The television broadcaster Globovision, long critical of the Venezuelan government, has been excluded from government plans to switch broadcast formats from analog to digital, Reporters Without Borders said Friday.

Globovision, which is Venezuela's sole national television broadcaster that routinely criticizes the government, "has been excluded from a new system of Open Digital Television (TDA), which the government launched on February 20 in a televised announcement that all the broadcast media had to carry," the advocacy group reported.

"Under the TDA system, all TV stations currently broadcasting by means of an analogue signal will eventually have to switch to a digitally processed signal in order to continue operating," it said.