About Todo Noticias

Todo Noticias

Todo Noticias, known universally in Argentina as TN, is the country's most-watched news channel and one of the defining institutions of Argentine journalism. It is a 24-hour pay-TV and streaming news channel owned by Grupo Clarín through Artear, the group that also operates the free-to-air network El Trece. TN began broadcasting on 1 June 1993 at 7:00 in the morning, and over three decades it has grown from a cable channel repeating and extending El Trece's news into a multiplatform news brand whose website ranks among Argentina's most-visited news destinations and whose community is described by its owner as the largest news following on social networks in Latin America.

Headquartered in Buenos Aires, TN broadcasts live around the clock, with long rolling news programmes through the day and political and current-affairs shows hosted by leading Grupo Clarín journalists in the evening. According to IBOPE figures cited in standard references, it is Argentina's most-watched news channel, ahead of rivals including LN+ and C5N. Its initials are so established that the full name, Todo Noticias, meaning All News, is rarely used in everyday speech.

Overview

TN is a Spanish-language news channel broadcasting in 1080i high definition, downscaled for standard-definition feeds, from Buenos Aires to Argentina and internationally. Its broadcast area covers Latin America and international distribution, including carriage on streaming television services in the United States. The schedule is live news for most of the day and across most of the weekend: bulletins and rolling programmes lasting up to several hours, breaking-news coverage as stories develop, and, from around 10 in the evening, political programmes hosted by prominent journalists of the Clarín group.

The channel's website, tn.com.ar, is a major news operation in its own right. The Media Ownership Monitor records that TN was created in 1993 with much of its early schedule repeating content from Canal 13, and that it now features journalists who work across the group's channel, newspaper and radio stations. That integration remains the channel's operating model: TN, El Trece, the Clarín newspaper and Radio Mitre form a single news ecosystem within Grupo Clarín, sharing an editorial line and a pool of leading presenters.

History

TN was launched by Artear on 1 June 1993. The first presenters to appear, at 7:00 that morning, were journalists Luis Otero and Silvia Martínez, a moment Grupo Clarín commemorated thirty years later as a milestone for Argentine television and journalism. The channel was led from its inception by Carlos de Elía, with Ricardo Pipino and later Marcelo Molina among its early managers, and its founding news director's successors, including Ricardo Ravanelli, have repeatedly described its founding identity in the same terms: a news-first brand whose strength is coverage, speed on breaking stories and closeness to the public.

In its first years TN drew heavily on Canal 13's news output, but it steadily built its own presenters, programmes and reputation, becoming the default channel for Argentines following elections, economic crises, major trials and national emergencies. On 26 November 2012 the channel completely relaunched, revamping its institutional image and studios during a special programme running from 7 in the morning to 10 at night with prominent presenters broadcasting from locations across the country. In April 2013 TN's website reached six million unique users, ranking as the fourth most-visited news medium in Argentina at the time, and on 5 August 2013 it launched a streamlined service called TN Re-evolution. By its thirtieth anniversary in 2023, Grupo Clarín presented TN as not only the country's most-watched cable and news signal but the core of its digital news growth.

Ownership

TN belongs to Arte Radiotelevisivo Argentino S.A., Artear, which is owned by Grupo Clarín. The Media Ownership Monitor records Grupo Clarín's principal shareholders as Héctor Magnetto, the heirs of Ernestina Herrera de Noble, Felipe and Marcela Noble Herrera, Lucio Pagliaro and José Aranda, with the group's board managing the corporation. Within the group, TN sits alongside El Trece in Artear's channel portfolio, alongside pay-TV services including Ciudad Magazine, Volver and Canal (á).

Ownership by Argentina's largest media group gives TN resources no independent news channel can match: the Clarín newspaper's newsroom, Radio Mitre's audio journalism, Artear's studios and transmission infrastructure, and a national advertising operation. It also places TN at the centre of Argentine debates about media power. The Monitor notes that TN is one of the outlets through which Grupo Clarín expresses a common editorial, political and economic line, together with the Clarín newspaper and Radio Mitre, and the channel's coverage is read in Argentina with that alignment in mind, particularly in periods of open conflict between the group and national governments.

Programming

TN's programming is structured around live news. The day is divided into long rolling programmes, each with its own presenting teams and character, covering national politics, the economy, crime and courts, social affairs, weather, traffic and sport, with live crosses to reporters across Buenos Aires and the provinces. Programmes run for hours rather than the half-hour bulletins of free-to-air television, allowing stories to be followed as they develop and guests and analysts to be interviewed at length.

The best-known fixed point of the schedule is A Dos Voces, the political interview and debate programme long associated with Marcelo Bonelli and, historically, Gustavo Sylvestre, on which presidents and presidential candidates have been interviewed, including President Néstor Kirchner in 2007. Evening political programmes hosted by leading Clarín journalists follow the news day, offering analysis and opinion clearly separated in tone from the daytime reporting programmes. Sport is covered within news programmes and in dedicated segments, drawing on the group's sports journalism, rather than through live event rights, which sit elsewhere in the market.

Weekend programming maintains live news through most of the day, with magazine-style news programmes mixing current affairs, culture, technology and human-interest reporting. The format discipline is consistent: when a major story breaks, the schedule gives way to continuous coverage, and TN's presenters and reporters remain on air for as long as the story requires, the behaviour Argentine viewers have come to expect from the channel during crises.

News operation

The TN newsroom operates continuously from Buenos Aires, integrated with Artear's news operation for El Trece. Journalists appear across TN, El Trece bulletins such as Telenoche, Radio Mitre and Clarín's print and digital titles, so a story reported for one outlet is available to all. The channel maintains reporters and camera crews for live coverage across the capital and correspondents and stringers in the provinces, and covers international news through agency material and its own correspondents on major stories.

Digitally, the newsroom publishes to tn.com.ar around the clock. The site has ranked among Argentina's most-visited websites overall, recorded as the twentieth most-visited site in the country in Alexa rankings cited by standard references, and among the top handful of news sites. Video is produced natively for the site and social platforms, live streams of the channel run on the web, and audience participation, viewer video and social sourcing are built into programmes, reflecting the channel's stated emphasis on closeness to the public and on being first with verified breaking coverage.

Distribution and reach

TN is distributed as a pay-TV channel on cable and satellite systems throughout Argentina, where it is a fixture of basic packages, and across Latin America through regional operators. International streaming carriage, including on Sling TV in the United States, extends it to expatriate audiences. Free online streaming of the live signal through tn.com.ar and video platforms has progressively blurred the pay-TV boundary, making TN available to any viewer with an internet connection in practice, whatever their subscription status.

Its audience leadership among news channels, recorded by IBOPE and cited by the Media Ownership Monitor with an audience share figure for the channel, has been consistent across many years and ratings cycles, through changes of government and of viewing technology. TN's closest competitors, C5N, LN+, A24 and Canal 26, compete for the same news audience, but TN's combination of incumbency since 1993, Clarín cross-promotion and digital scale has kept it in first place.

Digital presence

TN's digital operation is among the largest in Argentine media. Grupo Clarín marked the channel's thirtieth anniversary by describing its website as consolidated among the four most-read news sites in Argentina and its social community as the largest of any news brand in Latin America. The 2013 milestone of six million unique monthly users, a record at the time, shows how early that scale was achieved. The site publishes breaking news, live blogs, video, explainers and service journalism, and the channel's programmes are clipped and distributed across social platforms as a primary product, not a by-product.

The digital and television operations reinforce each other systematically: television presenters promote digital exclusives, digital stories are developed on air, and major events are covered with simultaneous television, web and social teams. For many younger Argentines, TN is encountered first as a website and social brand and only secondarily as a linear channel, a reversal the channel has embraced rather than resisted.

Audience and significance

TN's significance is that of Argentina's channel of record for breaking news. When Argentines turn on the television to follow an election count, an economic announcement, a major crime or a national celebration, TN is, for the largest single audience, the channel they turn to, and its presenters and programmes, above all A Dos Voces, are fixtures of the country's political conversation. Its witnesses-of-history framing at its thirtieth anniversary, built around thirty major events it had covered, captured that role accurately: the channel's archive is a moving-image history of Argentina since 1993.

As part of Grupo Clarín, TN is also a central actor in the politics of Argentine media, praised for its reporting resources and criticised for its group's editorial positions, depending on the observer and the government of the day. Both judgements testify to the same fact: no account of how Argentina informs itself is complete without TN. From a cable channel launched in June 1993 with two morning presenters, it has become the benchmark against which every other Argentine news channel, from C5N to LN+, is measured.