AP, 10 Feb 2013, Andrea Rodriguez: "There have been some strange sights on Cuban TV sets recently. News-starved viewers watched an Ecuadorean opposition candidate liken the government of President Rafael Correa, one of Havana's staunchest allies, to a moonwalking Michael Jackson: He walks like he's moving ahead, but he's actually going backward. On another day Cubans learned a quarter-billion of their fellow Latin Americans have access to the Internet – something less than 10 percent of islanders can say themselves. Cubans even watched a live broadcast of U.S. President Barack Obama's inaugural address. Such images would be unremarkable in most countries, but they're a break from the stodgy, tightly scripted state-run television that has long been the only fare in Cuba, with its mind-numbing tributes to efficiency, constant diatribes against the U.S. economic embargo and remembrances of minor anniversaries from the early years of the 1959 revolution. The change has come not from U.S.-funded TV Marti, which few Cubans can see, but via the left-leaning Latin American news channel Telesur, which is bankrolled primarily by Venezuela. Since Jan. 20, it has broadcast live about 12 hours a day in Cuba. Telesur's outlook may be sympathetic to Cuba's socialist model, but it's still a relatively unfiltered news source, and many say the decision to carry it here is as groundbreaking as other recent reforms, such as legalizing more private businesses and allowing greater travel freedom."

Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 30 Jan 2013, Alejandro Tur Valladares: "Gualdo Ramírez, who represents teleSUR in Cuba ... noted that teleSur seeks to disseminate the ideas of the Bolivarian Revolution, the movement led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez."

Huffington Post, 22 Jan 2013, Yoani Sanchez, Cuban blogger: "The 'leaked' satellite TV or the biased vision of TeleSUR are not, today, our only choices. For months now the alternative market offerings have been widening, with collections that join documentaries and series. A kind of on-demand television, a programming for every taste, distributed on digital media such as hard drives and USB flash memories."

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