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 business model, subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichan ...

service over digital terrestrial television (TDT) in Spain in the early years of the

digital television transition 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 con ...

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

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

; other investors included Planeta of Spain,

Carlton Communications Carlton Communications plc was a British media company. It was led by Michael P. Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it was bought by Granada plc in a corporate takeover to form ITV plc. Carlton s ...

of the UK, and the MediaPark investment firm of

Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

. 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 known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

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 The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

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