El Tiempo is a nationally distributed broadsheetdaily newspaper in Colombia launched on January 30th, 1911., El Tiempo has the highest circulation in Colombia with an average daily weekday of 1,137,483 readers, rising to 1,921,571 readers for the Sunday edition. After longtime rival El Espectador was reduced to a weekly publication following an internal financial crisisin 2001, El Tiempo enjoyed monopoly status in Colombian media as the only daily that circulated nationally, as most smaller dailies have limited distribution outside their own regions. However, El Espectador returned to the daily format on May 11, 2008. From 1913 to 2007, El Tiempo's main shareholders were members of the Santos Calderón family. Several also participated in Colombian politics: Eduardo Santos Montejo was President of Colombia from 1938 to 1942. Francisco Santos Calderón served as Vice-President. And Juan Manuel Santos as Defense Minister during Álvaro Uribe's administration. The latter was elected president in 2010. In 2007, SpanishGrupo Planeta acquired 55% of the Casa Editorial El Tiempomedia group, including the newspaper and its associated TV channel Citytv Bogotá. In 2012, businessman Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo bought the shares of Planeta, the Santos family and other small shareholders, becoming the only owner of the newspaper.
History
The newspaper was founded in 1911 by Alfonso Villegas Restrepo. In 1913 it was purchased by his brother-in-law, Eduardo Santos Montejo. From then until 2007, El Tiempo's main shareholders were members of the Santos family, as part of the media conglomerate Casa Editorial El Tiempo. In 2007, the Spanish Grupo Planeta obtained majority ownership of the daily, but in 2012 sold majority ownership to Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo who now owns 86% of El Tiempo. Between 2001 and 2008, due to El Espectador being published as a weekly newspaper, it was Colombia's only national daily newspaper.
On Sundays there are special sections. For about 3 years it published every Sunday a special section with a weekly selection of articles from The New York Times, translated into Spanish and using the same pictures. This section was dropped in January 2008 and since August 2008 it has been published by rival newspaper El Espectador. El Tiempo is part of Grupo de Diarios América, an organization of eleven leading newspapers from eleven Latin American countries.
