Expansion of Television in Eastern Amazonia

Abstract

Walking down the dusty streets of an isolated frontier boomtown in the Brazilian state of Para in the evening, one can follow the dialogue of the country's favorite evening soap operas streaming from front-room television sets. The pling-pling noise that marks the end of commercials on the Globo network, now the fourth largest in the world, echoes down the squatter-settled streets. From this simple observation, three striking points emerge. The Amazon region, until recently only sparsely inhabited and isolated from international and even national Brazilian culture, is experiencing a rapid spread of television. Although this trend was pointedly pictured in the movie Bye Bye wherein a band of Brazilian gypsies fruitlessly travel to Amazonia in search of a part of their country without television (Godfrey 1993), it has scarcely been commented on in the growing scholarly literature on the region. The second observation is that the Globo network has a near monopoly on viewership in the region. In hundreds of towns across the Amazon region viewers have no choice but Globo on their dials. A third extraordinary feature is that there are intervals when viewers in interior towns of Para watch a blank screen with a clock in the corner counting the minutes until the nationwide programming returns, just as the Indians in Bye Bye Brazil watched the test pattern on seeing their first television set. Because only big cities have the capacity to mount full television stations, most small towns have set up satellite dishes and small retransmitting towers that draw signals directly from distant transmitters in the country's south. Without local input in television programming, all the images received on television sets in Para come from the other Brazil, the urbanized and modern Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro corridor where most shows and advertisements are produced or are imported, chiefly from the United States. Exposure to images of the outside world has implications for whether Amazonia can maintain a distinct regional identity, which in turn bears both on the ecological fate of the region and on hopes of integrated or sustainable development there. An analysis of television in Amazonia, of which this article constitutes only a beginning, must explain the odd geographical patterns of networks, retransmitters, and groundlinks spreading across the region. The rapid creation and change of these patterns cannot be explained by a natural and even diffusion of the technology, because state politics and the deliberate policy of the Brazilian military regime from 1964 to 1985 to spread television throughout the country must be taken into account. The military regime wanted to create a national culture and to legitimate itself through televised modern images of the most developed southern regions. The policy of bringing television to all Brazil was achieved by providing infrastructure for the industry and special credit to consumers for the purchase of television sets (Straubhaar, Olsen, and Nunes 1993). The new image of Brazil promulgated by the regime and Globo was one of modernity: mobility, development, and consumption (Pereira, Santos, and de Carvalho 1988; Kottak 1990). This article begins an analysis of the spread of electronic media into Amazonia by examining the geographical distribution of television during 1990 in Para [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. It includes discussion of some causes and consequences of this distribution and of the lack of locally produced programming. The text is organized around three simple but profoundly important questions. To what extent has television expanded into eastern Amazonia? What channels are residents there watching? How much television content there is of local origin? The study has four sources of information: Brazilian Ministry of Communications data on Para; a household survey in one Para town during 1989-90; interviews with local governmental officials and television executives in 1990, 1992, and 1993; and analysis of network program listings for Belem, the state capital. …