Canal 8 was the first television station to broadcast in Guatemala, operating in

Guatemala City Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, nest ...

from September 18, 1955, to 1961. The station, owned by the government, failed due to lack of funds.

History

Plans had existed for television in Guatemala as early as 1953, but it was not until September 18, 1955, two days after tests were conducted, when the first official television broadcast was made in Guatemala, with the first image seen on channel 8 being that of Mexican singer

Pedro Vargas Pedro Vargas Mata (San Miguel de Allende, 29 April 1906 – Mexico City, 30 October 1989) was a Mexican tenor and actor, from the golden age of Mexican cinema, participating in more than 70 films. He was known as the "Nightingale of the Ameri ...

singing the ''Our Father''. Just 40 television sets existed at the time, all of them in the historic center of Guatemala City. The original facilities were an improvised studio in the

National Palace Buildings called National Palace include: * National Palace (Dominican Republic), in Santo Domingo *National Palace (El Salvador), in San Salvador *National Palace (Ethiopia), in Addis Ababa; also known as the Jubilee Palace * National Palace (Guate ...

, supported by American engineers, which operated for about a month. At that time, management of the new station was taken over by government radio station TGW and moved into the National Typography Building, which offered improved facilities and a much better audio chain. The station extended its broadcast day to as long as five hours. However, its limited power curtailed its reach to the center of Guatemala City. Not long before its closure, on September 30, 1961, the station began airing commercial advertisements; the day before, a fire had destroyed the country's only commercial television station, Canal 3. The station closed not long after due to slow technical decline and a lack of funding.

References

{{reflist Television channels and stations established in 1955 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1961 Television stations in Guatemala Defunct mass media in Guatemala