Imevisión

The Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión, also known as Imevisión, was a Mexican state agency in charge of operating television stations owned by the federal government. These included channels 7, 13 and 22 in Mexico City, as well as channel 2 in Chihuahua, channel 11 in Ciudad Juárez, channel 11 in Guadalajara, channel 5 in Mexicali, channel 27 in Tijuana and channel 8 in Monterrey, in addition to the national networks of channels 7 and 13 with 90 and 78 repeater stations, respectively.

History

On October 12, 1968, XHDF Channel 13 began to broadcast regularly, a station initially private, whose concession was granted in 1967 to Corporación Mexicana de Radio y Televisión S.A. de C.V, owned by businessman Francisco Aguirre Jiménez. In 1971, when the channel began to generate higher profits, businessman Alejo Peralta acquired 49% of the station's shares.

In the 1970s, faced with the political instability of the country due to the events of 1968, the government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez created the policy of "democratic opening", which encouraged criticism and self-criticism in the mass media, in academic sectors and even in official circles. In this context, the government expressed its interest in actively participating in the media as a broadcaster for the first time and in 1972, after Peralta sold his shares to the Federal Government, the Echeverría administration pressured Aguirre Jiménez to give him sell the remaining 41%, since the other 10% had already been sold to them previously on the condition that other businessmen participate. Thus, on March 15 of that same year, the government acquired channel 13 through the Sociedad Mexicana de Crédito Industrial SOMEX and, from that moment, the State began to structure a project for the use of state television.

On March 25, 1983, the Television of the Mexican Republic (TRM) was created during the government of Miguel de la Madrid, who a year earlier, in 1982, decided to annex the recently formed Mexican Institute of Television dissolved Televisión Rural Mexicana and channels 13 and 22 in Mexico City, in addition to other state television networks.

The Mexican Institute of Television was created as a decentralized public body on March 25, 1983 by means of a decree published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. That same year, the Mexican Institute of Radio (IMER) and the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE).

In 1985, the Institute changed its name to Imevisión as its commercial brand, and on May 15 of the same year channel 7 in Mexico City went on the air; The creation of this channel forced the transfer, for technical reasons, of Televisa's channel 8 to channel 9. In that year, Imevisión began to operate the national networks of channels 7 and 13, 22 of the Federal District and, commercially, on 11 of the National Polytechnic Institute.

In that same year, due to the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the television station broadcast long hours of newscasts reporting on the disaster, such as the newscast Día a día by Pedro Ferriz Santacruz. Imevisión also reported the fall of the Televisa transmission tower on Dr. Río de la Loza avenue.

In the last quarter of 1990, the Government announced the separation of Imevisión from all its affiliated stations at the national level, with the exception of channel 13, which would continue to be owned by the State. In December, the tender for channel 7 is published.

In 1991, channel 7 and channel 22 stopped broadcasting their own programming and became repeater stations for channel 13, leaving only one station for the company. In addition, the declines and signal problems in Imevisión were persistent. At the beginning of the year, the Government organizes an auction on channel 7 and, due to the few proposals and low offers made by the invited companies, it is declared void. The Manuel Buendía Foundation, an organization made up of 800 academics, asked the President of the Republic that channel 22 not be sold and be maintained for cultural purposes. The proposal is accepted and during the first semester of 1991, the channel ceases to be a repeater of 13 and goes off the air, waiting to restart transmissions under its new concept and under the responsibility of the National Council for Culture and the Arts. In December, the The Government declared the liquidation of Imevisión and the name was only kept for commercial and identification purposes. However, by December 1992, the name Imevisión ceased to be used on the station definitively. In its place, the open television signal began to use the name "channel 13 XHDF" for the entire company.

Privatization

At the beginning of 1993, the Government undertook to renew the image of Imevisión in order to make it attractive to potential buyers, as well as to regularize the legal situation of various frequencies that were licensed, including those of the channel network 7, changing them to concessionaires, an essential requirement to be able to be divested from third parties, thus creating TV Azteca. With this change, the independent transmissions of channel 7 were also restarted; albeit rare and intermittent. The name and emblem of Televisión Azteca began to be used in April of that same year, before the television station was formally privatized.

On July 18, 1993, the Government announced that the auction for channels 7 and 13, carried out under a tender, had been won by businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of the Elektra stores, now part of Grupo Salinas. Thus, TV Azteca began its operations on August 2 of the same year, initially transmitting the same signal on channels 7 and 13. On October 15, TV Azteca separated the channels, giving them their own identities, using the slogans Your vision on channel 7 and Mi tele on channel 13.

Logo

Imevisión's initial logo is a green hexagon divided into two parts, like the one channel 7 once had in its logo, resembling a figure similar to a stylized recycling logo.

In a matter of channels, their logos were the following:

• Red Nacional 7 was identified with the number 7 in pink. The green color was used during test transmissions.
• Red Nacional 13 had the 13 in purple.
• Cine Canal 22 used 22 in navy blue.

From October 1990 the logo of "Imevisión La Red Nacional" came into use, which was used until September 9, 1991, when "Channel 13&#34 came into operation; as the company's base channel.

Programming

Original Productions