http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCTVEnd of license
On 28 December 2006, President Chávez announced that the government would not renew RCTV's broadcast license which came up for renewal on 27 May 2007, thereby forcing the channel to cease broadcast operations on that day.<40> The government says that the non-renewal is caused by RCTV's alleged support for the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez's democratically elected government.
The Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ)<41> ruled on 17 April 2007 that it is within the National Telecommunications Commission's power to decide on the issuing, renewal and revocation of broadcast licenses.<42> RCTV may continue broadcasting over cable or DTH systems (DirecTV Latin America) when its license expires, but the government will take over the equipment, studios and even the master control for their use in the new station it has created on 27 May 2007. On 24 May, the Supreme Court ordered RCTV to stop broadcasting as soon as its license expires and approved the government's takeover of its equipment, though it would review the station's appeal of the decision. Chávez announced plans to start broadcasting a public service channel, TVes, using this infrastructure which belonged to RCTV.<43>
The Supreme Court ruled that RCTV's broadcasting equipment must be available to TVes. The ruling also ordered the military to guard the equipment. This allows TVes to be available in the same locations where RCTV used to broadcast.<44>
The final program airing on RCTV Sunday was an all day/night retrospective tribute to the network, featuring current and ex workers, artists and staff of RCTV. Many workers and artists from other networks, including Venevision had to used the last hours of RCTV to give their opinion since they were not allowed at their own companies.
On Saturday, 26 May, RCTV shut down its live internet stream in preparation for its forced close-down on Sunday, 27 May. At 12 Midnight on 28 May, RCTV ceased broadcasting and for the following 8 seconds the signal went dark. It was then replaced by TVes's ID which was on air for 20 minutes. At 12:20AM, TVes began programming for the first time. DirecTV Venezuela has replaced RCTV with TVes on 104.<45>
2007 onwards - broadcasting via cable/satellite
RCTV lost its free-over the air broadcast licence, but it was not out of business. In an article in the 5 July 2007 edition of AM New York, the head of RCTV, Marcel Granier said that he was considering taking the network's programming to cable or satellite. This was accomplished in the Summer of 2007.
DirecTV Latin America and RCTV signed an agreement for the satellite service to transmit RCTV's programming to satellite subscribers in Venezuela and other parts of the world. The network will be broadcasting for DirectTV in the channel 103. Later came the deals with other national cable operators, Inter, formerly known as InterCable, and NetUno, both being the most important and known cable operators in Venezuela. The channel number varies by area of the country and the cable system. Broadcasting officially resumed on 16 July at 6:00am (UTC-4).
Since its return, RCTV has become the most watched channel in Venezuela (despite being on cable). Only 30% of houses have cable in Venezuela but the total amount that view RCTV is higher than all viewers of TVES, Venevision, and all other channels. In Caracas and in Valencia twice as many people view RCTV than Venevision.<89>
In the wake of the loss of its terrestrial licence, RCTV announced plans to continue broadcasting its main news program 'El Observador' on popular internet video host YouTube during 2007.<90> YouTube viewership of 'El Observador' was initially significant but within a week of the end of RCTV's television transmission had fallen to less than 5,000 viewers a day.<91> El Observador no longer promotes the YouTube site and instead directs its viewers to watch its broadcasts through a different video hosting service. Viewership numbers are not available.
Following its move to cable, RCTV relaunched itself as RCTV International, in an attempt to escape the regulation of the Venezuelan media law. In mid-2009 the Venezuelan media regulator CONATEL declared that cable broadcasters would be subject to the new media law if 70% or more of their content and operations were domestic.<92> In January 2010 CONATEL concluded that RCTV met that criterion (being more than 90% domestic according to CONATEL), and reclassified it as a domestic media source, and therefore subject to the requirements to broadcast state announcements, known as cadenas. Along with several other cable providers, RCTV refused to do so and was sanctioned with temporary closure. According to the government, in order to resume broadcasting it will need to register as a domestic media provider. Other sanctioned channels include the American Network, America TV and TV Chile. TV Chile, an international channel of Chilean state television, had failed to respond to a January 14 deadline for clarifying the nature of its content.<93> Cable network providers have been encouraged by the Venezuelan government to remove those channels that are found to be in violation of existing media regulations.<94>