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Venezuela President Hugo Chavez - Source: ONE News -
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Venezuela is taking dozens of radio stations off the air and
putting stricter rules on cable and satellite television, a
minister said, part of President Hugo Chavez's battle with private
media firms.
Disodado Cabello, the public works minister who also oversees
Venezuela's broadcasting watchdog, said 154 FM radio stations will
be taken off the air and shifted into public hands in what he
called democratizing the airwaves.
He recently said 86 AM radio stations will also be hit as the
government steps up efforts to turn Venezuela into a socialist
society.
"The use of the radio-electric spectrum is one of the few areas
where the revolution has not been felt," Cabello said in a
presentation to legislators about the need for reform in the
sector.
Since taking office a decade ago, Chavez has broken up large farms
and nationalized important economic sectors including the oil
industry.
Chavez and his supporters describe their drive to broadcast a
pro-government message as a "media war" with private news
companies.
Venezuela's media is highly polarized with biased coverage the
norm on both government and private networks.
The president has vastly expanded the number of publicly owned
television and radio stations since he took office in 1999.
Some are directly owned or financed by the government, while
others are operated by cooperatives and community groups.
In 2007 Chavez did not renew the concession for a widely watched
critical private TV station RCTV.
Cabello also announced plans to apply Venezuelan broadcasting
regulations to cable and satellite television stations that
produced more than a third of their content in the oil-exporting
nation.
The new rules for subscription television seemed to be aimed
specifically at RCTV, which now broadcasts only on cable.
RCTV was Venezuela's most popular television station, watched by
millions because of its soap operas.
The station was highly critical of Chavez and played an active role in a failed coup against him in 2002.
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