2013 ICA London conference“Television, popular culture and the Latin

American and Brazilian identity”

Dr. Carolina MatosGovernment DepartmentUniversity of Essex

Key points• Overview of Media and politics in Latin America: globalization,

democracy and identity (I.B. Tauris, 2012)• Empirical methods and survey with students• Brazilian culture as hybrid: cultural globalization and the national

identity• Latin American broadcasting and commercial Brazilian television• TV Globo and the history of Brazilian commercial TV• Soap operas and the construction of national identity• The “public” versus “private” dichotomy • Audience’s media consumption habits and responses to the public

media• Public media formats: from TV Cultura to TV Brasil• Brazilian commercial and public television: facts and figures • Quotes from interviews

Parts of Media and politics in Latin America

• Frameworks of comparison for public service media• Public communications and regulation in Latin America• European public service broadcasting revisited• Journalism for the public interest: the crisis of civic communications

and journalism in Latin America• Television, entertainment and the public interest• Audience perceptions of quality programming and the public media• Television, popular culture and Latin America and Brazilian identity• Internet for the public interest• Political cynicism and the digital divide• Mediated politics in the 2010 Brazilian elections• Media democratisation in Latin America: towards a politics for

national development

Four lines of research inquiry in Media and politics in Latin America (IB Tauris, 2012)

• An evaluation of the historical evolution and the public broadcasting tradition of countries like the UK and Brazil;

• The relationship established between the public media with the state, public sphere and the public interest;

• The debates on what constitutes ‘quality’ programming and information in both the private and public media;

• An examination of the ‘crisis’ of civic forms of communication, and how they can still be relevant.

Brazilian culture as hybrid: cultural globalization and the national identity

• Since its origins, Brazil has been multiracial and has been supported on the interplay of cultures and on racial miscegenation. It has been classified by Lauerhass Jr. (2006, 6) as ‘a Creole variant of a European (Portuguese) culture’. Thus cultural mixing and mestizaje, which refers to the racial mixture of African, European and indigenous peoples throughout Latin America, has characterised the whole formation of the continent’s multiple identities.

• Lesser (1999) further argued how different ethnic groups in Brazil, such as the Syrians, Lebanese and Japanese, have succeeded in challenging previous elite notions of Brazilianness, equated with Europeanness and ‘whiteness’, thus permitting a more fluid identity.

• As Lesser (1999, 5) notes, mesticagem became to be understood as a joining rather than mixing of identities, thus emphasising ‘the creation of a multiplicity of hyphenated Brazilians rather than a single....one.’

Latin American broadcasting has adopted US model

• TV in many Latin American countries has developed following the US commercial model

• I.e. Development of Brazilian television by military planners in the 60’s onwards contributed for the formation of what Straubhaar (2001; 138) has defined as the “nationalizing vocation”

• It has also assisted in the creation of a consumer culture and a wider engagement of Brazilians in the market economy.

• Television has taken on a central role in political life, in the country’s democratisation process and in the construction of various identities.

• It is possible to say that in this sense TV Globo carries some resemblance with the role played by the BBC in the UK.

Latin American broadcasting and Brazilian commercial television

• Various studies have dissected the close ties established between TV Globo in its early years with the dictatorship (i.e. Straubhaar, 2001; Fox, 1997). The military government was seen as having been interventionist in the media during the dictatorship years, financing microwave, satellite and other aspects of TV infra-structure, and favouring in particular TV Globo.

• TV Globo from Brazil is considered one of the most powerful and dynamic actors in today’s global connections (Waisbord, 1995) alongside Mexico’s Televisa. Both Globo, with annual revenue of US$ 1.9 billion, and its Mexican counterpart, Televisa, with US$ 1.4 billion, could fall within the range of the ‘Top 25 Media Groups’ of 1997, as they were ranked by the trade journal Broadcasting and Cable (Higgins and McClellan, 1997, quoted in Sinclair, 1999, 74).

• TV Globo and Televisa have managed to emerge nonetheless as the two largest broadcasters located outside of the developed world which offer global competition to the established Northern players.

Commercial television and national identity

• Sinclair (1999, 77) has underlined how Globo and Televisa combine both horizontal and vertical integration and that, in conjunction with the traditional family style of ownership, they have conformed to the ideal type of what can be understood as the ‘Latin American’ model of a media corporation.

• As Voltmer and Schmitt-Beck (2006, 231) asserted, the excessive commercialisation of the media in Latin America’s new democracies, which has also been influenced by the heavy entertainment diet provided by commercial broadcasting, can be seen as having constituted an obstacle in the process of institution-building and successful democratic consolidation in the continent (Skidmore, 1993; Waisbord, 1995 in Voltmer and Schmitt-Beck, 2006).

• Television to start with has occupied a central role in political life, in the country’s democratization process and in the construction of various identities.

• The power of the medium of television in setting standards of conduct, influencing lifestyles, selling products and ideas and shaping behaviours and identities should not be underestimated. This is one of the reasons for the initiatives and pressures to strengthen the public media.

TV Globo and the history of Brazilian commercial TV

• As Guedes-Bailey and Jambeiro Barbosa (2008, 50) have pointed out, it was radio broadcasting, through the success of stations such as Radio Nacional, the most important radio station in Latin America for about 15 years, that established crucial patterns for the TV industry in Brazil.

• This included current characteristics associated to the Brazilian commercial television industry, such as the pursuit of a mass audience, the predominance of entertainment over educational or cultural programming and of private over public ownership, as well as advertising support over government, public over non-commercial financing (Guedes-Bailey and Jambeiro Barbosa, 2008; 50).

• As Possebon (2006) affirms, according to the Pesquisa Nacional de Amostragem de Domicilios of the 2005 IBGE census, 91.4% of Brazilian homes have television, with the channels TV Globo and SBT reaching more than 95% of homes.

Brazilian commercial television and national identity

• The Brazilian military also invested heavily in telecommunication infra-structure, which was among the fastest sector in the economy. As Straubhaar (2001) affirms, the military government supported Globo as a quasi-monopoly until the late 1970s.

• It was only in 1981 that the government issued license packages to create competitors SBT and TV Manchete (Straubhaar, 2001, 140-143). From mainly that year onwards, the Brazilian importation of American programming began to fall. Prime time began to be filled with Brazilian productions. Nonetheless, the aesthetic of entertainment and the privileging of American programming had already began to prevail.

• Commercial television in Brazil has had a major role in selling not only cultural goods and ideas, but in shaping lifestyle and consumerism habits and behaviours of large sectors of the population independently of class, ethnicity and race.

• It has also played a significant role in defining national politics and in obstructing, as well as contradictorily assisting, in the construction of the democratization project following the end of the dictatorship in 1985 (Matos, 2008; Bucci, 2001; Conti, 1999).

Television and national identity in Brazil

• According to the study “Os Donos da Midia” (Owners of the Media) done by the Instituto de Estudos e Pesquisa em Comunicacao (Epcom) of 2002, Globo Organisations has 32 concessions of commercial TV, 11 in Sao Paulo and 113 affiliated stations in the country. It obtains 54% of audience numbers and of national advertising resources (R$ 1.59 billion in 2002), whereas SBT has 10 stations and 100 affiliates.

• Former director of journalism of TV Cultura, Gabriel Priolli, president of the Brazilian Association of University TVs (ABTV), has argued that Brazilian commercial television has played a powerful role in the diffusion of the national Brazilian sentiment, largely identified with the white Rio and Sao Paulo elites.

• TV Globo’s telenovelas have undoubtedly also had a large role in the building of this unifying national identity. Many have argued that a highly commercial entertainment and advertising diet has encouraged the development of a particular individualistic and consumerist personality.

TV Globo and its role in democratization

• TV Globo has the largest percentage of national content production in comparison to its competitors, including an average of 70% and 100% during peak time (Possebon, 2007, 289).

• Due to TV Globo’s relationship with the dictatorship regime in its early years, there has been controversies in regards to the role that the station’s soap-operas have played in providing avenues for political liberalisation during the 1980s (Porto, 2008; Straubhaar, 1988).

• Straubhaar (1988) has argued that Brazilian soaps contributed to delay support for political opening, whereas Porto (2008, 10) points to the ambiguity of the telenovelas’ texts.

• Porto (2008) correctly believes that there is (and has been) a role for television fiction in the process of nation-building

• Porto (2008) argues that they helped to give meaning and to shape the political process by incorporating new demands coming from a more organised civil society. He underlined the work of authors such as Dias Gomes, and soaps like O Bem Amado (The Well Loved, 1973) and Roque Santeiro (1985), as being emblematic of such actions.

TV Globo and its role in democratization• TV Globo’s wider commitment to representing balanced political debate

has grown as a response to the critiques that it received in relation to its coverage of the key presidential elections of the post-dictatorship phase (i.e. Bucci, 2000; Skidmore, 1993; Fox, 1997).

• From the mid-1990s onwards, it started to be pressured to improve its journalism and balance criteria, at the same time that it began to suffer from competition posed by other television stations, cable TV and the Internet.

• Many sectors of the Brazilian audience continue to rate soaps highly, including them among their favourite programming, alongside Jornal Nacional. TV Globo on the other hand has also tried to respond better to criticism, and has began also to market itself as producing culture.

• This is evident in its more recent slogan, “Cultura, a gente se ve por ai” (Culture: we will see each other around).

• With an average of 40 points daily nonetheless, Globo’s Jornal Nacional is still the highest audience rating in Brazilian TV (Meditsch, Moreira and Machado, 2005).

TV Globo’s popular programmes and the emergence of a new competitive market

• TV Globo’s popularity has however been in decline. In April 2010, the station registered the lowest average audience rating in a decade, of 16.8 points per day. Ibope also detected a decline of interest in open television in general, attributing this to various reasons including the type of programming, growth of the Internet, access to DVDs as well as competition from other leisure activities.

• Although commercial television is still the main source of information for most of the population, many journalists, academics, civil society players and others from the cultural elites have become highly dissatisfied with it since the mid-1990s.

• The current contemporary reality is more grounded on the need to serve the country’s multiple public spheres and identities, which is something that both “public” television as well as commercial television is slowly beginning to do more

• The opposition between public and commercial media is grounded, as Livingstone and Lunt (1994, 22- 23) stress, on elitist and participatory forms of democracy. According to the authors, it wrongly equates commercialization with an emancipatory rhetoric and the illusion of involvement. Neither model permits the full realization of a critical public sphere.

The ‘private’ versus ‘public’ dichotomy in broadcasting

Private PublicRight/Conservative/Centre/Left – the consumer

Centre/Left/Liberal/some conservatives - citizen

‘Objective’ and informational journalism ‘Objective’/’public’/’serious’ journalism

Talk shows/sit-coms/reality TV – American programming, some content from other countries

Realism in films/documentaries/reality TV – ‘arty’ and European programming, some US material

Advertising/aesthetic of consumerism – self/intimacy/the private sphere (i.e. Sci-fi, horror)

‘Quality’ aesthetic/Challenging material - collective/the public sphere

Dreamy/fantasy/’escapism’ texts – occasional ‘serious’ material

Historical material/in depth analyses – some entertainment (i.e. Soaps, drama, sci-fi, horror).

Audience’s media consumption habits and responses to the public media

• Various sectors of the audiences in Brazil do envision a more robust role for public television stations like TV Cultura and TV Brasil in nation-building, functioning as a counter-weight to the market and posing quality and positive competition to commercial stations like TV Globo.

• The UFRJ online survey showed how most students claimed that they watched television on a daily basis (76 respondents or 51%) or on average 3 to 4 times a week (17% to 6% respectively).

• The online questionnaire was applied at the Journalism Department of UFRJ and was answered by 149 students from various socio-economic backgrounds. The questionnaire was put online during the holiday and initial start of term period, from mid-July to the beginning of September 2010.

• Practically all respondents are university students or young journalists between 18 and 25 years of age (92% of 149), are members of the low, middle and upper classes of Brazilian society and live in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Audience’s media consumption habits and responses to the public media

• A dominant pattern that emerged from the answers was that the penetration of public television is still very small, given the little amount of attention that it receives from the respondents, who mainly watch Globo TV and cable and satellite television. Although there is still lack of knowledge and understanding of the purposes of the public media, a significant 71% are defenders of it and recognise its importance.

• Among other reasons stated for watching television included to be ‘up to date with information’ (12% or 18); ‘professional reasons’ (10% or 15) as well as ‘to know about the situation of the country’ (1%).

• Most respondents revealed that their preferred programming consisted of news, soap operas, films and series, both national and American. Asked about their preferred television genre, most chose TV Series (56 respondents or 38%) and the general option, Arts and Entertainment (43 or 29%), with smaller numbers for Documentaries (12 or 8%), Soap-opera (9 or 6%) and Comedy (5 or 3%).

Audience’s consumption of ‘private’ and ‘public’ media

• The option ‘soap opera’ did not score highly as one would think at first. This can be largely due to the fact that TV Globo’s audience viewing is in decline due to the competition from other channels, the Internet and also the saturation of some of its programmes with especially more demanding viewers. It also might be the case that many in fact do watch soaps, but given other options of entertainment programming, they chose series and documentaries.

• The results showed how most like both entertainment and news and documentaries, with 52% (or 77) saying that they liked both. The balance is tipped slightly more towards entertainment, which received 32% (or 48), whereas news got 13% (or 20).

• Commercial television appeared as the main source of information for 87% (129 respondents). Only 13% claimed that it was not their prime source. Most students also like to read newspapers (104 or 70%) and online news sites (129 or 87%), with only 11 respondents, or 7%, saying that they also obtain their information from both the public and commercial media. In terms of which television station they watch, and if they prefer public to commercial TV, most respondents said that they watched TV Globo (97 respondents or 65%) and cable and satellite (99 or 66%).

Audience’s consumption of ‘private’ and ‘public’ media

• Only 3% (4) chose the public media option and a slightly higher number opted for the Brazilian public station options, TV Brasil (8 or 5%) and TV Cultura (8 or 5%). These received similar percentages to the small open commercial television stations, TV Record (7 or 5%) and Rede TV! (4 or 3%). Channels Bandeirantes and SBT appeared in a middle position, with 25 or 17% for the former and 18 or 18% for the latter.

• The responses for favourite TV programmes were however quite varied. A popular TV choice was TV Globo’s Jornal Nacional (38 or 25%). The option of the 8 o’clock soap opera appeared with 13% (20), although in the previous question concerning television genres, only 6% chose soaps. Forty-seven per cent (47%) chose other programmes which were not included in the list.

• Among the preferred programmes freely listed by the respondents were films, popular national programmes or American series.

Key trends in audience viewing and consumption of Brazilian media

• The UFRJ survey also highlighted how audiences give importance to quality programming. In regards to the question on what attracted their attention to TV, the predominant answer was ‘the quality of a programme’ (58% or 86) and in second place was ‘information’ (22% or 33).

• Such answers endorse the fact that television, be it in the UK or in Brazil, is expected by viewers to be both entertaining and informative, whilst at the same time also offering quality programming.

• In regards to issues concerning the ‘quality’ of television, many showed a similar understanding to the general outline discussed above. Most chose the options ‘the script and the in depth information provided’ (53%, or 79) as well as the ‘creativity and originality’ of the programme (27% or 40). The professionalism of the journalists and actors, and the type of language used, received 8% , or 12, and 7%, or 10 answers, respectively.

Key trends in audience viewing and consumption of Brazilian media

• Most also recognised the importance of the role of the public media (71%). Although a majority of the respondents of the survey did show a lack of interest in watching the public television stations, a significant 71% of 149 people defended its necessity.

• Another 26% however preferred the option ‘it depends.’ This seems to signal to the fact that many do in fact not understand what the public media is actually for, and would like to have more information about it.

• This interpretation is confirmed by the answers in another question asked afterwards, which is ‘why’ are you in favour of it. Here the main option selected was ‘I would like to know more about it’ in order to make a better judgement (33% or 49). Most do assign a role for the public media, seeing it as being a compliment to the commercial media (38%, or 57) and/or a correction of market failure (20% or 30).

• Contradicting what one would at first expect, not everyone automatically saw the public media as necessarily more capable of being impartial. There was little consensus here.

What role should be reserved for the public media?

• The responses varied significantly in this category from the ones who choose newspapers, to those who opted for the foreign media, the Internet and the public media. Forty-eight (48%) saw the Internet as having the capacity of being more impartial, with the public media coming in second with 15%. Newspapers received 6% (9), commercial TV 5% (8) and foreign media 2% (3). Many chose to include comments in the space provided.

• Another wrote that it is ‘not the media vehicle, but the integrity of the journalist’; whilst another affirmed that the public media only ‘engages in spectacles.’ Another student claimed that television and radio as mediums had the potential of being more impartial due to their wider reach.

• The respondents were divided in the question concerning the functions and purposes of the public media. Most opted for answers which can be interpreted as seeing civic communications as having a role in democratization.

Public media formats: from TV Cultura to TV Brasil

• TV Brasil, which is part of the public media platform Empresa Brasileira de Comunicacao (EBC), was launched by the Ministry of Culture and the Brazilian government in December 2008. The total funding for EBC includes money from the federal government as well as donations.

• According to the former minister of Communications, Franklin Martins, the new channel received a budget of R$ 350 million. The main programming is provided by Rio’s educational television (TVE), with two programmes from Radiobras.

• The current Brazilian TV market, which is funded with public resources, includes the television stations TV Cultura, which has an annual budget of R$ 160 million; Radiobras, with R$ 100 million; TVE, which had R$ 35 million in 2004, and which has been incorporated into TV Brasil. There are also other resources which go to the television stations of the Legislative federal, state and municipal powers, plus TV Justica and university channels (Possebon, 2007, 290), all of which have a low audience rating.

TV Brasil: facts and figures• According to Abepec (Brazilian Association of Public Educational and

Cultural Stations), with less than two years of its existence, TV Brasil is watched regularly by 10% of the population and has 80% of the audiences’ approval.

• Twenty-two per cent considered the programming excellent, and 58% classified it as ‘good’. The research was conducted during the 18th and 22nd of August 2009, with 5.192 people being interviewed throughout Brazil. One of the most popular programmes of the station is Nova Africa (New Africa).

• Perhaps where the public media is differing most also from the commercial stations is in regards to the production of distinctive cultural and historical programmes, like TV Brasil’s Almanaque Brasil, Sustentaculos and Brasilianas.org.

• The journalism staff at TV Brasil has been built around largely professional norms. It includes names of professionals who worked for the mainstream media, such as the current president of EBC, Tereza Cruvinel, former O Globo columnist. Among the most popular shows broadcast by TV Brasil is the cultural De La Para Ca, a programme of interviews presented by former Globo columnist Ancelmo Gois.

Brazilian television, politics and the media

•

Quotes from interviews

• According to Gabriel Priolli, former director of journalism for TV Cultura, the notion of a ‘public television’ in Brazil is still far away from being fully implemented:

• “The government of Sao Paulo was worried about expanding audience numbers at TV Cultura. There is an elitist view of culture….. and there was also a sense of having to satisfy the government for the liberation of funds. There are different visions in regards to the public media, in Sao Paulo, in relation to the federal view. TV Brasil has a wider preoccupation with independent programming, but TV Cultura has gone in the opposite direction….The fact of the matter is that the public media does not exist in Brazil. Public TV is more an idea…What exists in Brazil is educational TVs controlled by the state”

Quotes from interviews• Former TV Globo correspondent and professor, Antonio Brasil,

stated that: “All the channels are stations dressed up as ‘public’ media

stations. We cannot even guarantee education and quality public health. This ‘public media’ is nothing more than a vanity affair which consumes millions of reais and guarantees good jobs for the friend of the friend. The public ignores its programming and continues to watch soap operas and football. Television should not be a priority of government. The interests of governments dictate their destiny and the public do not show interest in maintaining these mediums. Thus we adore to speak well and bad of the public media, but then to watch the commercial one...There is no ‘real’ interest of the government….of confronting Globo.......The BBC for instance is excellent for the British, but the model does not apply to Latin America. The governments of the region would not be prepared to live with the power and independence of the BBC......”

Some conclusions• The UFRJ student survey underlined for instance how most still have

a habit of watching commercial television, TV Globo and satellite and cable TV, but nonetheless do have a genuine interest in the public media and see it as an important tool for democracy and for raising public debate and quality standards.

• Some of the key challenges facing public television stations like TV Cultura and TV Brasil in Brazil concern their lack of full editorial independence from politicians and from government, a consequence of the impact of political influence which exists at both stations, as well as the tradition that exists in Brazil of understanding “public” media more as a vehicle of the state.

• The breaking of the historical tradition of promiscuous relationships established between the public media and specific political groups in Brazil, as well as the investments in innovative programming capable of creating a medium which offers positive quality competition to the market media, are some of the challenges in the project of strengthening the public media and skewing it to the public interest.

Selected bibliography• Barbosa, Livia Neves de H. (1995) “The Brazilian Jeitinho: an Exercise in

National Identity” in Hess, David J. and DaMatta, Roberto (eds.) The Brazilian Puzzle, New York: Columbia University Press, 35- 47

• Canizalez, Andres and Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2008) “Beyond National Media Systems: A Media for Latin America and the Struggle for Integration” in The Media in Latin America, Berkshire: Open University Press, 209-223

• Daniel, G. Reginald (2006) “Eurocentrism – Racial Formation and the Master Racial Project” in Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?, University Park: Pennsylnavia State University Press, 9-51

• Matos, C (2012) Media and politics in Latin America: globalization, democracy and identity, London: I.B Tauris

• Porto, Mauro (2008) “Telenovelas and National Identity in Brazil”, paper presented at the IX International Congress of BRASA, New Orleans, US, March 27-29

• Straubhaar, Joseph (2007) “Making Sense of World Television: Hybridization or Multilayered Cultural Identities” in World Television: From Global to Local, London: Sage, 221-257

Thank you!

• Dr. Carolina Matos

• Government Department

• University of Essex

• E-mail: cmatos@essex.ac.uk

• http://essex.academia.edu/CarolinaMatos