Telesur

Telesur (stylized as teleSUR) is a Latin American terrestrial and satellite news television network headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela and sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua. It was launched in 2005, under the government of Hugo Chávez, promoted as "a Latin socialist answer to CNN". In Latin America, teleSUR can be seen in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and other territories as Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Curaçao in DirecTV's package (channels 292 and 722). The proposed alternative Latin American television network that would become Telesur took shape on 24 January 2005, as part of the projects approved in a council of ministers of the Venezuelan government. According to The Boston Globe, the Venezuelan government provided broadcasting facilities and 70% of Telesur's funds, with other leftist governments supporting the network as well. Telesur was advertised "as a Latin socialist answer to CNN." Telesur began broadcasting on a limited, four-hour schedule on 24 July 2005, on the 222nd birthday of Latin American leader Simón Bolívar. The network began full-time broadcasts on 31 October 2005. In 2009, Venezuela subsidized the launch of the communications satellite Venesat-1, in part to amplify Telesur's programming by enabling it to avoid geo-blocking efforts by DirectTV, an American company. The founder of Telesur was Aram Aharonian, a journalist and scholar, who left Uruguay after the 1973 coup d'état. Aharonian stated that the idea of Telesur was "to see ourselves as we truly were", stating that he sought more diversity in the media. After Aharonian resigned from his position as the network's director in 2013, he commented in a 2014 interview that Telesur "did not achieve latinamericanization and continued to be Venezuelan". La Nueva Televisora del Sur, C.A. is a public company which has various Latin American governments as its sponsors. Its primary sponsor is the Government of Venezuela; Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia have contributed as well.