Telecanal is a Chilean privately owned TV channel, launched on Monday, December 5, 2005, six years and four days after the end of the transmissions of Canal 2, whose broadcast hours required by law were covered by slots paid for by the evangelical ministry VidaVisión. Its offices and studios are located in the Sanhattan neighborhood of Las Condes and is owned by Canal Dos, S.A., a company with connections to Albavisión, owners of La Red. On May 4, 2026, the CNTV unanimously declared the total expiry of Canal Dos S.A.’s digital broadcasting concessions, citing repeated and serious breaches of technical, administrative, and legal requirements. In its last 2 days on air from May 12, Telecanal operated as a pirate television station without a valid broadcasting license.
At its launch, Telecanal offered alternative programming for the local industry. However, during its first years of broadcasting it left behind its original offer, reducing its in-house programs and limiting itself to broadcasting foreign programming. Much of the output has already been broadcast by La Red since both channels belong to the Albavisión group; therefore, both are the only broadcast television channels in Chile that have the same owner, even though national legislation and regulatory entities have blocked this ownership situation in other similar cases, including the one that led to the bankruptcy of the previous owner of the channel 2 frequency in 1999.
Its biggest competitors are its sister channel La Red and TV+, being the three channels with the lowest audience reception in the country. It currently airs in Santiago on VHF channel 2, and digital terrestrial television since 2021.
Since the early morning of June 16, 2025, Telecanal has ceded almost its entire broadcast schedule to the foreign channel Russia Today in Spanish, as Canal Dos S.A. signed an agreement with the Mexican company Unimedios. Through this agreement, it rebroadcasts up to 23.5 hours of RT content daily, limiting its own programming to only brief half-hour segments each day. The contract stipulates that Unimedios assumes responsibility for the content, indemnifies Canal Dos against any potential penalties, and can manage the RT rebroadcast without administrative access to the television slots, at least formally.
However, the CNTV considers that these events could constitute a de facto transfer of control and use of the television signal to a third party, which is prohibited by Article 16 of Law 18.838. It is noted that Canal Dos would be relinquishing its autonomy and individuality as a concessionaire, essentially acting as a repeater of foreign programming.
On February 5, 2026, the National Television Council of Chile announced the maximum administrative sanction for retransmitting and completely changing its programming to that of the Russian channel RT, this sanction consists of the suspension of broadcasting for 7 days, having a working period of 5 days, until February 12, to carry out the above indicated. Despite the above, Telecanal did not comply with the suspension, and continued broadcasting continuously, even after the deadline for the interruption of broadcasting had expired. The arrangement Telecanal had with Unimedios ended prematurely after it accepted a CNTV decision to suspend the channel from midnight on April 18 for the period of one week.
Finally, on April 17, 2026, it was announced that the agreement with Unimedios for the retransmission of RT would be terminated early, and it would also comply with the CNTV sanction of suspending its broadcasts for one week, which took place at midnight on April 18 of the same year.
On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, Telecanal relaunched, broadcasting packaged content and infomercials from Antena 3 Directo (A3D), but only on cable television, on the cable operators VTR, Claro and Movistar, from which the channel was already previously available., However, as of July 22, the signal went black, and days later it was displaying color bars due to the loss of the image from the Amazonas 4a satellite service.
History Background Originally, channel 2 in Santiago was used by the high-power repeater station of Televisión Nacional de Chile operating from Cerro El Roble (border between the Metropolitan Region and the Valparaíso Region) to relay its signal to other localities. This had to be technically modified to give frequencies to the broadcasts of a new channel in Santiago.
The eventual winner became Compañía Chilena de Comunicaciones, who, by associating itself with Estudio Visión (as CCC had no resources to produce content for television), began Canal 2 Rock & Pop, based on the existing radio station of the same name. However, the channel started facing a series of financial crises and lack of ratings, as well as the sale of the license in 1998 to Canal 2, S.A., which in 1999, began broadcasting VidaVisión, an evangelical channel, during daytime hours. On the early hours of December 1, 1999, Rock & Pop's programming on the station closed, facing moments of tension between employees and staff, and a replacement service (Canal 2) took over with a minimal eight-hour schedule and slots from the VidaVisión network.
VidaVisión was an evangelical channel created by Christian media professionals led by Alejandro Martínez (born Santiago in 1965 and became a born-again Christian in 1984),Alejandro Nelson Martínez Véliz who created two local Christian stations, Gospel TV (first Christian television station in Chile), RTV (La Roka TV) and a kids channel on VTR, Rainbow Club (first Chilean kids channel, later renamed The Fun Channel). Around early 2001, VidaVisión rented over 100 hours per month on Canal 2's frequencies.QUE ES VIDA VISION
In August 2001, the station was renting from 5pm to midnight. Alejandro Martínez said that the station was "not an evangelical channel" but a general profile station. Due to its beliefs, it had to omit the promotion of gambling from its programming. It initially did not aim to have a newscast in a first phase, but would offer one by 2002. The channel also aired safe, violent-free cartoons and planned a children's program similar to Cachureos but avoiding all acts of violence. There were also programs dedicated to the evangelical music scene, and Grupo Cooperativa went to the United States on purpose to obtain know-how from Christian television stations there.Evangélicos se la juegan por televisión abierta, El Mercurio, August 12, 2001 VidaVisión started to rent studios from Edu Comunicaciones (now Televisión Interactiva), who at the time controlled Vía X, Zona Latina, and ARTV to remain on the air for at least 8 hours per day by law to avoid forfeiture of its signal. As a result, religious programming ended up coping with the full extent of daily transmissions.
On February 17, 2004, VidaVisión lost its studios at Alameda 2520 under the grounds that it lacked the technical conditions to operate as a television station. Work evaluated at CL$100 million to continue operating from its extant facilities was made, but its staff was unaware that its operations were on the verge of closing. As consequence, the staff had to start producing its programming from the streets.
Launch (2005–2010) In July 2005, Compañía Chilena de Comunicaciones, the owner of the frequency, announced that it would sell the channel 2 concession to Inversiones Alfa Tres SA, led by Jaime Cuadrado (former commercial manager of Canal 13 and personal friend of Don Francisco) for CLP 2.7 million. The VidaVisión programming had left Canal 2's signal and was replaced by color bars.Vidavisión... ¿pa' la casa?
The sale became final in September of that year. That same month, Telecanal began its test phase, in which it only aired corporate promotions for the channel, as well as revealing the channel's logo and slogan for eight hours a day (especially overnight), to comply with the Chilean regulations. In that video, the faces of the channel and the planned programming were revealed, which was different than the one that was planned. On October 27, Alfa Tres acquired the frequencies formerly used by the Telenorte network which operated between Arica and La Serena.
The channel began its official broadcasts on Monday, December 5, 2005, but only on terrestrial television. Negotiations with VTR were underway in order to enable the channel to be seen by its subscriber base of 750,000. Its broadcasts through cable television began on January 1, 2006, through the networks of VTR and on January 10 on Coltrahue TV, in June, the channel began broadcasting on satellite through Telefónica TV Digital and in December through Gtd, on 23 March 2010, it reached Claro TV's cable network.
Initially, the channel had small live slots of no more than 30 minutes in length, while the bulk of its programming was based on foreign series, cartoons (Telemonitos), films, and telenovelas, mainly from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. Launch titles included Soy Gitano, La Mentira and Privilegio de amar. Its limited local programming consisted of Casi a las 12 (women's interest program), Canal abierto (discussion program) and a youth co-production called NFK2 (pronounced "enfocados") presented by Paloma Aliaga and Daniel Valenzuela. The Telemonitos strand included foreign animated series such as Sinbad, Sitting Ducks and Timon and Pumbaa, interspersed by local studio segments with Lidia Gutiérrez. With just one year on air, new programs came to light such as the sports program Como en la radio, the magazine Cocinados, and the talk show Canal Abierto. Among their main faces were Daniel Valenzuela, Carolina Correa, Milton Millas, and Carla Ballero.
It was the most technologically advanced television station in Chile at the time of its launch. Jaime Cuadrado was appointed as its director in order to avoid La Red from controlling the station, which was a violation of CNTV laws. The channel did, however, gain access to La Red's back catalog of imported series. A similar arrangement existed between La Red and Canal 13, in which Canal 13 acquired titles and it and La Red shared revenues. The scheme used to set up its operations was similar to the planned buying of Red Global in Peru.
In mid-October 2008, as a result of the worldwide financial crisis, the television company decided to remove a large part of its national programming, which was mostly carried out by external producers, leaving its most emblematic program "Cocinados" on the screen, together with Conspiración Copano, Hiperconectados, Pago x ver, Pura noche and Mundo Motor. Its newscast, En Línea, was transferred to 11pm with a half-hour edition, while the films that occupied the primetime slots in "Cine de Estrellas", were moved to 8pm.
2009 started with the return of Pura Noche but with Alfredo Alonso as its host, who joins the station, as well as Krishna Navas, who later would have her talk show with female themes ("Only them"), along with Pamela Díaz, Liliana Ross and Matilda Svensson. "Jugados" and "Actualidad central" were also created.
As of April 2009, the network's reach increased its coverage towards the Chilean Antarctic.
On 16 November 2009, the station's first late show debuted, "Influencia Humana" (with Jorge Castro de la Barra), which incorporated Pablo Zúñiga into the channel. The slot was well received by the public, and key national personalities were interviewed, such as presenters Felipe Camiroaga and Vivi Kreutzberger.
Early 2010s In early January 2010, Telecanal dispatched a journalist, Sergio Molleda, for Anatel's presidential debate. A few days after the debate, the news service "En Línea" stopped broadcasting. In late February, "Influencia Humana" was canceled and weeks later, the same thing happened with "Only They", and again, the programming focused on canned foreign content.