Gran Santiago Televisión

**Gran Santiago Televisión** is a defunct cable television channel from Santa Cruz, which was from 1995 to 2000. This time focused on the programming of miscellaneous programs, where it does not have a place on open-to-air television.

## History

In 1995, Jose Artemio Espinoza had received a agreement with "MVS Multivisión" to have their own channel, but for cable. At that time, the production company Canal Uno Televisión produced for Superestación El Conquistador, the programs La Bolsa de Comercio a sus Ordenes, hosted by Gonzalo Chamorro, as well as Tertulia, Gente del Mundo and the Picoteo magazine.

The channel was launched on October 9th, 1995 on MVS Multivisión, Cable Mundo (owned by Bío-Bío Comunicaciones), VTR Cablexpress, Metrópolis and Intercom. Which at the beginning was going to be for MVS, which in the end was left to all the cable companies, to obtain an audience.

The difference with many national cable channels was the absence of foreign content. Due to the cost of the broadcast rights licenses issues. One of its exceptions, was Transtel and PW-TV documentaries and dubbed content from C-SPAN Worldnet.

### Closedown

Its closure was for many reasons, one of them was the withdrawal of the channel from MVS Multivisión in 1998, due to low audience. And one of those factors was the absence of sponsors on that channel. Also including that in late 1999, 80% of programming was just infomercials from Vivienda, Construcción y Decoración and Novedades Increibles.

One of the consequences of the closure was that several programs like "Tertulia", "Mister Chips" and "La aventura del aprender" was moved to TNSC Alfa in January 2001. Meanwhile Picoteo was moved to La Tele in December 2000.

## Controversies

### Dispute with MVS

Since 1997, GSTV decided to sell the morning programming of the channel to three companies, one of them was Vidavisión (which come from the evangelical church), Derco Motores (a car distributor) and Vivienda, Construcción y Decoración. The consequence of which was that the channel starts at 7:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 p.m. And even due to economic reasons, he decided to close the channel at 11:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m.

Many cable companies have preferred not to eliminate the channel, despite the problems they have. One of them was VTR, which had decided to fill in the infomercial programming with another channel, as a time-share.

But MVS, as it had the distribution of the channel, had become very angry with Espinoza for the changes to sell programmatic spaces such as infomercials. One of them was the announcement of the channel's withdrawal from MVS Multivisión in January 1998. This left the channel without a distributor, and it lost many sponsors it obtained in its early years.

Between May 1998 and June 2000, Espinoza sued MVS for breaching and breaking the channel's distribution agreement. Something that the judicial demand took a long time until in 2001, the judicial demand was extended to the fact that they blamed MVS for the abrupt closure of the channel. Something that for 2004, they gave him a ruling against MVS for the conflict that Espinoza had, which even paid him millions in compensation in the midst of the judicial conflict. Espinoza is currently a priest; and while MVS Multivisión stopped operating in Santa Cruz in 2002, due to the free migration of clients to DIRECTV.

## Programs

* *Agenda Nusloniana*
* *Aquí gente nueva*
* *Bulevar Santa Cruz*
* *Claves* (a program in association with PW TV)
* *Comiendo en el 97-80*
* *De culto*
* *De noche con Benni*
* *Derco Motores*
* *Diálogos del fin de siglo*
* *El columpio*
* *Gane tiempo con nosotros*
* *Gente del Mundo* (a travel program)
* *Hocky Pocky* (a program for the Santa Cruz scouts)
* *Hocky Tareas*
* *Jockey Play: la hípica entretenida*
* *Juntos, pero no mucho*
* *La aventura del aprender*
* *La bolsa de comercio a sus ordenes*
* *La cotorrisa en la tele* (a short-lived program about a TV version of Radio Rinoceronte program, between May 1999 to December 1999)
* *Logos* (a religious program)
* *Mister Chips* (a computer-themed program)
* *Motor Plus*
* *Mundo PC*
* *Nosotras*
* *Picoteo*
* *Por la fuerza de la razón* (a political program)
* *Rostro, mente y espiritú*
* *Santa Cruz emprende*
* *Séptimo arte global* (a program about world cinema)
* *Signo más, signo menos*
* *Sociedad anónima*
* *Tertulia*
* *Todo por el pupla*
* *Vidavisión* (Religious programming)
* *Vivienda, Construcción y Decoración*
* *Y pasó por un zapato roto...*

### Foreign programming

* *Club Date*
* *Computer Chronicles*
* *Conversemos en Esta Noche*
* *Crossroads Cafe*
* *Documentaries from Transtel and PW-TV*
* *Science World*
* *Telematch*
* *Worldnet Dialogue*