Venezuela steps up control of television, radio

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela is taking dozens of radio stations off the air and putting stricter rules on cable and satellite television, a minister said on Thursday, part of President Hugo Chavez's battle with private media firms.

Disodado Cabello, the public works minister who also oversees Venezuela's broadcasting watchdog, said 154 FM radio stations will be taken off the air and shifted into public hands in what he called "democratizing the airwaves."

He recently said 86 AM radio stations will also be hit as the government steps up efforts to turn Venezuela into a socialist society.

"The use of the radio-electric spectrum is one of the few areas where the revolution has not been felt," Cabello said in a presentation to legislators about the need for reform in the sector.

Since taking office a decade ago, Chavez has broken up large farms and nationalized important economic sectors including the oil industry.

Chavez and his supporters describe their drive to broadcast a pro-government message as a "media war" with private news companies. Venezuela's media is highly polarized with biased coverage the norm on both government and private networks.

The president has vastly expanded the number of publicly owned television and radio stations since he took office in 1999. Some are directly owned or financed by the government, while others are operated by cooperatives and community groups.

In 2007 Chavez did not renew the concession for a widely watched critical private TV station RCTV.

Cabello also announced plans to apply Venezuelan broadcasting regulations to cable and satellite television stations that produced more than a third of their content in the oil-exporting nation.

The new rules for subscription television seemed to be aimed specifically at RCTV, which now broadcasts only on cable.

RCTV was Venezuela's most popular television station, watched by millions because of its soap operas. The station was highly critical of Chavez and played an active role in a failed coup against him in 2002.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Patricia Rondon; Editing by Bill Trott)