La Tele (Santa Cruz)

**La Tele** is a Santa Cruzean free-to-air television channel, owned by Albavisión.

## History

### CTV-Radio Duna era (1999-2005)

The channel was launched on June 10, 1999, through a partnership between Radio Duna and Cochrane's CTV. Where the origin of the channel was due to a contest for the concession of channel 27 UHF. At first it was going to be "SC27" (Satelite Color 27) or "SCL 27" (in honor of the IATA code of the Santiago airport). Thing that both names were rejected, for being less attractive to the audience. While the name "La Tele" was chosen by a public survey.

When the channel was launched, the idea was made in two parts, CTV handles packaged and purchased content, while Radio Duna handles the press department. Since for 2000 and 2001, La Tele began to independently commission its own production, which only make magazine programs, as part of its "no soap operas" policy. As a consequence of the closure of "Superestación Rock & Pop" in 1999, La Tele acquired the remaining episodes of the third season of "El Factor Humano" (only 12 of the 15 planned episodes, was aired on La Tele, between 2000 to 2002, but sporadically), as well as reruns of the cult TV series "Plan Z" (as a edited version, under the name of "syndicated edition").

Since its launch, La Tele has broadcast the matches of the Santa Cruzean Baseball League (acquired since 1999, but shared with Imagen), and NBA basketball, as an alternative to the national ones that only broadcast soccer or motorsport matches. While Mitre was banned from broadcasting sporting events due to a punishment from the OTI in 2002, La Tele began to take advantage of broadcasting local soccer matches, but only limited to Universidad Católica matches until 2004 when CDF had acquired all the broadcasting rights of Universidad Católica's soccer matches.

### Copesa era (2005-2008)

In February 2005, 50% of La Tele was bought by Copesa, as part of the purchase from Radio Duna. But in October 2005, CTV decided to sell its 50%.

When Copesa was the full owner of La Tele, it was adding programs from Radio Zero, like "Ciudadano Zero" or "Acid Bar", as television versions. Meanwhile in 2008, it was the channel who saved "Invasión" from Imagen, but from October 2007 to December 2008 (since as of December 2008, only airs segments broadcast on Imagen in 2005 and 2006 as filler and reruns, until May 2009, when it was canceled without prior notice, after moving to the weekend schedule).

### Radio Cooperativa era (2008-2014)

In December 2008, three years after CTV sold its channel to COPESA (the company who owns Radio Duna since 2005). And because COPESA prefers to strengthen its group of radio stations (and Radio Carolina's cable television channel), it decided to sell La Tele to Radio Cooperativa. One of its first measures was to remove the Radio Duna and Zero programs from the programming, in favor of broadcasting El Diario de Cooperativa and Al Aire Libre.

But one of his controversies was to break the rule of "no soap operas" policy, in 2010. This time, they were acquired telenovelas from Teifaros and Cochrane, while he also acquired the rebroadcast rights of Unitel's telenovela "Santiago City".

### Albavisión era (2014-present)

In February 2014, Albavisión bought La Tele from Cooperativa. While it will continue as an association until 2018, when Cooperativa launched its own cable news channel.

In 2018 to 2021, the channel suffered a major content crisis, where the broadcast of live programming was cancelled, in favor of broadcasting only canned content. While in 2021, Albavisión decided to announce an agreement with the radio station La Clave FM (owned by Miguel Nasur), for the return of live programming to the channel, while the return of the press department was announced, after being closed in 2018.