Communications in Argentina
Encyclopedia
Communications in Argentina gives an overview of the postal, telephone, Internet, radio, television, and newspaper services available in Argentina
.
The National Postal Service was established in 1854, privatized in 1997, and partly re-nationalized in 2003. There are no standard abbreviations for provinces' names; but the province name is optional and usually not needed if the postal code is correct. The format of the postal code was expanded in 1998 to include more specific information on location within cities; it now uses a letter that identifies the province, a four-digit number, and then three more letters (and slightly different numbers are used for different parts of a city, which was formerly done only in the case of Buenos Aires). See Argentine postal code
for details.
The largest mail carrier nationally is the public Correo Argentino, followed by two private carriers operating nationwide (OCA and Andreani) and a number of regional ones.
in the 1990s and, more recently, market deregulation
. The network was initially developed primarily by ITT
, and grew following the system's nationalization in 1948 and the creation of the ENTel
State enterprise. Its limitations notwithstanding, ENTel gave Argentines the widest access to phone service in Latin America. Following ENTel's privatization
in 1990, a new numbering plan
was enacted, and the number of lines grew to cover the majority of households. A sizable minority of households, do not have land line telephone service, however. The growth of the mobile telephone market since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2003 has been impressive, with new customers now preferring a comparatively cheap cellular phone to land line household service.
As of January 2010, there are 9.2 million land lines, 50 million cellular phones and 143,000 public phones in the country. The domestic telephone trunk network is served by microwave radio relay and a domestic satellite
system with 40 earth stations. It carries a monthly traffic of about 1.3 billion local calls, 400 million inter-city calls and around 24 million outgoing international calls.
International communications employ satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); two international gateways near Buenos Aires; Atlantis II submarine cable
(1999).
This system is largely replaced with a domestic fiber optic ring connecting the main cities (actually the main central offices). This link runs at 2.5 Gbit/s. From these head central offices, local calls are routed through 10 Gbit/s fiber optic links, or 3 × 155 Mbit/s microwave links. These links are spaced at about 30 km. Some of these links (the ones serving smaller towns) are spaced at 60 km and this makes communications unreliable in certain weather conditions.
According to a report released in January 2006 by INDEC
, mobile phone lines increased by 68.8% during 2005. Eleven million mobile phones were sold that year and, by then, these serviced three-quarters of the population over 14. A growing minority of users are children under 14, something that has raised concern and debate in Argentine society. A private study conducted by Investigaciones Económicas Sectoriales (IES), covering January–October 2006, found a 51.2% growth compared to the same period of 2005; by December 2007, the number of these units (40 million) exceeded Argentina's total population. Most of the phones (almost 90%) are imported from Brazil or Mexico. The monthly volume of calls made with these units (over 4.6 billion) more than doubles the number made on land lines; a further 6 billion text messages are sent, monthly.
, a telco from Spain
, and Telecom Argentina
, owned by Telecom Italia
and the Argentine Werthein Family
. The country was divided in two zones, within which one of the companies was the exclusive provider of the service (a state-sanctioned monopoly
).
The service was then deregulated in several steps, first allowing the participation of other companies to provide international phone call services, then mobile services and finally the domestic service.
Telecom has a subsidiary Internet service provider
, Arnet. Other ISPs, such as Flash (property of the Clarín group), hire the facilities of Telecom and Telefónica.
Several newcomer companies in the telephone market (2005) offer high-speed broadband access, Voice over IP
and other services to a restricted market group (businesses and high-level residential users).
The number of Internet users in the country as of 2011 has been estimated at 27 million (two thirds of the population), the number of registered domain name
s was approx. 1.7 million in August 2008 and the number of internet hosts in 2009, 6,025,000.
Besides monthly-paid Internet connections (either flat rate or with a number of free minutes), in Argentina there are also a number of Internet service provider
s that have commercial agreements with the telephone companies for charging a slightly higher communication rate to the user for that communication, though without any monthly fixed fee. There were around 12 million PCs registered in Argentina in 2011. The number of residential and business internet networks totaled around 5.7 million in 2011, of which around 5.5 million were broadband connections, mainly ADSL.
The number of dial-up users has decreased drastically since 2005 in favor of broadband internet access
. This latter service grew from under 800,000 networks in late 2005 (compared to over 500,000 dial-up connections), to nearly 2.6 million by December 2007, and to over 5 million by late 2010 (82% of which were residential and 81% of which connected at a speed of least 512 kbit/s). Wireless and satellite networks expanded markedly during 2008-09, and totaled over 1.5 million in March 2011. Among residential users, 38.3% were located in Buenos Aires Province
(including Greater Buenos Aires
), 26.0% in the city of Buenos Aires
, 8.2% in Córdoba and 7.4% in Santa Fe Province
.
Among companies and organizations, 788,000 connection contracts were valid as of March 2011, 98% of which were broadband. Among the total (in late 2010), 44.7% correspond to the city of Buenos Aires, 21.1% to the Buenos Aires Province, 7.6% to Santa Fe Province, 6.0% to Córdoba Province and 4.5% to Patagonia
.
The number of e-mail
accounts in March 2011 was estimated at around 4.56 million, with a monthly traffic of 3 billion messages.
Argentina's Internet top-level domain
is .ar
.
, a cable provider, now offers Cablemodem service in a limited range of cities, and ADSL is monopolized by the 2 major phone companies: Telecom
in the north with Arnet ADSL, and Telefónica in the south with Speedy ADSL.
In 2004, Arnet announced new plans. Controversy ensued, as in small print it mentioned that it was capped to 4 GB monthly. This plans were never put in practice until late 2005, though they were modified from the original announcements. There are no longer any capped plans. As of June 2010, they currently offer from 1 Mbit/256 kbit/s download/upload at around 20 USD/mo to 20 Mbit/s / 512 kbit/s for home users at about 77 USD/mo. Arnet has been slowly recovering its reputation, which was tarnished amongst connoisseurs due to their 2004 announcement.
, and began on August 27, 1920, when Richard Wagner
's Parsifal
was broadcast by a team of medical students (the "madmen on the roof") led Enrique Susini
in Buenos Aires
' Teatro Coliseo. Only about twenty homes in the city had a receiver to tune in. The world's first radio station was the only one in the country until 1922, when Radio Cultura went on the air; by 1925, there were twelve stations in Buenos Aires and ten in other cities. The 1930s were the "golden age" of radio in Argentina
, with live variety, news, soap opera and sport shows.
The medium, which was nationalized by President Juan Perón
between 1947 and 1953, has historically been broadcast by a combination of state and private-sector operators, and most of the highest-rated stations are presently owned by a number of media conglomerate
s. Internet radio
was first broadcast in Argentina in 2001 and by 2009, 61 stations did so, nationwide.
There are currently 260 AM broadcasting
and 1150 FM broadcasting
radio stations in Argentina. Radio remains an important medium in Argentina. Music and youth variety programs dominate FM formats; news, debate, and sports are AM radio's primary broadcasts. Amateur radio
is widespread in the country.
, Fox Sports en Español
(with the United States and México), MTV Argentina, Cosmopolitan TV, and the news network Todo Noticias
.
Argentine television broadcasting began in 1951 with the inaugural of state-owned Channel 13 (since privatized). A technology jealously guarded by U.S. broadcasters at the time, this was largely the achievement of Russian-Argentine engineer and radio pioneer Jaime Yankelevich
. Color television broadcasting, however, was not widely available until after 1978, when the government launched Argentina Televisora Color (ATC), now Channel 7
(Argentina's principal public television station). The prevalence of cable television, increasing steadily since the first CATV transmitter opened in the city of Junín
in 1965, is now the third-widest in the world, reaching at least 78% of households.
Radio and television broadcasting, whose ownership structure had become increasingly concentrated since the 1980 Media Law, is regulated by a new law advanced by President Cristina Kirchner, and signed on November 11, 2009. This new policy would restrict the number of media licences per proprietor and allocate a greater share of these to the state and NGOs, thereby limiting the influence of the Clarín Group
(the largest media conglomerate in Argentina) and other media companies, such as the conservative La Nación.
There are currently 42 television broadcast stations and 12.5 million television sets in Argentina.
, the best-selling daily in Latin America and the second most widely circulated in the Spanish-speaking world. Other nationally circulated papers are La Nación (center-right, published since 1870), Página/12
(left-wing), Ámbito Financiero
(business conservative), Olé (sports) and Crónica
(populist).
Two foreign language newspapers enjoy a relatively high circulation: the Argentinisches Tageblatt
in German and the Buenos Aires Herald
, published since 1876. Major regional papers include La Voz del Interior
(Córdoba), Río Negro
(General Roca
), Los Andes
(Mendoza), La Capital
(Rosario), El Tribuno
(Salta) and La Gaceta
(Tucuman). The most circulated newsmagazine is Noticias
. The Argentine publishing industry, which includes Atlántida
, Eudeba, and Emecé
, among numerous others, ranks with Spain's and Mexico's as the most important in the Spanish-speaking world, and includes the largest bookstore chain in Latin America, El Ateneo
.
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
Postal
Argentine postal code
Postal codes in Argentina are called códigos postales. Until 1998 Argentina employed a four-digit postal code for each municipality, with the first digit representing a region in the country, except in the case of the city of Buenos Aires...
for details.
The largest mail carrier nationally is the public Correo Argentino, followed by two private carriers operating nationwide (OCA and Andreani) and a number of regional ones.
Telephone
The Argentine telephone system is more modern following privatizationPrivatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
in the 1990s and, more recently, market deregulation
Deregulation
Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or...
. The network was initially developed primarily by ITT
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
, and grew following the system's nationalization in 1948 and the creation of the ENTel
ENTel
The Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones was an Argentine state owned company which had the monopoly on public telecommunications in the country until its privatization in 1990.-Overview:...
State enterprise. Its limitations notwithstanding, ENTel gave Argentines the widest access to phone service in Latin America. Following ENTel's privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
in 1990, a new numbering plan
Argentine telephone numbering plan
Phone numbers in Argentina have ten digits, if both the area code and the subscriber's code are included. The area code may have 2, 3 or 4 digits, with the remaining 8, 7 or 6 digits being the subscriber's number...
was enacted, and the number of lines grew to cover the majority of households. A sizable minority of households, do not have land line telephone service, however. The growth of the mobile telephone market since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2003 has been impressive, with new customers now preferring a comparatively cheap cellular phone to land line household service.
As of January 2010, there are 9.2 million land lines, 50 million cellular phones and 143,000 public phones in the country. The domestic telephone trunk network is served by microwave radio relay and a domestic satellite
Communications satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...
system with 40 earth stations. It carries a monthly traffic of about 1.3 billion local calls, 400 million inter-city calls and around 24 million outgoing international calls.
International communications employ satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); two international gateways near Buenos Aires; Atlantis II submarine cable
Submarine cable
Submarine cable may refer to:*Submarine communications cable*Submarine power cable...
(1999).
This system is largely replaced with a domestic fiber optic ring connecting the main cities (actually the main central offices). This link runs at 2.5 Gbit/s. From these head central offices, local calls are routed through 10 Gbit/s fiber optic links, or 3 × 155 Mbit/s microwave links. These links are spaced at about 30 km. Some of these links (the ones serving smaller towns) are spaced at 60 km and this makes communications unreliable in certain weather conditions.
According to a report released in January 2006 by INDEC
National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina
National Statistics and Censuses Institute is the Argentine government agency responsible for the collection and processing of statistical data...
, mobile phone lines increased by 68.8% during 2005. Eleven million mobile phones were sold that year and, by then, these serviced three-quarters of the population over 14. A growing minority of users are children under 14, something that has raised concern and debate in Argentine society. A private study conducted by Investigaciones Económicas Sectoriales (IES), covering January–October 2006, found a 51.2% growth compared to the same period of 2005; by December 2007, the number of these units (40 million) exceeded Argentina's total population. Most of the phones (almost 90%) are imported from Brazil or Mexico. The monthly volume of calls made with these units (over 4.6 billion) more than doubles the number made on land lines; a further 6 billion text messages are sent, monthly.
Companies
In the 1990s the Argentine telephone system (which was formerly property of a state-owned company, ENTEL) was sold to two private corporations looking to invest in the local market: TelefónicaTelefónica
Telefónica, S.A. is a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider in Europe and Latin America. Operating globally, it is the third largest provider in the world...
, a telco from Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, and Telecom Argentina
Telecom Argentina
Telecom Argentina is the major local telephone company for the northern part of Argentina, including the whole of the city of Buenos Aires...
, owned by Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia is the largest Italian telecommunications company, also active in the media and manufacturing industries. Now a private concern listed on the Borsa Italiana, it was founded in 1994 by the merger of several state-owned telecommunications companies, the most important of which was...
and the Argentine Werthein Family
Werthein Family
The Wertheins are an important Jewish family of entrepreneurs in Argentina.The Werthein family, headed by Leon Werthein, his wife Raquel and five of their children emigrated to Argentina from Bessarabia in 1904, and settled in Riglos, Province of La Pampa....
. The country was divided in two zones, within which one of the companies was the exclusive provider of the service (a state-sanctioned monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
).
The service was then deregulated in several steps, first allowing the participation of other companies to provide international phone call services, then mobile services and finally the domestic service.
Telecom has a subsidiary Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
, Arnet. Other ISPs, such as Flash (property of the Clarín group), hire the facilities of Telecom and Telefónica.
Several newcomer companies in the telephone market (2005) offer high-speed broadband access, Voice over IP
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
and other services to a restricted market group (businesses and high-level residential users).
Internet
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s was approx. 1.7 million in August 2008 and the number of internet hosts in 2009, 6,025,000.
Besides monthly-paid Internet connections (either flat rate or with a number of free minutes), in Argentina there are also a number of Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s that have commercial agreements with the telephone companies for charging a slightly higher communication rate to the user for that communication, though without any monthly fixed fee. There were around 12 million PCs registered in Argentina in 2011. The number of residential and business internet networks totaled around 5.7 million in 2011, of which around 5.5 million were broadband connections, mainly ADSL.
The number of dial-up users has decreased drastically since 2005 in favor of broadband internet access
Broadband Internet access
Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just "broadband", is a high data rate, low-latency connection to the Internet— typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56 kbit/s modem or satellite Internet with inherently high latency....
. This latter service grew from under 800,000 networks in late 2005 (compared to over 500,000 dial-up connections), to nearly 2.6 million by December 2007, and to over 5 million by late 2010 (82% of which were residential and 81% of which connected at a speed of least 512 kbit/s). Wireless and satellite networks expanded markedly during 2008-09, and totaled over 1.5 million in March 2011. Among residential users, 38.3% were located in Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...
(including Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires is the generic denomination to refer to the megalopolis comprising the autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the conurbation around it, over the province of Buenos Aires—namely the adjacent 24 partidos or municipalities—which nonetheless do not constitute a single administrative...
), 26.0% in the city of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, 8.2% in Córdoba and 7.4% in Santa Fe Province
Santa Fe Province
The Invincible Province of Santa Fe, in Spanish Provincia Invencible de Santa Fe , is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero...
.
Among companies and organizations, 788,000 connection contracts were valid as of March 2011, 98% of which were broadband. Among the total (in late 2010), 44.7% correspond to the city of Buenos Aires, 21.1% to the Buenos Aires Province, 7.6% to Santa Fe Province, 6.0% to Córdoba Province and 4.5% to Patagonia
Patagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
.
The number of e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
accounts in March 2011 was estimated at around 4.56 million, with a monthly traffic of 3 billion messages.
Argentina's Internet top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...
is .ar
.ar
.ar is the Internet country code top-level domain for Argentina. It is administered by NIC Argentina.-Second Level Domains:*.com.ar *.edu.ar...
.
- See also: Internet censorship in Argentina
Broadband Internet access
ADSL first appeared in Argentina in 1998, through Speedy by Telefónica de España, a Spanish company. FibertelFibertel
Fibertel is an Argentine Internet service provider. It worked as a stand-alone organization until 2003, when it was merged with Cablevisión, a cable television provider. Cablevisión is part of the Grupo Clarín, thus Fibertel became part of it. Fibertel has over a million clients, and it is the...
, a cable provider, now offers Cablemodem service in a limited range of cities, and ADSL is monopolized by the 2 major phone companies: Telecom
Telecom Argentina
Telecom Argentina is the major local telephone company for the northern part of Argentina, including the whole of the city of Buenos Aires...
in the north with Arnet ADSL, and Telefónica in the south with Speedy ADSL.
In 2004, Arnet announced new plans. Controversy ensued, as in small print it mentioned that it was capped to 4 GB monthly. This plans were never put in practice until late 2005, though they were modified from the original announcements. There are no longer any capped plans. As of June 2010, they currently offer from 1 Mbit/256 kbit/s download/upload at around 20 USD/mo to 20 Mbit/s / 512 kbit/s for home users at about 77 USD/mo. Arnet has been slowly recovering its reputation, which was tarnished amongst connoisseurs due to their 2004 announcement.
Radio
Radio broadcasting in Argentina is predated only by radio in the United StatesRadio in the United States
Radio is one of the major mass media of the United States.-History:The beginning of regular commercially licensed sound broadcasting in the United States in 1920 ended the print monopoly over the media and opened the doors to the more immediate and pervasive electronic media...
, and began on August 27, 1920, when Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
was broadcast by a team of medical students (the "madmen on the roof") led Enrique Susini
Enrique Telémaco Susini
Enrique Telémaco Susini was an Argentine entrepreneur and media pioneer.In 1920, Susini led the effort for the first radio broadcast in Argentina, and subsequently established one of the earliest regular radio stations in the world...
in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
' Teatro Coliseo. Only about twenty homes in the city had a receiver to tune in. The world's first radio station was the only one in the country until 1922, when Radio Cultura went on the air; by 1925, there were twelve stations in Buenos Aires and ten in other cities. The 1930s were the "golden age" of radio in Argentina
Radio in Argentina
Radio in Argentina is an important facet of the nation's media and culture. Radio, which was first broadcast in Argentina in 1920, has been widely enjoyed in Argentina since the 1930s. Radio broadcast stations totaled around 150 active AM stations, 1,150 FM stations, and 6 registered shortwave...
, with live variety, news, soap opera and sport shows.
The medium, which was nationalized by President Juan Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
between 1947 and 1953, has historically been broadcast by a combination of state and private-sector operators, and most of the highest-rated stations are presently owned by a number of media conglomerate
Media conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group or media institution is a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet...
s. Internet radio
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
was first broadcast in Argentina in 2001 and by 2009, 61 stations did so, nationwide.
There are currently 260 AM broadcasting
AM broadcasting
AM broadcasting is the process of radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation. AM was the first method of impressing sound on a radio signal and is still widely used today. Commercial and public AM broadcasting is carried out in the medium wave band world wide, and on long wave and short wave...
and 1150 FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
radio stations in Argentina. Radio remains an important medium in Argentina. Music and youth variety programs dominate FM formats; news, debate, and sports are AM radio's primary broadcasts. Amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
is widespread in the country.
Television
The Argentine television industry is large and diverse, widely viewed in Latin America, and its productions seen around the world. Many local programs are broadcast by networks in other countries, and others have their rights purchased by foreign producers for adaptations in their own markets. Argentina has five major networks. All provincial capitals and other large cities have at least one local station. Argentines enjoy the highest availability of cable and satellite television in Latin America, similar to percentages in North America. Many cable networks operate from Argentina and serve the Spanish-speaking world, including Utilísima Satelital, TyC SportsTorneos y Competencias
Torneos y Competencias is an Argentine sports communications firm created by businessman Carlos Ávila, who has left the company...
, Fox Sports en Español
Fox Sports en Español
Fox Deportes is a cable television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming 24 hours a day in Spanish...
(with the United States and México), MTV Argentina, Cosmopolitan TV, and the news network Todo Noticias
Todo Noticias
Todo Noticias is an Argentine news cable channel. It is owned by the Group Clarín. TN began broadcasting on Tuesday, June 1, 1993, at 07:00...
.
Argentine television broadcasting began in 1951 with the inaugural of state-owned Channel 13 (since privatized). A technology jealously guarded by U.S. broadcasters at the time, this was largely the achievement of Russian-Argentine engineer and radio pioneer Jaime Yankelevich
Jaime Yankelevich
Jaime Yankelevich was an Argentine engineer and businessman who was a pioneer in the development of his country's radio and television media.-Life and times:...
. Color television broadcasting, however, was not widely available until after 1978, when the government launched Argentina Televisora Color (ATC), now Channel 7
Canal 7 Argentina
Canal Siete, TV Pública or TV Pública Digital is an Argentine television network founded on October 17, 1951. Between 1979 and 1999, the network was known as Argentina Televisora Color . During the 1978 World Cup, it was known as A78TV.Owned, financed and operated by the Argentine State, Canal 7 is...
(Argentina's principal public television station). The prevalence of cable television, increasing steadily since the first CATV transmitter opened in the city of Junín
Junín, Buenos Aires
Junín is a city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and capital of the municipality of Junín. It has a population of 82,427 and is situated 260 km west of Buenos Aires.-History:...
in 1965, is now the third-widest in the world, reaching at least 78% of households.
Radio and television broadcasting, whose ownership structure had become increasingly concentrated since the 1980 Media Law, is regulated by a new law advanced by President Cristina Kirchner, and signed on November 11, 2009. This new policy would restrict the number of media licences per proprietor and allocate a greater share of these to the state and NGOs, thereby limiting the influence of the Clarín Group
Grupo Clarín
Grupo Clarín is the largest media conglomerate of Argentina.-Overview:Established as such in 1999, it includes the Clarín newspaper , Papel Prensa , the Artear media company, and numerous other media outlets.Rooted in the successful, 1945 launch of the centrist daily,...
(the largest media conglomerate in Argentina) and other media companies, such as the conservative La Nación.
There are currently 42 television broadcast stations and 12.5 million television sets in Argentina.
Newspapers
The print media industry is highly developed and independent of the government, with more than two hundred newspapers. The major national newspapers are from Buenos Aires, including the centrist ClarínClarín (newspaper)
Clarín is the largest newspaper in Argentina, published by the Grupo Clarín media group. It was founded by Roberto Noble on 28 August 1945. It is politically centrist but popularly understood to oppose the Kirchner government...
, the best-selling daily in Latin America and the second most widely circulated in the Spanish-speaking world. Other nationally circulated papers are La Nación (center-right, published since 1870), Página/12
Página/12
Página/12 is a newspaper based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Página/12 was founded on May 25, 1987, by journalist Jorge Lanata in association with writer Osvaldo Soriano and investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky...
(left-wing), Ámbito Financiero
Ámbito Financiero
Ámbito Financiero is an Argentine newspaper founded on December 9, 1976 by economist Julio A. Ramos. It was initially sold in downtown Buenos Aires, covering mainly the daily prices of the U.S. dollar, gold, stocks, etc., and included other editorials....
(business conservative), Olé (sports) and Crónica
Crónica (newspaper)
Crónica is a newspaper published in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Founded on July 29, 1963, by publisher Héctor Ricardo García, it became well known for its oversized headlines and yellow press approach; as García explained: "we needed a strident daily, with large and shocking headlines, like the kind...
(populist).
Two foreign language newspapers enjoy a relatively high circulation: the Argentinisches Tageblatt
Argentinisches Tageblatt
Argentinisches Tageblatt is a German-language weekly newspaper published every Saturday in Buenos Aires, Argentina....
in German and the Buenos Aires Herald
Buenos Aires Herald
The Buenos Aires Herald is an English language daily newspaper from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their slogan is A World of Information in a few words.-History:...
, published since 1876. Major regional papers include La Voz del Interior
La Voz del Interior
La Voz del Interior is a daily Spanish language newspaper edited and published in Córdoba, capital of the province of Córdoba, Argentina and the second-largest city in the country...
(Córdoba), Río Negro
Río Negro (newspaper)
Diario Rio Negro is a daily newspaper edited in General Roca, and published in the provinces of Río Negro, Neuquén, the south of La Pampa, the north of Chubut, the south of Buenos Aires Province and the City of Buenos Aires.- History :...
(General Roca
General Roca, Río Negro
General Roca is a city in the northeast of the Argentine province of Río Negro, northern Patagonia. UN/LOCODE is ARGNR.It was founded on September 1, 1879 by Coronel Lorenzo Vintter during the Conquest of the Desert...
), Los Andes
Los Andes (Mendoza)
Los Andes is an Argentine daily newspaper published in the city of Mendoza. The newspaper was founded in 1883 by Adolfo Calle. In September 1995 it became the first Argentine newspaper to become available on the internet....
(Mendoza), La Capital
La Capital
La Capital is a daily Spanish-language newspaper edited and published in Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It was founded in 1867 , and it is the oldest Argentine newspaper still in circulation, which has gained it the title of Decano de la Prensa Argentina...
(Rosario), El Tribuno
El Tribuno
El Tribuno is an Argentine newspaper and media group from Salta Province. Widely criticized for its pro-Peronist tilt, it is the only newspaper in Salta Province, and also publishes a Jujuy Province edition....
(Salta) and La Gaceta
La Gaceta (Tucumán)
La Gaceta is a daily newspaper founded in Tucumán, Argentina, and the most prominent in the Argentine Northwest.La Gaceta was established on August 4, 1912, by Alberto García Hamilton, an Uruguayan publisher who left for neighboring Argentina following a political dispute...
(Tucuman). The most circulated newsmagazine is Noticias
Noticias (magazine)
Noticias de la Semana is a weekly newsmagazine in Spanish published in Argentina, where it is known simply as Noticias . Founded and published by Jorge Fontevecchia in a format similar to U.S...
. The Argentine publishing industry, which includes Atlántida
Editorial Atlántida
Editorial Atlántida is a prominent Argentine publishing house and the country's leading magazine publisher and distributor.-Development:Editorial Atlántida's origins began with three magazines founded by an Uruguayan-Argentine journalist, Constancio C...
, Eudeba, and Emecé
Emecé Editores
Emecé Editores is an Argentine publishing house, currently a subsidiary of Grupo Planeta.The company was founded in 1939 by Mariano Medina del Río, shortly after his arrival from Spain, with the literary collaboration of Álvaro de las Casas, and the support of Medina's former classmate Carlos Braun...
, among numerous others, ranks with Spain's and Mexico's as the most important in the Spanish-speaking world, and includes the largest bookstore chain in Latin America, El Ateneo
El Ateneo
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is one of the best known bookshops in Buenos Aires, Argentina. -Overview:Situated at 1860 Santa Fe Avenue in Barrio Norte, the building was designed by the architects Peró and Torres Armengol for the empresario Max Glucksman , and opened as a theatre named Teatro Gran...
.