Once (formerly Once TV México and Canal Once) is a Mexican educational broadcast television network owned by National Polytechnic Institute. The network's flagship station is XEIPN-TDTchannel 11 in Mexico City. It broadcasts across Mexico through nearly 40 TV transmitters and is required carriage on all Mexican cable and satellite providers. The network also operates an international feed which is available in the United States and Venezuela via satellite from DirecTV and CANTV, via online from VEMOX, VIVOplay and also on various cable outlets, on "Latino" or "Spanish" tiers. Most of its programs are also webcast through the Internet, though its programming is not the same as the actual broadcasters or satellite signal.
History
The network began broadcasting on March 2, 1959, when its flagship station became the first non-profit educational and cultural television station in Mexico, owned and operated by a Mexican institution of higher education.[1] The television channel was conceived by Alejo Peralta y Díaz, the director of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional between 1956 and 1959, and supported by his successor Eugenio Méndez Docurro, as well as Secretary of Communications and Transportation Walter Cross Buchanan and Jaime Torres Bodet, Secretary of Public Education.[1][2] Its first broadcast was a mathematics class transmitted from a small television studio located at the Casco de Santo Tomás, in the northern part of Mexico City.[1]
In 1969, Canal Once was the first Mexico City TV station to relocate its transmitter to Cerro del Chiquihuite, in order to improve its signal. It would later be joined on the mountain by most of Mexico City's other television stations as well as several radio broadcasters. Around this time, Canal Once converted to color. By the 1980s, it already had four of its own studios.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Once TV (as the network had been renamed in 1997) embarked on a two-pronged expansion strategy. The IPN built transmitters in cities such as Cuernavaca and Tijuana in the late 1990s, and in the 2000s and early 2010s, it expanded to build in the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua. It also allied with state networks, such as those of Guerrero, Nayarit and Quintana Roo, providing them with Once TV programs. The launch of the Organismo Promotor de Medios Audiovisuales, now the Sistema Público de Radiodifusión del Estado Mexicano (SPR), in 2010 marked the beginning of a second expansion, which finally brought Once TV to such large cities as Guadalajara, Monterrey and Puebla.
Logo used from 2011 to 2013.
The SPR operates 26 transmitters to the IPN's 13, and all of them (with the exception of Mexico City) carry Canal Once as one of their subchannels.
In 2013, Once TV México returned to its original name of Canal Once as part of a branding refresh.[3]
In 2015, the IPN launched Once Niños, a subchannel of Canal Once featuring children's programming, which is available on all Canal Once transmitters operated by the IPN as well as on all Mexican cable systems. On December 31, 2015, Canal Once completed its digital television transition.
In July 2016, Olympusat added the channel to its OTT platform, VEMOX.[4][5]
Logo used from 2013 to 2019.
On January 23, 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador nominated senator José Antonio Álvarez Lima to serve as the new director of Canal Once.[6] marking his return to public media after 28 years away.[7] Álvarez was installed in that position in March.[7] He announced his resignation in late October 2020, in order to fill the Senate vacancy in his seat that resulted from the death of alternate senator Joel Molina Ramírez.[8] If Álvarez Lima had opted to remain at Canal Once, the vacancy would have triggered a special election for the seat.[9] He was replaced by 25-year-old Carlos Brito Lavalle, the youngest director in the station's history, who had previously helped coordinate the Aprende en Casa program and held other posts.[10]
In 2021, Canal Once was authorized a further 24 new transmitters, many to be co-sited with existing or new SPR installations.
Logos
1959-1986
1986-1990
1991-1996
1996-2007
2007-2011
2011-2013
2013-2019
2019–present
Once Niños Logos
2014-2016
2016-2020
2020–present
Programs
Canal Once produces a wide variety of cultural and educational programming. It also produces and airs Once Noticias national newscasts.
Canal Once has an extensive transmitter network owned by the IPN that is supplemented by the SPR transmitter network. All Canal Once transmitters, whether owned by the IPN or the SPR, use virtual channel 11.
Once Niñas y Niños is only available on Canal Once transmitters owned by the IPN and as the subchannel of one separately owned station, XHZHZ-TDT in Zacatecas, Zacatecas.[11] A third subchannel, known as Mente Abierta, was authorized for the IPN transmitter network in August 2020 but never launched.
One transmitter, in Cuernavaca, carries Canal Catorce as a subchannel under agreement with the SPR.
In 2017, the IPN was authorized for four additional transmitters; it surrendered the concession for one of the four, at Tepic, Nayarit, to the IFT in 2019.
Canal Once continues to supply programming to state networks, such as XHBZC-TDT in Baja California Sur. Some commercial stations in markets without public television air some Canal Once programming, notably XEJ-TDT in Ciudad Juárez and XEFE-TDT in Nuevo Laredo.
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