Telesur (officially stylized as teleSUR) is a Latin American terrestrial and satellite news television network headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela and sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua. It was launched in 2005, under the government of Hugo Chávez, promoted as "a Latin socialist answer to CNN". History The proposed alternative Latin American television network that would become Telesur took shape on 24 January 2005, as part of the projects approved in a council of ministers of the Venezuelan government. According to The Boston Globe, the Venezuelan government provided broadcasting facilities and 70% of Telesur's funds, with other leftist governments supporting the network as well. Telesur was advertised "as a Latin socialist answer to CNN." Telesur began broadcasting on a limited, four-hour schedule on 24 July 2005, on the 222nd birthday of Latin American leader Simón Bolívar. The network began full-time broadcasts on 31 October 2005. In 2009, Venezuela subsidized the launch of the communications satellite Venesat-1, in part to amplify Telesur's programming by enabling it to avoid geo-blocking efforts by DirectTV, an American company. The founder of Telesur was Aram Aharonian, a journalist and scholar, who left Uruguay after the 1973 coup d'etat. Aharonian stated that the idea of Telesur was "to see ourselves as we truly were", stating that he sought more diversity in the media. After Aharonian resigned from his position as the network's director in 2013, he commented in a 2014 interview that Telesur "did not achieve latinamericanization and continued to be Venezuelan". Sponsor countries La Nueva Televisora del Sur, C.A. is a public company which has various Latin American governments as its sponsors. Its primary sponsor is the Government of Venezuela; Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia have contributed as well. Argentina was its second main sponsor, but after the victory of big tent center-right coalition Cambiemos in the elections of 2015, the new government decided in 2016 to pull out allegedly because of a "lack of 'pluralism'." In June 2016, the Argentine government announced that it would no longer support Telesur broadcasting. Argentina became the first founding member of Telesur to discontinue participation, although Telesur content has been widely available in the country via internet, cable and satellite TV. Uruguay On 3 March 2005 Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez signed several agreements with then-recently elected Uruguayan president Tabaré Vázquez regarding the energetic and communicational integration of both countries, one of them being the joint