Televisión Independiente de México

Televisión Independiente de México (Independent Mexican Television, known on air as TIM or Cadena TIM) was a Mexican national television network founded in 1965 by Eugenio Garza Sada. It operated until 1973, when it merged with its primary competitor, Telesistema Mexicano, owned by Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, to form the Televisa conglomerate. Televisa absorbed all of TIM's assets, including its television transmitters and its series, including pioneering programs such as El Chavo del Ocho.

TIM was founded not in Mexico City, which was the largest media market in the country, but in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, where Garza Sada already owned a brewery (Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, now part of Heineken) and a glass factory, among other assets. The goal of TIM was to provide an alternative to the television stations located in Mexico City, chiefly XEW-TV on channel 2, XHTV-TV on channel 4, and XHGC-TV on channel 5.

In Monterrey TIM received the channel 6 allocation, which it built as XET-TV. It then sought to enter other major Mexican markets before eventually targeting Mexico City, a task that had TIM building stations elsewhere. In Veracruz it built and signed on XHFM-TV channel 2, and in Puebla it created XHP-TV channel 3, placed midway between Veracruz and Mexico City. It was in Puebla that José Ramón Fernández, one of Mexico's pioneering sports journalists, got his start.

TIM finally entered Mexico City in 1967, in time for the 1968 Summer Olympics. In Mexico City, TIM received a concession for channel 8, which was given the callsign XHTM-TV. It built new facilities in the San Ángel neighborhood. TIM's entry into Mexico City put it into direct competition with Telesistema Mexicano, which had just been formed between Azcárraga, XHTV owner Romulo O'Farrill Jr., and the shares of the deceased Guillermo González Camarena (owner of XHGC), for viewers in the nation's capital.

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