Colombia. After the balance sheet delivered by the national government for public television in 2019, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, MinTIC, will make in 2020 a historic investment for national and regional public channels: $291.5 billion (about US$83 million) that will be used for its strengthening and modernization.
This figure represents an increase of 9% over the previous year ($267.48 billion). The ICT Minister, Sylvia Constaín, reported that, of the total investment for this year, $200,000 million will be allocated to the strengthening of public media and the beginning of the deployment of Phase 5 of the secondary network of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT); and $91.5 billion will be for content, calls, training, audience measurement tools, audiovisual heritage and RTVC Play.
"2020 is a year to consolidate the work we are doing to strengthen public television. This commitment requires budget and talent, so from MinTIC we will promote work with the Colombian audiovisual sector and articulate the necessary efforts so that the productions reflect the interests and heritage of all Colombians, "said the head of the ICT portfolio.
Television continues to be one of the most used media by Colombian families. A fact that reinforces the theory that analog screens and digital platforms are not exclusive but complementary is the study carried out by Target Group Index (TGI), which analyzes the consumption of media in the country. According to this, in the first half of 2019, 98.2% of Colombians watched television through traditional screens.
With this broad and challenging panorama, the national government will continue with its strategy of strengthening public television and will invest even more resources than in 2019 to the entire Colombian audiovisual ecosystem. One of the enablers of this increase in investment is Law 1978 of 2019 (Law on modernization of the ICT Sector), which aims to strengthen national and regional public channels, and ensures the necessary resources for the development of new productions.
Soon, the national government, with the leadership of the Vice Presidency of the Republic and MinTIC, will present the Bicentennial productions, which will be available on traditional screens and digital platforms.
