Television is one of the major mass media of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. It was introduced in 1957. There are 63 broadcast stations throughout the country (plus 121 repeaters) (1997). The

broadcast television system Broadcast television systems (or terrestrial television systems outside the US and Canada) are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals. Analog television systems were standardized by ...

used is

NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...

. The primary regulator of television content is the National Television Council (CNTV). The technical aspects are regulated by the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications, through the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel).

History

The first television transmission in Chile took place on October 5, 1957, from the Catholic University of Valparaíso's main campus, giving birth to UCV, the country's first

television channel A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...

. Two years later, on August 21, 1959, the

Catholic University of Chile The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

made an experimental transmission between its main campus and the ''

El Mercurio ''El Mercurio'' (known online as ''El Mercurio On-Line'', ''EMOL'') is a Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's newspaper of record and it is considered the oldest daily in ...

'' newspaper headquarters, both in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

's downtown, inaugurating the country's second channel, Canal 13, occupying frequency 2 for a few years (now 13). Color television debuted on February 6, 1978.

Users

According to the 2002 census, 87% of Chilean households had at least one color television set. According to a November–December 2011 nationwide poll by CEP, 88.6% of Chilean households had at least one color television set, 0.9% didn't and 10.5% did not answer. Sixty percent of those households that said they owned at least one color TV set also said they had cable or satellite television.

Cable/satellite television

In Chile, there are 1,138,718

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

subscribers (55.3%) and 921,490

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

subscribers (44.7%) as of September 2011. The household penetration rate for cable and satellite television stands at 40.4% as of September 2011.

Digital television

In late October 2008, the President submitted a bill to Congress detailing the legal framework for DTTV broadcasting in the country, but without defining which standard would be used.) On 14 September 2009, Chile announced its decision to adopt the Japanese / Brazilian standard

ISDB-T International ISDB-T International, or SBTVD, short for Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital ( en, Brazilian Digital Television System), is a technical standard for digital television broadcast used in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Botswana, Chile, Honduras, Ve ...

with MPEG-4 for digital terrestrial television, joining Brazil, Argentina and Peru. The

analog switchoff The digital television transition, also called the digital switchover (DSO), the analogue switch/sign-off (ASO), the digital migration, or the analogue shutdown, is the process in which older analogue television broadcasting technology is conv ...

was scheduled for 2019. (Chile had delayed its decision on which

digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

standard to adopt. As of 2021, a new schedule has been set for 2024

TVN TVN may refer to: * TVN (Australian TV channel), a former horse racing channel * Televisión Nacional de Chile, a public broadcaster * TVN (Indonesia), a former television station; predecessor of Rajawali Televisi * TVN (Norway), or TVNorge, a comm ...

, Chile's state-owned channel, has made digital terrestrial television broadcast tests since 1999. Canal 13 has been doing so since 2007 in

only, transmitting in three DTV formats ( ATSC,

DVB Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

and ISDB). In Valparaiso, UCV TV was to start in June 2010 demonstrative ISDB-Tb broadcasting for the Valparaíso/Viña del Mar area, using an 800 watts transmitter.

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

-ready television sets are widely sold in Chile, and

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

and

companies transmit limited HD content to its subscribers (27 HD channels in

VTR A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were us ...

(2 national-free, 4 Premiums, 21 basic), the country's largest cable TV provider).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Television In Chile

History

Users

Cable/satellite television

Digital television

Most viewed channels

See also

References