Chavez turns off ‘critic’ channel

Venezuelan folk music, a Cuban documentary and heavy doses of government propaganda glorifying “21st century socialism” highlighted

Venezuelan folk music, a Cuban documentary and heavy doses of government propaganda glorifying “21st century socialism” highlighted the first day of a new television channel that on Monday took over airspace of this nation’s oldest and most popular station, a frequent critic of leftist President Hugo Chavez.

At midnight on Sunday, Radio Caracas Television or RCTV, went dark for the first time in 53 years after the Chavez government refused to renew its broadcast licence, alleging violations of telecommunications law. The decision was announced last December and had been slammed ever since by international press freedom groups, several governments and even some Chavez supporters.

Protests that began on Sunday night around the national telecommunications regulatory commission’s office continued into the morning at several universities in the Caracas area. Police fired tear gas at demonstrators who closed down a lane of one of the city’s principal freeways on Monday.

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On the other hand, pro-government gatherings to applaud the handover were also held around the city.

RCTV, a powerhouse news and prime time programmer and national icon, was replaced on the airwaves by Television Venezolana Social, or TVes, after the Supreme Court over the weekend gave the new broadcaster the right to use RCTV’s towers and microwave transmitters.

In a final news conference before hundreds of tearful RCTV employees on Sunday night, station president Marcel Granier said the denial of the licence was part of an ongoing Chavez campaign to stifle the Opposition’s free speech. He also called the court decision “robbery”.

None of RCTV’s 3,000 employees were laid off immediately, as management scrambled to try to continue broadcasting over cable or satellite. But set designer Valentin Martinadonna said cuts were “inevitable”. “They can’t maintain all of us in our places for long.”

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Government officials said the licence was denied for alleged violations of laws governing violence and sex programming. Andres Izarra, a former RCTV producer who is now president of TeleSur, one of the three government channels that Chavez now has started up, defended the switch in broadcasters, saying it was not a “takeover, but a case of the expiration of a license. … This will lead to a pluralisation of voices and a democratisation of the news media”.

But most observers cite RCTV’s strident criticism of Chavez and his policies as the real reason for the licence denial. Like Venezuela’s other major broadcasters, RCTV lent at least tacit support to the failed 2002 coup against the president by directing marchers and then failing to inform the public that the coup had failed. While other major broadcasters reportedly reached understandings with the Chavez government to soften their criticisms, RCTV remained critical.