TV Tupi Ribeirão Preto

TV Tupi Ribeirão Preto was a short-lived affiliate of TV Tupi set up by its parent company Diários Associados. It signed on in 1959 as the first television station built by the conglomerate outside of a state capital and shut down in 1963 due to a flood that damaged its transmitter. Since the station tried resuming its services after the flood, but wasn't broadcasting signals for a considerable amount of time, its license was declared peremptory.

History
In 1957, president Juscelino Kubitschek visited Ribeirão Preto. Accompanying him on his visit was Assis Chateaubriand. In a speech, Kubitschek announced that a television license was granted for the city, which was later revealed to be set up by Chateaubriand, who stood up to the microphone, saying that he was going to build the station. The first technical and commercial meetings happened in October 1958, and on December 2, 1959, the experimental broadcasts of the station started, with two nightly hours of local programming as well as relays from the parent station in São Paulo, who had built a microwave network since 1956. In an initial phase it shared the same frequency with the São Paulo station, which was on the verge of moving to channel 4 in August 1960.

Tupi had set up a company to exploit television signals in inland São Paulo in March 1959 (Rede de Televisão Associada do Interior). The São Paulo and Ribeirão Preto stations were connected by six static microwave stations out of the new TV Tupi building in São Paulo to that of the new station in Ribeirão Preto. Test broadcasts started in July 1959, with a first experiment conducted on July 30. It wasn't until February 1960 that broadcasts became regular.

Ribeirão Preto was a strategic location for the development of Associadas' plan to form a national network, and among those priorities, was the link from Ribeirão Preto to Brasília, the new federal capital. The task was very hard, as some of the microwave stations were placed in disparate geographical areas.

The station went off air in March 1963, after heavy rain damaged its transmitter. Since the station was operating at a shoestring, the São Paulo station decided to stop producing content for the area. A new tower was built to relay the São Paulo service, but the structure was never activated. Since the station was unable to generate programming for years on end, it lost its license. In the late 1960s, plans to reactivate the local station were enacted by locals, but the effort turned out to be futile, as it coincided with the beginning of the downfall of the Diários Associados conglomerate.

Despite the closure and the failed attempts at its revival, the station was still referenced in international directories as late as 1976.

The channel 3 allocation hasn't been given to Ribeirão Preto since its closure. One of Tupi's successors, who took over the frequency of the former TV Tupi São Paulo, has an owned-and-operated station in the city.

A book chronicling the station's history was released in 2015.