Telefé

Canal 11 was the last private channel in the city of Buenos Aires that started to operate. Its operation began in 1961, as part of a project carried out by Jesuit priests and Buenos Aires tradesmen. The company holding was called Difusora Contemporánea S.A. (DICON S.A.). Due to challenges to invest in content production and the inability to include foreign capital in the media ownership, Teleonce (as Telefé was called in the early years) partnered with American network ABC, which created production company Telerama in Argentina. Because of its origins, from the beginning Telefé was known as “a channel for the family".

In 1972 it was purchased by Héctor Ricardo García, owner and founder of newspaper Crónica. In 1975 it was nationalized, but it returned to private hands in 1989, when, during Carlos Menem’s administration, State-owned TV channels and radio stations were up for tender. Canal 11 was awarded to a private television trust that included businessmen from across the country together with Editorial Atlántida and Avelino Porto (from Universidad de Belgrano). At this time, the channel was renamed TELEFÉ (Federal Television). In 1998 the channel was purchased by Grupo CEI-Telefónica, with shareholding from the Spanish company, local businesspeople and financiers such as Raúl Moneta, and the Vigil family, former owner of publishing house Editorial Atlántida.

By the early 2000s, Telefónica Spain held all Telefé’s stock and the eight other channels that made up the network. In mid-2016, it passed into American hands, when VIACOM purchased it for USD 345 million.

Currently, Telefé is the most watched television channel in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires and it leads audience ratings in the largest cities of Argentina, according to Kantar Ibope Media. Its programming included six hours of news, divided into four bulletins (early morning, noon, evening and midnight), three live entertainment shows, one national fiction, plus international fictions (which are generally Turkish).