| The Gun and the Church - Development of television in Brazil | ||||
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| Redaktionelt indhold - Artikel |
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Joseph Straubhaar, som flere gange har besøgt Danmark, har brugt store dele af sin karriere på at forske i, hvordan indførelsen af tv-mediet påvirker et lands kultur, og ikke mindst hvordan et lands kultur og lovgivning sætter rammerne for tv-mediets etablering. Joseph D. Straubhaar, Amon G. Carter Centennial Professor of Communications , Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Brazil has one of the world's largest and most productive commercial television systems. Its largest television network, TV Globo, is the fourth largest commercial network in the world. Brazil is one of the largest television exporters within Latin America and around the world, particularly of telenovelas, the characteristic Latin American prime time serials, which have become popular in a number of other countries as well. Brazil began television in 1950. It remained urban and elitist, as long as television was live, transmitters covered only major centers, and sets were expensive. That era produced quite a bit of classic drama, as well as local traditions in variety, news, drama and telenovelas. The advent of videotape around 1960 opened Brazil to imported programs, which dominated much of the 1960s, but also stimulated some efforts at creating local networks. Two major early networks were TV Tupi and TV Excelsior. Television truly became a mass medium in Brazil earlier than in most developing countries. The military governments which took power in 1964 saw television as a potential tool for creating a stronger national identity, creating a broader consumer economy, and controlling political information. The military pushed television deeper into the population by subsidizing credit for set sales, by building national microwave and satellite distribution systems, and by promoting the growth of one network they chose as a privileged partner, TV Globo, which also started in 1964 and created the first true national network by the late 1960s. Censorship of news was extensive under the military governments between 1966 and 1978, but they also encouraged national television program production. In the early 1970s, several government ministers pushed the commercial networks hard to develop more Brazilian programming and reduce their reliance on imported programs, particularly those that contained violence. The 1960s represented a formative period for genre development. Telenovelas had been largely patterned after those in other Latin American countries, even using imported scripts. Telenovelas were developed during this period into a considerably more sophisticated genre by TV Excelsior and TV Tupi in São Paulo and TV Globo in Rio. A key turning point was the 1968 TV Tupi telenovela, Beto Rockefeller, which was well-produced and reflected a singular Brazilian personality, the Rio good-lifer or boa vida. By the 1970s, telenovelas were the most popular programs and dominated prime time on the major networks, TV Globo and TV Tupi. Particularly TV Globo began to attract major writers and actors from both film and theater to also work in telenovelas. The Brazilian telenovelas became good enough, as commercial television entertainment, to be exported throughout Latin America and into Europe, Asia and Africa. Another major genre of the 1960s was the show de auditório, a live variety show mixing games, quizzes, amateur and professional entertainers, comedy, and discussion. The shows de auditório have been extremely popular with the lower-middle and lower-classes, and played an extremely important role in drawing them into television viewing, according to analyzes like Sérgio Miceli's A Noite da Madrinha (Evening with the Godmother, 1972). Between 1968 and 1985, in Brazilian television's second phase, TV Globo dominated both the audience and the development of television programming. It tended to have a 60-80% share of the viewers in the major cities at any given time. TV Globo was accused during this period of representing the view of the government, of being its mouthpiece. Other broadcast television networks found themselves pursuing smaller, more specific audience segments largely defined by social class. SBS (Sílvio Santos) targeted a lower middle class, working class and poor audience, mostly with variety and game shows. That gained it a consistent second place in ratings in most of the years between 1980 and 2000. TV Manchete targeted a more elite audience initially, with news, high budge telenovelas, and imported programs, but the network failed because that segment was not large enough to gain adequate advertiser support. TV Bandeirantes tended to emphasize news, public affairs and sports. All three ultimately wished to pursue a general audience with general appeal programming, such as telenovelas, but tended to find that such efforts still did not gain enough of the audience to pay for the increased programming costs. Brazilian television since 1985 has gone through a third phase, marked by its role in the transition to a new civilian republic. In 1984, TV Globo initially supported the military government against a campaign for direct election of a civilian government, while other media, including other television networks, many radio stations, and most of the major newspapers supported the campaign. Perceiving that it might literally lose its audience to the competition, Globo also switched sides and supported transition to a civilian regime, which in a compromise was indirectly elected. This immediately reduced political censorship and pressure on broadcasters. The fourth phase of Brazilian television was its internationalization. The importation of television programs into Brazil declined from the 1970s through the 1980s, as Brazilian networks produced more of their own material. TV Globo often produced 12-14 hours a day. TV Globo and other networks began to export, particularly telenovelas, and soon Brazilian exports of programming to the rest of the world became economically and culturally significant. Brazilian exports reached over a hundred countries, often with great success, particularly historical telenovelas, like A Escrava Isaura (Isaura the Slave), about the abolition of slavery in Brazil, which was a hit in countries as diverse as Poland, China, Cuba and most of Latin America. SBT also began to import telenovelas from Mexico to provide a low-cost alternative to producing its own. The Mexican telenovelas are also typically more romantic and less political, which appeals to more traditional audiences, particularly among the working class and poor. The recent fifth phase of Brazilian television is marked by the appearance of some new video distribution systems and a new type of broadcaster, religious television. The videocassette recorder (VCR) largely gave the middle and upper class greater access to imported feature films. The new technology with most effect on Brazilian electronic media is the satellite distribution of television to small repeaters throughout the country. In the 1980s, thousands of small towns in rural Brazil purchased satellite dishes and low power repeaters to bring in Brazilian television networks, effectively extending television to cover 99 percent of the population, and recent studies show that over 90 percent of the population probably has television sets. New video technologies entered the Brazilian television market in the 1990s, offering multiple channels of segmented programming. There are three main approaches so far: advertising supported UHF (like the Brazilian adaptation of MTV, which features about 10-20 percent Brazilian music), cable pay-TV systems (relying heavily on regional versions of imported channels like CNN, ESPN and HBO), and DBS systems. So far only MTV has gained even a small share of the audience. Studies to date indicate that most satellite dishes and many cable connections are being used to get better quality reception of Brazilian channels. So although the new technologies seem to threaten to bring in a new wave of largely U.S. programming, the audience studies so far do not seem to indicate that there will be a strong audience response to them, except perhaps within a globalized elite and the upper middle class. So far less than 10 percent of Brazilian television households have pay-TV. The dominant characteristic of Brazilian television still seems to be that of a strong national system with a distinct set of genres that are very popular with its own audience and in export. In the late 1990s, a new kind of network changed the scenario. TV Record was purchased by the Church of the Universal Reign of God, and made the hub of an expanded national network. This rapidly expanding Brazilian evangelical church, run by Bishop Macedo, operated TV Record somewhat along the lines of SBT, populist, often sensationalist variety shows, talk shows and reality shows. The church put together another network for explicitly religious programs. The Catholic Church expanded its efforts into a national network, as well. So recent Brazilian television is characterized by a sharp rise in domestic religious television, as well as a continuation of earlier trends. All of these new entrants have gradually whittled away at the formerly overwhelming popularity of TV Globo. |
| Senest opdateret ( Tirsdag, 26. oktober 2010 14:25 ) |
