Broadcasting airwaves are public in Brazil, and a federal government agency grants licenses to media companies operating radio and television stations. There are five large privately owned national television networks- TV Globo, SBT, TV Record, TV Bandeirantes, and TV Manchete, as well as hundreds of local and regional television stations (256 stations in 1992) operating under an affiliation system similar to the United States’.
Broadcast TV has an immense influence on virtually all aspects of Brazilian culture and society. Television programming is often a topic of conversation at school and in the workplace, in the house and among friends. Television is an extremely important source of information for Brazilians of every socio-economic stratum. Brazilians across the board refer to reports they have seen on Jornal Nacional-TV Globo’s most watched evening newscast, or to the latest plot twist in one of the soap operas.
The introduction of cable, satellite and pay TV is a relatively recent (1990s) phenomenon, but these sectors’ growth has been astounding. In 1993, only 0.8 percent of Brazilian households had pay TV, in contrast to 28 percent of homes in Argentina. A year later, the number had jumped to 2.3 percent, or 700,000 subscribers. In early 1996, Brazilian homes with cable TV neared 1.5 million. That number had doubled by March of 1998. Radio ownership in Brazil follows a format similar to that of television. However, radio networks are a phenomenon of the twenty-first century. Until the turn of the century, most radio stations were still family owned. In April 1996, there were 1,822 radio stations in Brazil, and radio was still the most pervasive mass media in the country (88 percent of households).
The growth of television viewership in Brazil is a unique and impressive phenomenon yet to be completely explored. TV sets numbered only 200 in the entire country on September 18, 1950, when commercial broadcasting started in São Paulo. By the end of 1980, only 30 years later, there were estimated 20 million TV sets in the country. By that time, Brazil alone had more TV sets than the rest of Latin America combined. Television households increased from 7 percent in 1964 to 51 percent in 1979, and then again to 75 percent in 1990, easily reaching more than 80 percent by the end of the century. More recent data estimated a total of 36.5 million TV sets in Brazil, and 209 TV sets per 1,000 people in 2002. Television broadcasts now reach all of Brazil.
The growth of viewership in Brazil both was stimulated and reflected the huge industrialization process that took place in the country from the 1940s on. In 1954, the development of an autonomous national industry was made possible by the creation of the National Steel Company and its peripheral heavy equipment manufacturers.
Brazil is today the world’s eighth largest economy. Although strangled by the largest foreign debt in the world, the country’s economy presents signs of vitality, with a strong currency, inflation under control, and a record trade surplus. The middle class represents one third of the country’s population of 170 million, making up the second largest market for TV and consumerism in the Western hemisphere.
Brazilian media organizations were clearly aware of the country’s economic potential. They took full advantage of the ‘‘expansion and integration’’ process that led the military dictatorship to create the Empresa Brasileira de Telecomunicaça˜es (Brazilian Telecommunications Enterprise, or Embratel), in 1967, and to launch a development plan that, by 1986, had virtually every Brazilian covered under a satellite blanket.
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| Assis Chateaubriand in 1957 |
The first Brazilian network, called TV Tupi, was established in São Paulo in 1950 by Diários e Emissoras Associados, a media conglomerate headed by journalist Assis Chateaubriand. A second TV Tupi station was launched in Rio de Janeiro on January 20, 1951. Diários e Emissoras Associados owned more than 30 daily newspapers, 18 TV stations and 30 radio stations. The conglomerate also had its own news agency, advertising agency, and some public relations firms. It published several magazines, including the influential O Cruzeiro, which was until 1967 the largest selling magazine in Latin America.
Television in Brazil was established following a trial and error pattern similar to the one experienced by American networks. Programming was adapted from other media, particularly radio and film. During the first years of Brazilian TV, there was little to no experimenting, television was a second-hand medium, absorbing formats which had their origins in radio, newsprint media, film, and theater. TV Tupi’s broadcast included news, comedy and ‘‘filmed theater,’’ or ‘‘teleplays.’’
Throughout the first half of the 1950s, television was a very elitist medium. Only a small percentage of the population (namely, wealthy families in Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo) had television sets. Consequently, programming was directed to that segment of the population. The situation changed in 1955, when television lost its ‘‘novelty for the wealthy’’ appeal and became a household item. Around that time, it became common, for example, to present newlyweds with television sets. Aware of the new trend, TV Tupi’s broadcast became more sensationalist.
During most of the 1950s, TV Tupi’s leadership remained unchallenged. That situation changed in the 1960s, when three competing networks—TV Excelsior, TV Record, and TV Globo—were launched. TV Record, which chose to produce well-structured journalism and music programs, had a particularly great impact on the market.
TV Excelsior was born in 1964, already in the age of soap operas, and excelled in this genre and in musicals. TV Globo came to challenge the leader, also aiming its programming at the lower economic strata. Competition among four different TV networks, combined with economic expansion, stimulated television’s growth. In 1950, viewership was limited to large cities, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, due mostly to the cost of TV sets. But if sets were only 200 in 1950, in 1965 they were already 3 million, spread throughout the country. Unlike other Latin American and European countries, where either monopolistic and/or government-owned broadcasting traditions were established, Brazil consolidated in the 1960s a major trend towards commercial television and multiple, privately-owned national networks, a format that had the American television system as its model and inspiration.
It was also in the 1960s that Brazilian television created its own specific style, best translated in the telenovela or simply novela (soap opera) genre. Interestingly enough, Colgate-Palmolive’s line of cosmetics had been one of the major advertisers in 1940s Brazilian radio, when soap operas first became popular in the country. One of the reasons why Brazilian telenovelas were created by the networks was to provide a product in which advertisements could be placed. For ten years, Brazilian TV had struggled to find the right formats for its potential advertisers. Most shows were short in duration (15 minutes, on average), because of the conditions in which they were produced and broadcast—virtually every program aired was a live presentation. Even the early soap operas followed that format. Advertisers were reluctant to invest in a medium that failed to grip the audience’s attention in a habit-forming fashion.
Throughout the 1960s, networks decided to resuscitate some of radio’s most popular soap operas. Although soap operas had been a common staple of Brazilian broadcasting since the early 1950s, the Cuban drama Direito de Nascer (A Right to be Born), a radio favorite of the 1940s, is believed to have originated the telenovela audience phenomenon in Brazilian television. First aired on December 7, 1964, the soap opera experienced an overwhelming success which continued to its final daily installment, broadcast live from an over-crowded sports arena in Rio, in August of the following year.
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| Rede Globo logo |
TV Globo
TV Tupi dominated Brazilian television during the 1950s and 1960s, but in the 1970s and 1980s, TV Globo became the largest television network in the country. TV Globo, also known as Rede Globo (Globo Network) was, well into the 1990s, the world’s most consistently watched private TV network.
In 1998, TV Globo was still the fourth largest network in the world, regularly attracting 55 percent of the country’s audience, and about 70 percent of the advertising revenue. However, with the growth of cable and satellite television, Globo started to experience a decline in ratings, dipping just under half of the audience for the first time in almost 30 years.
As late as April 2002, Brazil’s giant media organization was still one of the top five commercial television networks in the world, commanding an estimated daily viewership of 100 million people at prime time. Advertisers responded to this large number of viewers. In 1995, US$ 3.6 billion were spent in television advertising in Brazil, with an estimated half of that total ending up in TV Globo’s coffers.
The network thrived during the military regime (1964-1985), when it received special treatment and financial incentives from successive governments. The conglomerate both reflected and legitimated the authoritarian regime’s ideology of ‘‘development and national security.’’
TV Globo initially aimed its programming at the lower economic strata of the population, competing directly with then leader TV Tupi. By the end of the 1960s, Globo had succeeded in attracting a large audience, mostly in detriment of TV Tupi’s audience. The rise of Globo in the popular preference coincided with the death of media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, which detonated a process of internal disputes and bad management that ended up by destroying TV Tupi, which went bankrupt in the 1970s.
Television critics have characterized Rede Globo’s role at gaining public support for the military regimes as subtler than mere propaganda. Some of them have noticed that the first military governments (1964 to 1974) pursued exclusionary policies that led them to rely on continued repression to maintain hegemony.
The following period (1975 to 1985) marked a socalled transition from military to civilian rule. Legitimacy, then, had to be obtained more through the construction of cultural and ideological hegemony than through overt repression.
TV Globo played a key role in both periods. In the first one, widely watched telenovelas worked to create a positive, happy and optimistic image of the country and its people, when the so-called Brazilian ‘economic miracle’ was emphasized to support the idea that ‘‘Esse é um país que vai pra frente’’ (‘‘This is a country that moves forward,’’ a popular government slogan of the time).
In the second period, when loss of legitimacy due to economic recession led the military regimes to propose the alternative of transition to civilian rule, Rede Globo threw all the heavy weight of its news coverage to support indirect transition (a civilian president indirectly elected by an electoral college), as opposed to a president chosen by the popular vote. The main consequence of the tactic was a complete ignorance of the unprecedented popular demonstrations demanding diretas já (direct elections now).
The second largest Brazilian network, Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão (SBT), was launched in August 1981. Owned by game show host Silvio Santos, SBT has nine local stations, including its national broadcasting center in São Paulo, and 76 affiliated stations throughout the country. The network’s programming is a mix of game shows, sensational journalism, soap operas (in-house productions and Mexican imports) and popular comedy shows.
SBT prides itself on being Brazil’s second-largest network. The network’s penetration is strongest in São Paulo. According to the Nielsen data furnished by SBT on its Internet home page, in 1997, the network had 30 percent of the advertising market share in São Paulo in 1995. Globo had 43 percent; Bandeirantes 11 percent; Manchete 10 percent; Record two percent and independent stations four percent.
It is worth noting that the third largest Brazilian television network, TV Record, is owned by Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, UCKG), an evangelical, revivalist Christian church that emerged in 1977, and that has now become one of the fastest-growing religious groups in the country.
In 1996, the UCKG owned TV Record and its 25 affiliates, besides 35 radio stations and two mass circulation newspapers. Its controversial leader, the self-appointed Bishop Edir Macedo, was investigated in the early 1990s for alleged links to a Colombian drug cartel, and has attracted the wrath of the all-powerful media mogul Roberto Marinho, who founded and, until the late- 1990s, ran the Globo media empire. In the late 1990s, with its mix of sensationalism and crass programming, TV Record was seriously threatening the audience leadership of TV Globo in parts of the country.
In "Word Press Encyclopedia" - A Survey of Press Systems Worldwide", Amanda C. Quick, project editor, Gale (Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc)., USA, 2003, pp.125-128. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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