Chavez's pet station, a ratings failure.

In late May, Venezuela's private television station Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) was replaced by state-funded Televisora Venezolana Social, or TVes (see VideoAge's May 2007 issue for more details). The name is pronounced "te ves," which means "you see yourself" in Spanish.

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reportedly pulled the plug on the popular RCTV due to the station's harsh criticism of the government. Chavez accused RCTV of supporting a coup against him in April 2002, as well as an oil strike in 2002-2003.

After going off the air, RCTV started broadcasting on cable, satellite and even over the Internet.

Chavez hopes the new station, TVes, will usher in a government-approved era in Venezuelan broadcasting. The 24-hour channel, which broadcasts sports, children's programming, movies, news, music, drama and cartoons, began broadcasting with the national anthem, and continues to play the anthem three times a day every day (at 6 a.m., noon and midnight).

The Venezuelan government claims that the new station aims to portray the identity of Venezuelans, but according to general news reports, TVes hasn't caught on with actual Venezuelans. The station has even struggled to reach 10 percent of RCTV's viewers.