La 1 (Spanish TV channel)

La 1 (Spanish pronunciation: [la ˈuno], The One) is a Spanish free-to-air television channel owned and operated by Televisión Española (TVE), the television division of state-owned public broadcaster Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). It is the corporation's flagship television channel and is known for broadcasting mainstream and generalist programming, including Telediario news bulletins, prime time drama, cinema and entertainment, and major breaking news, sports and special events.

La 1

Country	Spain
Broadcast area	Nationwide, Andorra, Gibraltar, also parts of France and Portugal
Network	Televisión Española (TVE)
Headquarters	Prado del Rey, Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid)
Programming
Language(s)	Spanish
Picture format	4K UHDTV HDR^[a] (downscaled to 1080i for the HDTV feed)
Ownership
Owner	Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE)
Sister channels	La 2 Clan 24h Teledeporte TVE Internacional Star TVE HD
History
Launched	28 October 1956; 67 years ago (1956-10-28)
Former names	TVE (1956–65) TVE-VHF (1965–66) Primera Cadena (1966–76) TVE 1 (1976–91) La Primera (1991–2007)
Links
Website	rtve.es/television
Availability
Terrestrial
Digital terrestrial television	Spain: Depends on each province Andorra: 45
Streaming media
RTVE.es	Live (Only in Spain)

History

It was launched on 28 October 1956 as the first regular television service in Spain. It was the only one until 15 November 1966, when TVE launched a second channel. As TVE held a monopoly on television broadcasting in the country, they were the only television channels until the first regional public television station was launched on 16 February 1983, when Euskal Telebista started broadcasting in the Basque Country. Commercial television was launched on 25 January 1990, when Antena 3 started broadcasting nationwide.

The channel was initially simply referred to as "Televisión Española" until the launch of its second channel in 1966. Since then it received other names, such as "Primera Cadena", "Primer Programa", "TVE-1", "TVE1" or "La Primera" until it adopted its current name "La 1" (La uno) in 2008. Its headquarters and main production center is Prado del Rey in Pozuelo de Alarcón. Although almost all its programming is in Spanish and is the same for all of Spain, TVE has territorial centers in every autonomous community and produces and broadcasts some local programming in regional variations in each of them, such as local news bulletins, in the corresponding co-official language.^[1]

On 1 January 2010, TVE stopped broadcasting commercial advertising on all its channels, with only self promotions, institutional campaigns and sponsorships allowed.^[2]

With analog service discontinued on 3 April 2010, it has only been available free-to-air through the digital terrestrial television (DTT) ever since. La 1 and Teledeporte started their DDT HDTV resolution simulcasts on 31 December 2013, initially in 720p and later in 1080i.^[3] With standard-definition feed discontinued on 11 February 2024, the UHDTV regular simulcast in 4K resolution was launched nationwide.^[4]

Logos and identities

•  
  first logo; 1956 to 1962
•  
  1962 to 1983
•  
  1982 to 1990
•  
  1984
•  
  1989 to 1991
•  
  1991 to 1992^[5]
•  
  1992 to 1994
•  
  1994 to 2003
•  
  2003 to 2007^[6]
•  
  In use since 2008
•  
  Variation of the logo for the HD signal between 2014 and 2019
•  
  Variation of the logo for the UHD signal since 2024

Criticism and controversy

Due to its status as a public service and pioneer television channel in Spain, La 1 has been criticized on numerous occasions for aspects related to its programming. Within TVE's offer, the first channel has been characterized by a general offer that competes directly with a private television, relegating any alternative or public service space to La 2.^[7] This practice has been maintained even after the withdrawal of advertising in 2010.

The Association of Viewers and Radio Listeners (ATR) denounced in 2005 that La 1 had been the channel that had broken the Self-regulation Code on Television Content and Children the most times, a total of 169 times.^[8] For its part, the management of the channel assured that many of the documented complaints had been based on "subjective criteria".^{[9][10][11][12]}

Since 2014, there has been a debate on television schedules in Spain: for reasons of screen share, prime time has been delayed in recent years until 10:30 p.m. and many programs ended at dawn.^[13] That same year, TVE signed an agreement with the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality for a "healthy use of television", which implied bringing forward the programming hours and ending them before 00:00.^[14] However, La 1 has not fulfilled the commitment in its prime time and some spaces such as the MasterChef Celebrity final have even ended at two in the morning.

Information Services

One of the most controversial aspects is the work of information services. The appointment of the presidency of RTVE, responsible in turn for the rest of the departments, has historically depended on the Congress of Deputies by absolute majority, without the need for consensus.^[15] For this reason, it is considered that the editorial line of the Telediario, the news program with the most audience in the entire group has been tilted in favor of the government in power, both during the Franco's dictatorship and in current democratic Spain.^[16][17] There have been denunciations of disinformation in the governments of Adolfo Suárez,^[18][19] Felipe González,^[20][21] José María Aznar,^[22][23] in the latter case including a sentence from the National Court for "violation of trade union rights" in the news coverage of the 2002 general strike.^[24][25]

The government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero changed the system for electing the presidency of RTVE in 2006, through a consensus of two-thirds of Congress, with the intention of granting more independence to the information services.^[26] However, Mariano Rajoy's executive recovered the previous model in 2012 to resolve the power vacuum in the radio station. Since then, the TVE News Council (made up of the house's employees) has reported more than 70 cases of alleged malpractice on the newscast and on the weekly report, all of them related to current affairs:^[27] the various cases of corruption affecting the Popular Party,^[28] the Bárcenas case, the focus of the pro-sovereignty process in Catalonia,^{[29][30][31][32]} or the positioning of news in the rundown.^[33][34] In addition, some journalists have denounced the gestation of a "parallel newsroom" to which the most sensitive information would be entrusted.^[35]

In September 2017, the Cortes Generales approved a new election system on RTVE that recovered the previous consensus model and established a public contest for the election of the presidency.^[36] The new system was applied in February 2021, after three years of temporary administration of a sole provisional administrator.^{[37][38][39][40]}

Notes

1. The UHD upscaled broadcast of La 1’s high definition signal includes the transmission of some native contents produced in UHD-4K, but lacks the regional opt-outs.

References

1. "TVE Activities". RTVE. 14 December 2020.
2. G. Gómez, Rosario (16 July 2009). "TVE dejará de emitir publicidad en 2010". El País (in Spanish). Madrid: Prisa. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
3. "Televisión Española comienza el año 2014 en Alta Definición". RTVE (in Spanish). 30 December 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
4. "La 1 UHD has already started its DTT broadcasts, it will be necessary to retune Teledeporte". mundoplus.tv (in Spanish). 11 February 2024.
5. Although the official one changed in 1992, this logo continued to be used as the channel bug until 2003.
6. The channel bug had the TVE branding at the bottom and three-dimensional effects.
7. Carcar, Santiago (24 June 1996). "Polémica sobre 'la herencia' en RTVE". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
8. "TVE y Antena 3 rechazan las conclusiones del informe de la ATR y aseguran que cumplen el código". Vertele (in Spanish). 5 December 2005. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
9. "El PSOE preguntará en el Congreso por el "tongo" de Eurovisión". ELMUNDO (in Spanish). 14 February 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
10. "Vertele - Información sobre televisión, series y programas de TV". vertele.eldiario.es. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
11. Elvira, Álvaro P. Ruiz de (22 February 2017). "Telebasura punta". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
12. "Las "mejores" perlas del debate sobre acoso de Carlos Herrera". Vanity Fair (in European Spanish). 5 November 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
13. 20minutos (14 May 2014). "'Prime time': apagar la televisión a las 23 horas en lugar de pasar la noche en vela". www.20minutos.es - Últimas Noticias (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
14. FormulaTV. "TVE crea un distintivo para señalizar los programas que finalicen antes de medianoche". FormulaTV (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
15. RTVE.es (20 April 2012). "El Gobierno cambia la ley para elegir al presidente de RTVE". RTVE.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
16. Aguilar, Miguel Ángel (4 December 2006). "¡Vivan las cadenas!". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
17. "La RTVE mutante del control mediático". www.elsaltodiario.com. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
18. Gavela, Daniel (6 March 1980). "TVE: vergüenza andaluza". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
19. "Siete meses para iniciar el cambio de imagen de los medios audiovisuales del Estado". El País (in Spanish). 15 August 1981. ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
20. "Escándalo en TVE: las siglas 'PSOE' aparecieron en la repetición de un 'gol' de la selección española en el telediario de Enric Sopena". La Hemeroteca del Buitre (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
21. Ibañez, Juan González (21 September 1988). "Pilar Miró defiende que se dediquen 20 minutos de un telediario a Felipe González". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
22. Baragaño, Techu (11 July 2003). "Urdaci reconoce que los informativos de TVE han perdido credibilidad". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
23. Gómez, Rosario G. (26 February 2004). "Aznar habló de la guerra de Irak en el 'Telediario-2' tres veces más que Zapatero". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
24. "La Audiencia Nacional condena a TVE por su cobertura informativa de la huelga general". El País (in Spanish). 24 July 2003. ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
25. SER, Cadena (16 October 2003). "Urdaci lee en el Telediario la condena por manipular la información de la huelga general". Cadena SER (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
26. "Reformas Zapatero". El País (in Spanish). 15 May 2004. ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
27. Olmo, Jaime (10 August 2017). "El Consejo de Informativos de TVE denuncia 70 casos de manipulación y censura entre abril y junio". infoLibre (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
28. Moraga, Carmen (15 October 2014). "Los trabajadores de TVE denuncian niveles de manipulación y censura informativa "sangrantes"". elDiario.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
29. "Los trabajadores de TVE protestan por la "censura y manipulación" de los audios de Fernández". ElNacional.cat (in Spanish). 23 June 2016. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
30. "Piden la comparecencia de Gundín en el consejo de RTVE por la cobertura del 1-O". El Español (in Spanish). 2 October 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
31. "Los periodistas catalanes de RTVE denuncian la "manipulación indigna" del 1-O". El Plural (in Spanish). 3 October 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
32. SER, Cadena (13 November 2017). "TVE tendrá que dar explicaciones por usar la canción de 'El Exorcista' mientras hablaba Puigdemont en Informe Semanal". cadena SER (in European Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
33. Camazón, Laura Uche, Alba (26 August 2017). "Dieciséis ejemplos de propaganda, censura y manipulación en TVE". elDiario.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
34. "El telediario de TVE esconde la noticia de las pruebas "abrumadoras" de la caja B del PP". Vertele (in Spanish). 25 October 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
35. "TVE paga más de 300.000 euros a la 'redacción paralela' de Informativos". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). 17 March 2016. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
36. AGENCIAS, RTVE es / (21 September 2017). "El Congreso da luz verde a la nueva Ley de RTVE". RTVE.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
37. "El relevo del presidente de RTVE, paralizado por la falta de acuerdo en el Congreso". ELMUNDO (in Spanish). 29 November 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
38. Moraga, Carmen (23 January 2018). "Los partidos que deben consensuar la renovación de RTVE tiran la toalla". Vertele (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
39. "Concurso público para la selección de los miembros del Consejo de Administración y del Presidente de RTVE - Congreso de los Diputados". www.congreso.es. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
40. RTVE, PRENSA (27 July 2018). "Rosa María Mateo, elegida por el Congreso administradora provisional única de RTVE". RTVE.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 February 2023.

External links

• Official site (in Spanish)