Sistema Nacional de Televisión owns the following channels in Nicaragua:
- Canal 6 Nicaragüense, a television channel owned and operated by the Government of Nicaragua through a company called Nepisa. It was established in 1957 by the family of the Nicaraguan president at the time, Anastasio Somoza Garcia. In 1979, when the Somoza regime was toppled by the Sandinistas, Canal 6 was nationalized, being embedded in the Sistema Sandinista de Televisión, the country’s state-owned broadcasting group. In 1997, the channel was declared bankrupt. In 2011, the government restored Canal 6’s broadcasting.
- Televisora Nicaragüense, known as TN8 or TeleNica, a nationwide television channel that was founded by the Nicaraguan businessman Carlos Briceño. The channel used to be known as a quality broadcaster with programs spanning all television genres, including news, information programs, sports, movies and entertainment. However, following the sale of the channel in 2010 to a group of investors that is believed to include members of the family of Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president, the channel has massively changed its editorial line, becoming openly supportive of the country’s presidency.
- Canal 4, a television channel operated by the company Intrasa, which took it over from another company, Nueva Imagen, S.A., in which FSLN has a stake.
- Viva Nicaragua Canal 13, a Managua-headquartered channel that offers a generalist program, which includes newscasts and information.
- Canal 15 Nicaragüense, a television channel specialized in educational and cultural content, launched in 2011.
- La Rock 22, a radio station founded in 2020.
Media assets
Television: Canal 6, Canal 8, Canal 4 Multinoticias, Viva Nicaragua, Canal 15 Nicaraguense
Radio: La Rock 22
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
The television outlets operated by Sistema Nacional de Televisión are fully controlled by the Presidency and FSLN through people appointed on the management boards of the company who in most cases are members of the Ortega family. Daniel Edmundo and Carlos Enrique, two of the sons of the president Ortega manage Canal 4. Another son of the president, Juan Carlos, manages Canal 8 and the newly launched La Rock 22. Camilia, Luciana and Maurice, three other children of the president, run Viva Nicaragua.
Canal 6 is officially operated by the government. The channel is controlled by the Presidency, which makes all the decisions related to the governing of Canal 6. Besides Canal 6, all the stations now run by Sistema Nacional de Televisión are former private channels that were taken over by people close to the Presidency, mostly companies controlled by the FSLN, which is where the power in Nicaragua is concentrated. For example, David Pereira, an FSLN-affiliated entrepreneur, bought Canal 4 in 2017. Canal 8 has been owned since 2010 by a group of investors that includes Juan Carlos Ortega, one of the sons of the President Daniel Ortega. The channel was purchased with funding from a government cooperation scheme between Nicaragua and Venezuela. (Juan Carlos Ortega is also the director of Canal 8.) Viva Nicaragua was taken over from its previous owners by Sistema Nacional de Televisión following a dispute over the station’s ownership. Canal 15 Nicaragüense was launched by the government in 2018 to operate on the frequency of 100% Noticias, an independent broadcaster, according to data from local journalists.
Source of funding and budget
The television outlets operated by Sistema Nacional de Televisión are financed in a proportion of over 50% from the state budget. Some of the channels in the group, such as Canal 6, draw their funding almost entirely from the state budget. Canal 8 regularly receives funding from the government, mostly in the form of state advertising, which accounts for more than half of its total turnover, according to local journalists.
Editorial independence
Led by people close to the Ortega family, the television channels part of Sistema Nacional de Televisión are closely following an editorial line that promotes the country’s government. Most of the independent reporting programs that were aired on the channels taken over by the government in the past decade have been canceled in the meantime and their journalists quit. One of Canal 8’s most outspoken journalists, Carlos F. Chamorro, who directed the channel’s Sunday TV news program Esta Semana, left the station right after the purchase of the station in 2010, making a series of accusations against the outlet’s new owners. Local experts and journalists said that the group that bought the channel is linked with the business arm of the FSLN.
No domestic statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism to validate the editorial independence of the channels run by Sistema Nacional de Televisión have been identified.
August 2023