1978–2000: Color television
Argentina hosted the 1978 FIFA World Cup. In order to allow for the event to be broadcast in color around the world, new color studio facilities were required; the country still had no color telecasts of its own. At the same time, there was unfinished construction in Buenos Aires; in the mid-1970s, prior to the coup of 1976, work had commenced on the Altar de la Patria (Altar of the Fatherland), which was to be a mausoleum for Eva and Juan Perón. A new innovative television center was built on the underground site for what was named Argentina 78 Televisora (A78TV), the television production center for the World Cup. The facility, situated on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, was Argentina's first dedicated television studio facility with features such as soundproofed studios. The center was outfitted with new Bosch Fernseh color equipment, which would be in service for decades. Among the various tasks that A78TV performed was the delivery of color live video to movie theaters over coaxial cable and export of color live video for worldwide coverage. However, just one match was broadcast in color to Argentina itself—the final match, between Argentina and the Netherlands—using the PAL-N color standard.
In 1979, Canal 7 took control of the new complex, and with it came a new name. On May 3, Canal 7 became Argentina Televisora Color (ATC), a name that would serve the channel for the remainder of the 20th century. Carlos Montero helped design the new channel's identity.
The investment in ATC paid off, and briefly in the early 1980s, before the rise of Alejandro Romay's Canal 9 Libertad, ATC led the national television ratings, a feat it has not accomplished since. As state network it brought news of the Falklands War of 1982 to Argentine TV viewers nationwide, with correspondents and news crews going into the actions of the conflict, and led a national publicity campaign in support of the war effort. Dubbed "Argentines, To Victory" (Argentinos, a Vencer), ATC and the national government produced several commercials for this campaign, and on the opening day of the war broadcast a special program dedicated to the conflict broadcast in all its stations nationwide, and, for the first time ever for an Argentine TV station, also in South American countries (save Uruguay) and the United States, via satellite broadcasts.
The 1990s were a more turbulent time for ATC. On one front, the Bosch Fernseh equipment, which was still the bulk of the channel's workflow, was aging, and replacement parts and fixes were getting harder to find. On another, under Carlos Menem, ATC was almost privatized and, in 1996, even had an unusual five-month change of identity to ATeCE, a la Argentina (ATeCE, to Argentina), with a new, more nationalist approach. The new logo was unveiled in February of that year, costing AR$60,000, and was designed by Orestes Lucero, coinciding with the introduction of a new schedule (due March and April) and the rename of its news operation to Pueblo Noticias (People News). According to ATeCE director Roberto Eliseo Llanini, the identity represented the Argentine flag, while the slogan has two interpretations: ATeCE as in "átése" (the correct spelling was "átése") as in "attach youself to Argentina" and becoming part of Argentina as a whole.[3]
