V-me
CountryUnited States
HeadquartersDoral, Florida
Programming
Language(s)Spanish
Picture format1080i (HDTV)
Ownership
OwnerV-me Media Inc.
Sister channelsVme Kids
Primo TV
History
LaunchedMarch 5, 2000 (2000-03-05)
Links
Websitewww.vmetv.com

V-me (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbeme], a pun on veme, "watch me" or "see me") is a Hispanic-Latino American Spanish-language television network, currently carried as an over-the-air public broadcasting network in association with public television stations. V-me airs a variety of programs, including comedy, music, science and technology, sports, soap operas, entertainment, juvenile, news and current affairs, food, reality shows, talk shows, lifestyle, nature, magazines, and educational pre-school content.

History

The 24-hour digital broadcast service was launched on March 5, 2000, with a stated mission to entertain, educate and inspire families in Spanish with a contemporary mix of original productions, exclusive premieres, acquisitions, and popular public television programs from PBS and American Public Television, specially adapted for American Latinos.[1][2]

The first venture of the media production and distribution company V-me Television Media Inc., it is a public-private partnership between WNET, a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, and the investment firm Baeza Group, the venture capital firm Syncom Funds, and Grupo PRISA from Spain, one of the world's largest Spanish and Portuguese-language media companies.[3][4] WNET is a minority partner in the for-profit venture.[1]

In April 2013, a Florida-based private investor group of Venezuelans (Eduardo Hauser, J. J. Rendón and Eligio Cedeño) took control of V-me Media, Inc., the U.S. Hispanic content and distribution company that owns Spanish-language network V-me and V-me Kids. Financial terms of the deal and the percentage of the ownership of the new investors was not disclosed. The V-me Board includes former AOL executive and founder and CEO of DailyMe.com Eduardo Hauser (chairman of the board), Syncom managing partner Terry Jones and WNET’s VP and general counsel Robert Feinberg.[5] V-me founder, Mario Baeza, stepped down as chairman, but will continue to have an ownership interest. LPM is the largest stakeholder in V-me.

Among the journalists who have worked for V-me are Jorge Gestoso, Juan Manuel Benitez, Luis Sarmiento, Alonso Castillo, Jackeline Cacho and Marián de la Fuente.

In December 2016, the network announced it would move V-me off PBS member stations and create V-me's own public television stations in 2017, following the expiration of the network's now 23-year contracts with many of these stations, and transition exclusively to being broadcast on 20 over-the-air affiliates and as a cable and satellite channel. Most of V-me's over-the-air PBS affiliates were dropped by March 31, 2017, and started to make its own public television affiliates; many of these affiliates had already chosen to replace V-me so it can have its own public TV stations and add a 24-hour PBS Kids channel, which launched on January 16, 2017.[6] V-me is still part of the Public Broadcasting Service and its own company but with its own public television stations.

The network has since pursued expanded cable carriage, along with distribution on AT&T U-verse, Dish Network and DirecTV and their associated streaming services, and the network was added nationwide at the start of October 2022 on Spectrum systems.[7]

Programming

The network broadcasts a variety of programming in Spanish:

  • Latino-focused lifestyle content: health, parenting, travel, food, home, design, self-improvement and sports programs
  • Prime time drama series
  • News and current affairs, with Oppenheimer Presenta and Jorge Gestoso Investiga
  • Nature documentaries from BBC, National Geographic and PBS
  • Latin films and TV miniseries
  • Original music series, like Estudio Billboard
  • Weekly arts and pop culture specials
  • Educational preschool programs in Spanish (40 hours a week)

Affiliates

See: List of V-me affiliates

References

  1. 1 2 Everhart, Karen (February 12, 2000). "Multicast channels crowd bitstream: V-me, in Spanish, joins options for stations' DTV broadcasts". Current. Archived from the original on February 11, 2011. Retrieved July 18, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Vme - About Us". Archived from the original on August 3, 2011. Retrieved July 18, 2011.
  3. ↑ Jensen, Elizabeth (February 7, 2000). "Public Television Plans A Network for Latinos" (PDF). The New York Times. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 24, 2011. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  4. ↑ Sefton, Dru (April 23, 2012). "PubTV multicaster V-me faulted for airing 'ordinary commercials'". Current. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  5. ↑ "BREAKING: Venezuelan Investors Buy Controlling Stake in Vme -". 18 April 2013.
  6. ↑ Sefton, Dru (December 14, 2016). "Spanish-language multicaster Vme will soon drop public TV service". Current. Archived from the original on December 29, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Vme TV Expands Its Distribution With Charter" (Press release). Vme Media, Inc. 27 September 2022. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
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