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Telesur

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Televisora del Sur
TypeTelevision network
Country
Venezuela
OwnerVenezuela, Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay
Key people
Andrés Izarra, President
Launch date
July 24, 2005
Official website
http://www.telesurtv.net/
For the unrelated telecommunications company in Suriname, see Telesur (Suriname).

Televisora del Sur (Spanish for "Television Station of the South"), named teleSUR, is a pan-Latin American television network based in Caracas, Venezuela. It began broadcasting on a limited schedule on July 24, 2005, and began full-time broadcasts on October 31, 2005.

Structure

Proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, teleSUR is intended to be a counterweight to popular privately-run networks in South America like CNN en Español and Univisión. It is also intended as a spur toward Latin American integration. The network is funded with US$10 million provided by the countries that jointly own the network: Venezuela (a 51 percent share), Argentina (20 percent), Cuba (19 percent), and Uruguay (10 percent), with the prospect of other countries joining later. (On April 19 2006 Bolivia's President Evo Morales agreed to buy a 5% stake in Telesur.) These countries, as well as Brazil (which is working on its own international Portuguese station, TV Brasil) will collaborate on content and technology.

TeleSUR's advisory council is formed by many international and regional intellectuals, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, poet Ernesto Cardenal, writers Eduardo Galeano, Tariq Ali and Saul Landau, editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique and historian Ignacio Ramonet, free software pioneer Richard Stallman, and actor Danny Glover. TeleSUR's current president is Andrés Izarra, who briefly served as Minister of Communication and Information (MCI) in Venezuela's government. Izarra is also a veteran journalist and has worked for NBC's defunct Canal de Noticias NBC based at the NBC Newschannel Headquaters in Charlotte, NC .a, CNN and Radio Caracas Television, a private Venezuelan network.

As Canal de Noticias NBC was shutting down operations, almost half of the staff began taking jobs in Atlanta. Izarra was joined by Belinca Cavazos Carlos Montero and others. Andres left and decided to move on to Caracas

The station promises to be an alternative to large media conglomerates like CNN, and has taken on the slogan "News from the South." It can be seen in at least 15 countries through at least 53 cable services, as well as five free stations. TeleSUR runs public service announcements and musical interludes instead of commercials. The news channel has 160 employees and correspondents in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Uruguay and the United States. [1]

Programs

The channel's main news program is titled "Noticias del Sur" and is financied by the Venezuelan Ministry for the Popular Economy. [2]

U.S. reaction

A week before the network began broadcasting, the United States House of Representatives voted on House Resolution 2601. Amendment A024 was introduced by Connie Mack IV, a Republican of Florida's fourteenth congressional district. The amendment was introduced as:

"An amendment numbered 25 printed in part B of House Report 109-175 to authorize the Broadcasting Board of Governors to initiate radio and television broadcasts to Venezuela for at least 30 minutes a day of balanced, objective, and comprehensive news programming."

Mack later attacked a February 2006 agreement between the Qatar-based network al-Jazeera and Telesur [3].

Wikinews has related news:
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