'El' Jazeera

Move over Al Jazeera, Telesur is here.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, tireless polemist and Bush nemesis, has a new pet project: a continent-wide television network slated for broadcast throughout South America in the coming weeks.

Telesur, or "Television of the South," aims to be a competitor of CNN, Univison and other global giants seen by southern neighbors as minions of American hegemony.

Described by its new director, Aram Aharonian, as South America's "first counter-hegemonic media project," Telesur reportedly has 20 employees but hopes to work its way up to at least 60. The Chavez government has coughed up $2.5 million for the project thus far and is permitting Telesur to operate as an affiliate of Venezuelan state television.

Telesur is painted in populist hues, befitting a World Social Forum keynoter. A kind of Al Jazeera of the South, the commercial-free, state-funded channel will beam news, documentaries and other programming with a uniquely Latin flavor. The network will be boosted by the presence of journalistic heavyweights -- among them, Jorge Enrique Botero, a well-known television producer known for his coverage of FARC rebels.

The vibe?

Forget coats, ties and corporate coif. Telesur's lead anchorwoman, Ati Kiwa, an indigenous Colombian woman, will deliver news while in native dress.

Telesur will compete for hearts and minds of viewers as a number of Latin American nations are leaning politically left, miffed both by Washington's neglect of the region and U.S.-backed neoliberal economic policies, widely seen as the cause of the devastating recessions of the early 2000s.

For Chavez, Telesur is about more than broadcasting. The continent's prime lobbyist for hemispheric cooperation as a counterbalance to U.S. power, the democratically-elected Chavez touts Telesur as a high-tech thread for binding regional cultures into a seamless fabric capable of balancing U.S. dominance.

He's found supportive ears.

In February, Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, committed his country, among other things, to buying up 20 percent of the company's initial equity stock, providing 100 hours of programming and using its satellites to beam Telesur across its territory. In Uruguay, one of the first acts of the country's new Socialist president, Tabare Vasquez, was to commit his nation to 10 percent of Telesur's start-up costs. And the Venezuelan government says Brazil and Cuba have agreed to share in programming and swap technical training.

Some say South America has long needed its own cultural conduit but they worry Telesur could devolve into a Chavista rant machine.

History bears warnings. Chavez, whom the Bush administration accuses of undemocratic behavior on several fronts, already uses Venezolana de Television, his country's state-run TV, to promote his agenda. The station gives Chavez a platform every Sunday in a one-man show called "Alo, Presidente."

But a new report by The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a Washington-based think tank, says Venezuelan state television only has 2 percent of market share. It's Venezuela's private media, which supported a 2002 coup against the former military colonel, that actually hogs market share. (Incidentally, the main media power in Venezuela is The Cisnero Group of Companies, owned by Gustavo Cisneros, one of Latin America's wealthiest men and a friend of George Bush, Sr.).

To help state TV better compete with folks like Cisneros, the Chavez government, according to the COHO report, plans to invest $56 million in its state run television enterprise (which will no doubt benefit Telesur).

Though Chavez needs Telesur to elbow in on private media, Nikolas Kozloff, the COHA analyst who authored the report, say it's not a forgone conclusion that Chavez will kidnap Telesur for his own ends.