Programadora
The Colombian television model from 1954 to the late 1990s, known as the sistema mixto ("mixed system"), relied on programadoras as the sole producers of programs that aired on the two major channels.
In May 2017, Plural Comunicaciones, a consortium including several former programadoras, took total control of Canal Uno's operations, marking the first time since the 1950s that one entity was responsible for programming the network's entire broadcast day.
However, a fall in the world price of coffee, the country's principal export, forced the government to cut the portion of its budget allotted to television.
[1] Private companies bid to lease timeslots to air their shows on the Cadena Nacional (National Channel), which was the only TV network in the country.
The government, in turn (from 1964, through Inravisión, the state broadcaster), chose the timeslots and the programs they should air, and operated the national television infrastructure.
Radio networks RCN (in 1967) and Caracol (in 1963) also entered the new medium of television; their initial joint effort, a programadora known as TVC, briefly held a contract to program as much as 50% of the broadcast day, but did not meet with success.
The pressure for equal political representation made the production of newscasts among the most coveted and scrutinized elements of the mixed system.
QAP, known for its impartiality and independence, believed that this act served solely to get them (as well as several other newscasts critical of the government) off the air and withdrew from the 1997 bidding.
In 1997, Colómbia awarded two private television licenses to Caracol and RCN, two of the largest programadoras; their channels took to the air on 10 July 1998.
For instance, RTI produced novelas and large-scale game shows, while En Vivo was placed in charge of developing a channel-wide news service.
[22][23] Colombiana de Televisión saw itself forced to sell its star program, Padres e Hijos, to competitor Caracol in order to stay afloat.
[29][30] Later in the year, En Vivo, which produced the weeknight 9:30pm newscasts on Canal A, made the decision to cease operations for reasons that included nonpayment of salaries of reporters and a debt of 14 billion Colombian pesos (over US$6 million).
The situation continued to worsen, and one channel was affected more than the other: while early on it had a ratings advantage over its public competitor, Canal A began to experience serious issues.
One week in March, Noticiero Hora Cero, the last news program on the channel,[34] and its producer CPS went off the air for lack of money, its news director calling the action a sign of the sure death of that channel;[35] the next, Andes Televisión and Proyectamos Televisión turned in their slots and called it quits due to the CNTV banning infomercials and depriving the companies of vital revenues.
[36] The rapidly deteriorating situation prompted the El Tiempo newspaper to dub the channel "a dying lion", a riff on its long-standing lion-themed idents.
[21] After several months of showing nothing but programs from Audiovisuales, the state programadora (an arm of the Ministerio de Comunicaciones), on 24 October 2003, Canal A became the government-controlled Señal Institucional.
[38] In November 2016, ANTV awarded Canal Uno's concession spaces for 10 years (starting in May 2017) to Plural Comunicaciones, a consortium of CM&, NTC, RTI and the US-based firm Hemisphere.
For its part, Programar Televisión filed a criminal complaint against Minister of Information Technologies and Communications David Luna and requested precautionary measures before the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce in order to stop the bidding, arguing that it was not true that the company had surrendered the timeslots it had until 2013.
In a 2004 retrospective on 50 years of television in Colombia, Iván McAllister, then the president of Citytv Bogotá, noted: "The broadcast concessionaires knew what to abide by.
