Chile Now Boasts two All-News Channel

Wednesday Chile’s public TV network, TVN, unveiled its 24-hour all-news channel, called 24 Horas. This new channel comes into the cable TV market to compete with CNN Chile. Chile's version of CNN is a partnership between Liberty Global –owner of Chile’s largest cable provider VTR- and Time Warner.

CNN Chile began operations last December with 30 minutes news segments around the hour. The channel is centred mostly in Santiago and brings regional news items from partnerships with regional television channels.



The Atlanta based news channel arrival was welcomed by all sectors of public life, because it gives fresh look to news coverage in Chile. CNN Chile is able to give a more diverse view of news than the one seen on Chilean TV channels, who in their news coverage are mostly concerned with the crime beat and other sensational news items.

CNN Chile has been a different voice. But CNN Chile has failed to break news, it has failed to provide live coverage of news events. In fact CNN Chile has had multiple technical glitches due to serious technical editing errors in their digital software that feeds reports to air.

Also CNN Chile is extremely rigid in its 30 minutes segments, it lacks segmented programming, it lacks personalities. CNN Chile is a bland news channel with little muscle or zest behind its coverage.

One click away on the clicker is TVN’s 24 Horas. The channel is oriented towards creating programming that delivers content after a 15-minute news segment at the top of the hour. It has personalities; it is developing segmented niches, with interviews, sports, arts and entertainment, international and financial news. Each of these areas is covered as a clear segment with a presenter identified with each area. To ensure international coverage, 24 Horas signed a partnership deal with NBC’s MSNBC news network.



However, 24 Horas makes the same mistake seen throughout Chilean television, its inability to edit and keep time. 24 Horas continues with the national incapacity to respect the clock, it continues to run over two or three minutes in its programming into the next hour. This is unacceptable for a serious news organization.

The major flaw 24 Horas has, is its Santiago centric news coverage. That coverage can also be seen in its continuity like graphics and information, for example, the weather in Santiago, traffic camera that show Santiago streets. The rest of the country also needs to know the weather and many cities are equipped with traffic cameras that can be followed on the Internet. That is the plus CNN Chile has over 24 Horas, it covers the country better, despite the fact 24 Horas is a channel owned by all Chileans.

24 Horas with its programming segmentation would appear to have an upper hand over CNN Chile’s 30 minute news segments, that contradicts its slogan “está pasando, lo estás viendo”. A slogan that translate to "it’s happening you are watching it," but with its ongoing 30 minute segment, after an hour-and-half, the viewer gets a constant repeat of the same news items. So CNN Chile’s slogan, “está pasando, lo estás viendo,” should translate to "it’s happening we are repeating it."

One final note, I applied unsuccessfully to both channels for employment as a journalist/producer. CNN Chile’s Director General Patricio Hernández told me I was too expensive for the local market. Meanwhile at 24 Horas, I was part of a cattle call with some 80 people. In that cattle call we were placed in an auditorium, there a HR person came to front of the auditorium, told us to fill in a job application form -all had sent resumes- then we were told to do a “psychology profile test.” In that exam we were shown 4 slides of different images and we were supposed to describe what we saw. We were also told to do a word matching test, where we were supposed to find the most correct word that would match with another.

In all my years of living and working in Canada, where I took part in many hiring processes as a candidate or as an interviewer, I was never given nor did I ever performed a psychological test. I was not called for a second interview, which leads me to think I was either to old and expensive, or I did not passed the so-called sham of psychological test.