Television in Ecuador started by initiative of José Rosenbaum, a German Jew who fled to Ecuador to escape persecution by Nazi Germany. Together with his wife, Linda Zambrano, from Manabí, they travelled to a fair in
Hanover to buy equipment for the first television station. The station was initially set to be in
Quito, but due to lack of public awareness, the station moved to
Guayaquil. The first test broadcasts were conducted on September 29, 1959 in the facilities of Radio Cenit. In the same year, regular television broadcasts of
HCJB-TV, owned by the HCJB radio ministry, began in Quito. Its launch was marked by a lack of television regulations, which were officially imposed on December 5, 1959. Rosenbaum's station, Primera Televisora Ecuatoriana, started broadcasting on December 12, 1960. Owned by Organizaciones Norlop, it was later renamed Telecuador, during which it started (in 1962) the first fully-commercial television station in Quito (channel 6) in 1962. In the late 1960s, channel 2 in Guayaquil (part of the current
Ecuavisa network), founding and receiving its equipment in 1966 and starting broadcasts on March 1, 1967. The network gained a second station in Quito (channel 8) in 1970. In 1969, CETV (now TC Televisión) started broadcasting, being owned by La Filantrópica (later
Filanbanco). After receiving its color equipment order in February 1973, it started test broadcasts on November 5, 1973, becoming regular on February 22, 1974. The launch of Teleamazonas, whose national transmitting network was received in border areas of
Peru at launch, put Ecuador in fourth place in Latin America to introduce color television, after
Brazil, the
Dominican Republic and
Mexico. Before the first tests conducted by Teleamazonas, Ecuavisa was already broadcasting its first programs in color in June 1973, limited to imports. In 1977, Telenacional began broadcasting. ==Most viewed channels==