to a recent period rather than the programme's whole life. What has endured is the slot and the habit it created: a daily appointment around lunch connecting the morning's events in the city with the afternoon ahead, and the clearest measure of how deeply Canal 3 embedded itself in Rosario's routine within a year of launch.

Distribution and Reach

Over the air, El Tres is received in Greater Rosario and nearby areas, where its audience and news focus are concentrated. The Media Ownership Monitor gave a broader footprint, extending to southern Santa Fe, northern Buenos Aires Province and parts of Córdoba and Entre Ríos. The two descriptions can coexist: a metropolitan transmitter, cable carriage and historic repeaters can carry a signal further than the city it is produced for, even where the agenda remains Rosario-centred.

Channel references list three repeaters in southern Santa Fe, at El Trébol, Rufino and Venado Tuerto, and one in northern Buenos Aires Province, at Pergamino, while also reporting those repeaters are currently out of service, so this profile claims no current coverage from them. From 17 August 2020 El Tres has also been available on DirecTV on channel 134, taking the signal beyond the terrestrial footprint.

Digital Presence

The digital home of the Rosario operation is Rosario3.com, the news portal launched by Grupo Televisión Litoral in 2005, covering Rosario and its metropolitan area and publishing the local stories El Tres covers on air, with video and live material from the channel. The eltrecetv.com.ar address given for this profile is the website of El Trece, the Buenos Aires network El Tres is affiliated with, and is best understood as the network destination rather than the Rosario station's own local news site.

El Tres also streams editions of its news programmes, promoted under the names Antes de salir, Cada día and De 12 a 14, letting viewers outside the terrestrial area follow Rosario news during the day. No independently verified figures for those streams were published in the sources used here, so no viewing numbers are claimed for them.

Audience and Significance

Rosario television began as a two-channel city, and El Tres is one of the original two. Canal 5, now Telefe Rosario, reached the air first in 1964; Canal 3 followed on 20 June 1965 and passed sixty years on air in June 2025. The Media Ownership Monitor listed a 14 percent audience share for Canal 3, calculated from Rosario city audiences, described it as one of the city's two most-watched channels, and described its group as Rosario's only locally owned media group at the time of that research. Those are dated research findings, not a current ratings claim, but the position they describe, a locally owned station competing head to head with a national network's Rosario station, remains the market's structure.

Its significance is also institutional: a station founded by a Rosario businessman, based since 1994 in its own communications centre, owned since 2015 by another Rosario family, and still producing four local newscasts a day plus a programme dating to 1966, is a rare continuity in Argentine regional media. El Tres does relay El Trece for much of its schedule. Its claim on Rosario's attention rests on the hours it does not: the mornings, De 12 a 14 and Telenoche Rosario, when the city sees itself on channel 3.