Colombia. The Minister of ICT, Mauricio Lizcano, announced that the Colombian Government will invest more than $98.415 billion Colombian pesos (about US$25 million) in the country's public media, to support the digital transformation, development, modernization and enhance the quality of the productions of the eight regional channels: Canal Capital, Telecaribe, Telecafé, Teleislas, Canal TRO, Telepacífico, Canal Trece and Teleantioquia.
"The Government ratifies its commitment to continue strengthening public television, but not only nationally, but also regionally. Today we are making an investment that will help us work on the digital transformation of channels, because we want them to be modern. It cannot be that the modern is the private, and the obsolete is the public. We have to value public television because it is where our customs, our regional issues, which are very important to the people, are explicit in the best way. Colombia is a multicultural country, but it is also a country of regions," said ICT Minister Mauricio Lizcano.
The meeting was attended by, in addition to the Minister, the Deputy Minister of Connectivity, Gabriel Jurado; Luz Adriana Latorre, manager of Telepacífico; Richard Francis, manager of Teleislas; Carolina Joya, manager of Canal TRO; Ana María Ruiz, manager of Canal Capital; Ismael Fernández, manager of Telecaribe; Margarita Arango, manager of Teleantioquia; Alejandro Linares; manager of Canal Trece, and Martín Montoya, acting manager of Telecafé. The space was also the opportunity to welcome the new managers of Teleantioquia, Telepacífico and Canal TRO.
"This support is very important for public television to maintain itself and bring new value propositions to audiences. That is why we are very happy, because we will be able to leverage the production of audiovisual content, as well as buy others already made from national producers, to feed our grids. We are going to allocate a percentage for technology and 10% for operating expenses," said Luz Adriana Latorre, manager of Telepacífico.
Thanks to this investment, not only are the commitments set out in Law 1341 of 2009 fulfilled, but a greater impact is achieved, through a comprehensive strategy of support, financing and training of public media. It is expected that the allocated funds will contribute to the generation of high-quality content, aimed at diverse audiences, as well as to the recovery, preservation, digitization and cataloguing of the national audiovisual heritage, among others.
The investment in each channel will be as follows:
- Telecafé: $15,693,328,503.
- Telepacífico: $15,170,337,554.
- Teleantioquia: $14,591,527,291.
- Channel Thirteen: $13,086,452,952
- TRO Channel: $12,509,919,383.
- Telecaribe: $10,240,998,780
- Teleislands: $9,599,185,723
- Canal Capital: $7,524,082,918
It is worth remembering that the MinTIC has allocated $10,000 million for the new headquarters of Teleislas, construction that is already advancing in San Andrés after Minister Lizcano laid the first stone two weeks ago.
