Quiero Televisión SA, commonly known as Quiero TV (Spanish for "I-Want TV"), was a

pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

service over digital terrestrial television (TDT) in Spain in the early years of the digital television transition. It launched in 2000, Accionariat

Quiero TV received its digital television license in 1999, and operated from 2000 to 2002, with 14 channels, at a time when the only other digital terrestrial channels were

TVE 1 La 1 (, ''The One'') is a Spanish free-to-air television channel owned and operated by Televisión Española (TVE), the television division of state-owned public broadcaster Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). It is the corporation's flagship te ...

and La 2, the two main channels of Spain's public broadcaster. Quiero TV was 49% owned by Auna/

Retevisión Retevisión was a former Spanish telecommunications company; of which a portion of it continues to exist as Cellnex Telecom, which was spun off from Abertis in 2015. History Retevisión was founded in 1989 as a public company, a division of ...

; other investors included

Planeta Planeta or El Planeta means (the) planet in multiple languages. It may refer to: Film, TV and publications * '' El Planeta'', a Boston-based Spanish language newspaper * ''El Planeta'' (Ecuador), an Ecuadorian newspaper, see List of newspapers in ...

of Spain, Carlton Communications of the UK, and the MediaPark investment firm of

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the nort ...

. Having to compete aggressively with satellite and cable for the pay TV market, Quiero TV provided

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

es and antenna servicing to subscribers. Expenses ended up being far higher than planned. By early 2001, Quiero had 200,000 subscribers, but afterwards, customer counts decreased. Losing 24 million euros a month, and failing to find anyone to buy the company, it shut down in April 2002, having lost around 600 million euros total. Another Carlton pay television service,

ITV Digital ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc, owners ...

in the United Kingdom, also shut down a month later.

References

{{reflist Cable television companies of Spain Pay television 2000 in Spanish television 2000 establishments in Spain 2002 disestablishments in Spain Defunct broadcasting companies Defunct companies of Spain