Repretel 11
television station in San José, Costa Rica
Canal 11 is a private Costa Rican television channel, owned and operated by Repretel since 1996. It was the first station owned and operated by Repretel-Albavision group in Costa Rica.
History
It was founded in 1968 by Juan Edgar Picado Trejos and a US investor. Broadcasts started the following year as the first television station in Central America to broadcast in color, but the government temporarily restricted its license to operate by means of a presidential decree, causing a legal battle in the process. The decree stated that the investor was American and should have had a Costa Rican work permit, even though he wasn't working for the channel. After a few months, Televictoria won the appeal and resumed broadcasts. In 1971, its color broadcasts became regular, and, from 1974, full-time. The station was initially known as Televictoria (TV Victoria in some sources) and was renamed Canal 11 in 1973.
As an independent operation, the station had a news bulletin (Reporte 11), whose first director was Eduardo Enrique Leiva. On weeknights at 10pm, the station presented Telegatunas, hosted by Hugo Araya, a program devoted to celebrity gossip, and before sign-off, La Última Tanda, which presented vintage Hollywood movies.
“Repretel 11” enters the record as television station in San José, Costa Rica. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Repretel, television and station can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Repretel 11” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Repretel, television and station provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3427315. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1968, 1971 and 1974.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Repretel 11” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.