Colombia. The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, MinTIC joined the celebration of World Television Day, recognizing this medium as a brave driver of development despite having been so affected by the crisis caused by the pandemic, but in turn, for having increased its audiences and returning to the tradition of television.
In the continuous effort to strengthen the audiovisual sector, the National Government has allocated during this 2020 the highest investment in the history of Colombian public TV and the audiovisual industry, allocating a budget of $ 291,500 million to modernize its infrastructure, strengthen its contents and train human resources.
The incentives, training and incentives have made this 2020 a creative and supportive agenda for the remote regions of the country that have benefited independent producers, workers in public channels and the union of workers in the audiovisual sector.
"We closed this year not only with an investment never seen before, but with an enormous satisfaction of the duty fulfilled and with the joy of having supported a sector that was so affected by the pandemic. And we will continue to do so, because our mission from the Government of President Iván Duque is to strengthen the public media and the audiovisual industry," said ICT Minister Karen Abudinen.
Towards content strengthening
These efforts have already begun to bear fruit. The quality and innovation of regional public productions became worthy this year with 48 nominations for the TAL-Television Awards of Latin America-, (surpassing 2019 when 24 were obtained).
At the same time, the project "Big stories with small cameras", which emerged as a support to the audiovisual guild in a natural way of the country affected by the pandemic, selected 300 winners with a stimulus of $ 12 million per project to tell stories representative of the region of origin or residence of the creators, recorded with cell phones or any other portable device.
Public TV has joined initiatives such as the program 'Profe en tu casa', a live space for education and entertainment, which allows viewers and listeners to participate with opinions, questions, workshops, stories and an infinity of activities that provide them with academic content in a fun way.
This content has been broadcast by Señal Colombia, Canal Institucional, Radio Nacional de Colombia, RTVCPlay and the regional channels: Telecafé, TeleCaribe, TeleAntioquia, TRO, Teleislas, Canal Trece and Tele pacífico, with a very great satisfaction and that is that we are reaching children and young people in the country who do not have access to any other media.
In the same way, the 5 audiovisual calls were opened, which with an investment of 23,664 million pesos, managed to finance 81 projects of new audiovisual productions of micro, small, medium and large producers, community channels and indigenous producers and NARP (Negros, Afros, Raizales and Palenqueros).
The commitment to training
All the strengthening of the audiovisual sector is complemented by the constant training processes that we develop through important alliances that allow us to guarantee the strengthening of public television, the promotion of multiplatform content of public and cultural interest, and the social and productive appropriation of ICT with an investment for 2020 of 3,500 million pesos.
