May 2013 4 World The Jornadas (days) of cable conferences and exhibition held annually in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will return to the Hilton Hotel September 25-27. This year Jornadas Internacionales will celebrate 50 years of cable TV in Argentina. Pictured at the right during the announcement are (from right): Walter Burzaco, president of the Association of Cable Television Argentina (ATVC), which organizes the event, with Eduardo Suárez, general manager of Argentina Chamber of Producers and Programmers Audiovisual Signals (CAPPSA). Also pictured is ATVC manager Laura Antoniazzo. In addition to the conference component, Jornadas will have its usual exposition area with 80 stands. Of the 20 seminars on the program, most concern the presentation of technical papers. The non-technical session topics span from regulations to piracy. The exhibition area will include such companies as Artear, BBC, Disney, Fox, HBO, RTVE, Telefe and Televisa, among other international TV content organizations. ATVC’sJornadasSets Calendar Date Pay-TV in LATAM Colombia has the highest pay-TV penetration rate in Latin America, with eight out of 10 households subscribing to cable service, said Miami, Florida-based Latin American Multichannel Advertising Council (LAMAC) in a report. Pay-TV grew 23 percent in the past five years in Colombia, reaching 84.4 percent of the population, the study reported based on figures from the IBOPE market research firm. Argentina, the former leader in LATAM,isnownumbertwo,with a penetration rate of 83 percent of households; followed by Chile, with 60 percent; Mexico, with 44 percent; and Brazil, with a 40 percent penetration rate. On average, the pay-TV penetrationrate inLatinAmerica as a whole is around 50 percent. Cable television customers have been growing in Latin America due to competition between cable providers, opening the way formore offerings andaffordable pricing, LAMAC reported. Colombia has experienced its highest growth in pay-TV subscribers in the middle and lower socioeconomic segments of the market. Channels Seek Basic Carriage Last month, the Canadian Radio-television and Te l e commun i c a t i on s Commissionstarteda two-week period of hearings from over 20 companies seeking “mustcarry” status, i.e. mandatory placement for their channels in basic digital cable packages so that they will be guaranteed subscriber fees. The main contenders include Sun News, a channel featuring “hard news and straight talk” that has been suffering heavy losses; Vision Television, whose programming has, according to its critics, seemingly moved away from its original faithbased mandate; and Starlight, a proposed new channel asking Canadian subscribers to pay 43 cents per month for a channel dedicated completely to Canadian cinema.
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