Television in Colombia
Source:[1] Television in Colombia was inaugurated on 13 June 1954 during the government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who became impressed with the new invention during a visit to Nazi Germany as a military attaché.
Caracol, RTI and Punch would bid on the license, but the winner was Consuelo Salgar de Montejo and her Teletigre.
Mrs. Montejo made an alliance with ABC and brought many of the US shows translated into Spanish to the local viewers.
Teletigre, which would return to state hands and become Tele 9 Corazón and, in 1972 Segunda Cadena, with national coverage.
Mrs. Montejo attempted on many occasions to get back in broadcasting TV, but the government refused to give her slots.
Cadena Dos became Canal A, and the programming companies, which numbered 24 at the time, received from that point slots on one channel to compete among each other for ratings.
A court decision forced Inravisión to ban sexual and violent scenes from the franja familiar (family block).
But the companies that produced the networks' shows also had to face a new landscape of Colombian television, as Caracol and RCN now dominated.
Ratings fell steadily as the programadoras became merely production companies for Caracol or RCN or disappeared outright.
The programadoras had continued working independently and never collaborated to establish a better program service against the newly organized privately owned networks.
Spanish groups PRISA and Planeta, and Venezuelan tycoon Gustavo Cisneros were bidding, each of them allied with Colombian shareholders, for the licence.
On August 28, 2008, Colombia adopted the European digital terrestrial television standard, DVB-T using MPEG4 H.264 and a channel bandwidth of 6 MHz.
[9] On January 9, 2012 Colombia adopted the latest European digital terrestrial television standard, DVB-T2, using a channel bandwidth of 6 MHz.
The reneging on their earlier decision to use DVB-T meant that many early adopters were left with incompatible set top boxes and televisions.
[13] DTH-Social (Direct To Home), a Ku satellite system using DVB-S2, is planned and will enable 100% geographic coverage.
