In 1954, Gillford "Giff" Hartwell arrived voluntarily to Ecuador to deliver equipment for a television station to be owned by HCJB, which would be used to expand its extant operations.
[1] Later, on July 25, 1959, Dick Benoit and Kerm Beougher, distributed several television receivers in several areas of Quito and on the 28th of the same month HCJB-TV made its first experimental broadcast, carrying movies dubbed in Spanish and provided by the United States Embassy, to great public acclaim.
The following day, broadcasts formally started with the television adaptation of the radio program Adelante Juventud (Onward Youth).
[3]: 121 Early on, it employed 35 Ecuatorian staff and 105 from abroad: from Japan, the Soviet Union and other countries.
At Christmas in its later years, the station aired the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special.