The channel's successor, Chavez-backed TVes, began broadcasting its own programming minutes later.
As 53-year-old RCTV was about to fade into history, network president Marcel Granier told US-based Univision television that Chavez was driven by "a megalomaniacal desire to establish a totalitarian dictatorship.
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Police used water cannon dispersed thousands of stone-throwing protesters outside Venezuela's telecom authority, which had ordered RCTV off the air.
Meanwhile, Chavez supporters held a huge, night-to-dawn public party outside RCTV studios to celebrate the birth of the new "socialist television" and the end of the bitterly anti-Chavez RCTV.
The closure of Venezuela's oldest network, the latest episode in President Chavez's socialist revolution, sparked growing protests over the weekend.
Chavez's political opponents championed RCTV as