Canal 5 is a Mexican free-to-air
television network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...
owned by
TelevisaUnivision
TelevisaUnivision (formerly known as Univision Communications) is a Mexican-American media company headquartered in New York and Mexico City, which owns the American Spanish language broadcast network Univision. 45% of the company is held by the ...
. It traces its origins to the foundation of Channel 5 in Mexico City in 1952 (also known by its identification code
XHGC-TDT). Canal 5's program lineup is generally targeted at a younger audience and includes cartoons, foreign series and movies, along with a limited number of sporting events such as
NFL games, boxing, the
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
and, historically, the
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...
.
Canal 5 is mainly aimed at children and youth audiences, although in late hours it usually includes a more general concept with television series and reality shows. Over the decades among its programming, it includes many series purchased from networks such as
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...
and
Cartoon Network, among others; while the series aimed at the general public often come from
Paramount Network
Paramount Network is an American basic cable television channel owned by the MTV Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Media Networks. The network's headquarters are located at the Paramount Pictures studio lot in Los Angeles.
The channel was ...
,
Fox Broadcasting Company
The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an Television in the United States, American Commercial broadcasting, commercial terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by Fox C ...
,
Warner Bros
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
.,
ViacomCBS
Paramount Global (doing business as Paramount) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquartered at One Astor Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York. It ...
(now
Paramount Global
Paramount Global ( doing business as Paramount) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquartered at One Astor Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York. ...
),
MTV,
NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States.
NBCUniversal is primaril ...
among others. The channel also broadcasts series produced by the company
TelevisaUnivision
TelevisaUnivision (formerly known as Univision Communications) is a Mexican-American media company headquartered in New York and Mexico City, which owns the American Spanish language broadcast network Univision. 45% of the company is held by the ...
, which owns the channel. In programming, its main national competitor in open television has historically been
Azteca 7
Azteca 7 (also called El Siete) is a Mexican network owned by TV Azteca, with more than 100 main transmitters all over Mexico.
Azteca 7 is available on all cable and satellite systems. A substantial portion of their purchased programming include ...
of
TV Azteca
TV Azteca, S.A.B. de C.V. is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate owned by Grupo Salinas. It is the second-largest mass media company in Mexico after Televisa. It primarily competes with Televisa as well as some local operators. It owns two nationa ...
.
History
On May 10, 1952,
XHGC-TV
XHGC-TDT (channel 5) is a television station owned by Grupo Televisa, broadcasting from Mexico City, and is the flagship of the Canal 5 network.
History
XHGC signed on May 10, 1952, broadcasting a Mother's Day event organized by the Excélsi ...
came to air for the first time. It was Mexico City's third television station, owned by
Guillermo González Camarena
Guillermo González Camarena (17 February 1917 – 18 April 1965) was a Mexican electrical engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television.
Early life
González Camarena was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was the younge ...
, an inventor who created the first color television system. In 1955, XHGC was one of three stations that formed
Telesistema Mexicano
Telesistema Mexicano was the predecessor of Televisa. Telesistema Mexicano was a television alliance made up of the independently owned television flagship stations XEW-TV, XEW Canal 2, XHTV-TV, XHTV Canal 4, and XHGC-TV, XHGC Canal 5 in Mexico, D ...
. González Camarena remained the general manager of XHGC until his death in 1965.
In 1963, XHGC became the first station in Mexico to broadcast in color. By request of Guillermo González Camarena, XHGC began targeting an audience of children and youth, with the first color telecast being ''Paraíso infantil'' (''Children's Paradise''). Over the years, Canal 5 has retained this programming focus, with a schedule incorporating foreign series and sports programs.
At the end of the 1980s, the then-vice president of Televisa, Alejandro Burillo Azcárraga, spearheaded drastic changes in the branding of the company's television networks. XHGC had branded as Canal 5 for years, using various logos with the number 5. However, as the network's various repeaters were not all on channel 5, the network began branding by the XHGC callsign. The landmark ''Energía Visual'' (Visual Energy) campaign, designed by Agustín Corona and Pablo Jato, featured idents with wildly varied logos and designs—a first for Mexican television. The campaign was designed to back the channel's youthful image.
In the 1990s, Canal 5 began branding with its channel number again. During this time period,
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu (; American Spanish: ; credited since 2016 as Alejandro G. Iñárritu; born 15 August 1963) is a Mexican filmmaker and screenwriter. He is primarily known for making modern psychological drama films about the hu ...
, who had also been involved with Televisa's radio station
XEW-FM
XEW-AM is a radio station in Mexico City, Mexico, broadcasting on the AM frequency of 900 kHz; it is branded as ''W Radio''. XEW-AM serves as the originating station for other "W Radio" stations around Mexico that carry some of its program ...
(WFM), was involved in the creation of some of the network's promotional campaigns. Additionally, in 1994, Televisa obtained a concession for 62 additional television transmitters nationwide, most of which form a key link in the Canal 5 network today.
1999 saw the beginning of a shift in content providers for Canal 5, which had long been the exclusive Mexican rightsholder to
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
programs such as
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers,
DuckTales
''DuckTales'' is an American animated television series produced by Disney Television Animation. The original cartoon series premiered on syndication and on Disney Channel on September 18, 1987 and ran for a total of 100 episodes over four sea ...
and a Mexican version of
Disney Club
''Disney Club'' is the name of many television shows associated to Disney productions aired mostly in Europe and the Americas during the 1990s and early 2000s (decade).
Americas
* Brazil: aired from April 28, 1997, to December 28, 2002, on SBT ...
. In 1999, these rights began to migrate to Televisión Azteca and
Azteca 7
Azteca 7 (also called El Siete) is a Mexican network owned by TV Azteca, with more than 100 main transmitters all over Mexico.
Azteca 7 is available on all cable and satellite systems. A substantial portion of their purchased programming include ...
. Instead, the network began relying more on
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
, Cartoon Network,
PBS Kids, Fox and Nickelodeon programs.
Today, Canal 5 carries children's programs, films and international series, as well as sporting events including
UEFA Champions League
The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...
,
UEFA Europa League
The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. ...
and
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
matches, a limited number of
Liga MX fixtures and international matches involving the Mexico national team, and select NFL and NHL games. Canal 5 also features some of Televisa's own productions, such as ''
El Chavo Animado
''El Chavo Animado'' (''El Chavo: The Animated Series'' in English) is a Mexican animated series based on the live action television series ''El Chavo del Ocho'', created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, produced by Televisa and Ánima Estudios. It a ...
'' and ''Mujeres Asesinas 3'' by Pedro Torres.
In recent years, Canal 5's Twitter page started posting strange and disturbing posts typically between 3-7 am, only to be deleted after said date. Since then, the posts have been investigated and widely shared and talked about in the Mexican media. Infobae México, a Mexican news site, contacted one of the collaborators of Channel 5. However, they claimed they had no knowledge about the disturbing posts.
English infomercials
It is quite possible that the first modern
infomercial series to run in North America was on
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...
-area television station
XETV
XETV-TDT (channels 6 and 16) is a television station located in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, broadcasting programs from Canal 5 and NU9VE. Its terrestrial signal also covers the San Diego, California area across the international border in ...
, which during the 1970s ran a one-hour program every Sunday consisting of advertisements for local homes for sale. As the station was actually licensed by the Mexican government to the city of
Tijuana
Tijuana ( ,["Tijuana"](_blank)
(US) and [< ...]
, but broadcast all of its programs in English for the U.S. market until 2017 (when it became a pure Spanish-language outlet for Canal 5), the FCC limit at that time of a maximum of 18 minutes of commercials in an hour did not apply to the station.
Transmitters
Canal 5 is carried on 66 of its own transmitters plus another 32 transmitters shared with
Las Estrellas and one transmitter that carries a Televisa local service, Las Estrellas and Canal 5; these 31 transmitters do not carry Canal 5 in HD. It holds the rights to virtual channel 5 nationwide and broadcasts on it in almost all areas, with a handful of notable exceptions along the US-Mexico border.
In 2018, the concessions of all primary Canal 5 repeaters wholly owned by Televisa were consolidated in the concessionaire Radio Televisión, S.A. de C.V. as part of a reorganization of Televisa's concessionaires.
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Logos
File:Xhgc1952.png, 1952-1964
File:XHGC-TV 1981.png, 1980-1986 (similar to Channel 5 honduran logo and KSTP-TV
KSTP-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an affiliate of ABC. It is the flagship television property of locally based Hubbard Broadcasting, which has owned the ...
in United States)
File:XHGC 1988.png, 1988-1989
File:XHGC-TV 1993.png, 1993-1994
File:XHGC Canal 5 1994.svg, 1994-1996
File:XHGC Canal 5 1996.svg, 1996-1997
File:Canal 5 XHGC 1997-2000.png, 1997-1999
File:Canal 5 2000-2002.svg, 1999 (with slight variants until 2007)
File:Canal 5 (MX) 2003-2006.svg, 2003-2007
File:XHGC.png, 2007 (with slight modifications until 2013)
File:XHGC 2013.png, 2013
File:XHGC-TV5 (2013 Aug).svg, 2013-2014
File:Canal 5 Mexico logo 2014.svg, 2014-2016
File:Canal 5 2016.svg, 2016-present
Notes
References
External links
Official website*
{{Televisa
Children's television networks
Mass media in Mexico City
Television networks in Mexico
Televisa broadcast television networks
Television channels and stations established in 1952
1951 establishments in Mexico