[1] Telemundo Group (then owned by investment firm Reliance Capital) announced that it would launch a 24-hour Spanish-language cable news channel that would be distributed in Latin America, Spain and the United States; at the time of the announcement, Telemundo was in the midst of negotiations with Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to become partners in the planned network, which it initially scheduled a target launch for later that year.

Telenoticias – which broadcast its programming in Spanish and Portuguese – was operated out of Telemundo's headquarters in the Miami suburb of Hialeah, Florida.

[8] Anchors employed by the channel during this time included Marian de la Fuente, Jose Gray, Carlos Maria Ruiz, Rodrigo Vera, Pablo Gato and Susana Roza Vigil.

The network also began utilizing resources from CBS Newspath to provide story content to supplement the newscasts, and based a small unit of reporters at the affiliate news service's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The network expanded its distribution into the United States in the fall of 1997,[10] with the launch of a service that emphasized news content focusing on the United States, the Caribbean and Mexico that launched on the same date as CNN en Español; the U.S. service featured two issues-focused talk shows, along with rolling newscasts.

[12][13] In March 1998, SBT started to broadcast five hours of programming from CBS Telenotícias through the night, known as SINAL (Sistema de Notícias da América Latina; Latin American News System in English).

[18] Telenotícias also established content sharing partnerships with Band and TV Cultura, but their contributions could not be shown on SBT.

[20][21] During the first quarter of 1998 alone, Telenoticias and fellow CBS Cable-owned channel Eye on People lost a combined $9 million in revenue.