The Financing of TV Brasil: Limitation of Resources or Political Choice?

• Author: Ivonete da Silva Lopes,Sales Augusto dos Santos
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18768466
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 141–150

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18768466

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

141

The Financing of TV Brasil

Limitation of Resources or Political Choice?

by

Sales Augusto dos Santos and Ivonete da Silva Lopes

Translated by

Frutuoso Santana

The federal funds allocated to Brazilian public television are insufficient for its ade-

quate maintenance and could be increased. Instead of advertising on public television,

which was the flagship of the Brazilian public communication system, the Lula and

Rousseff administrations turned to private broadcasting systems in the hope of co-opting

them. In addition to robbing public television of critical funding, this proved a political

mistake when TV Globo became one of their harshest critics.

Os recursos federais direcionados ao sistema público de TV brasileiro são insuficientes

para sua manutenção adequada e poderiam, portanto, ser ampliados. Ao invés de fazer

propaganda na televisão pública, que a propósito fora a bandeira do sistema público de

comunicação, as administrações Lula e Rousseff voltaram-se para o setor privado de comu-

nicação, na esperança de nela fazer aliados. Além de reduzirem os recursos críticos para a

TV pública, essa estratégia provou-se um erro político quando a TV Globo tornou-se um

de seus críticos mais crueis.

Keywords: Brazilian public television, Communication financing

Mass communication systems exert so much influence over individuals that

they can sometimes determine the destiny of a society. This influence may be

negative or positive, depending on how the system is regulated. As Venício

Lima (quoted by Pignotti, 2015) has argued, “Nowadays, the big media no

longer hold the power they once did. Now their power is boundless.” Although

Article 220 of Brazil’s constitution claims that “the means of communication

may not, directly or indirectly, be the object of a monopoly or oligopoly,” they

are concentrated in the hands of a few families or corporate conglomerates.

According to James Görgen (2011), up until July 2007 the five major commercial

television broadcasting systems owned 75 percent of the main stations and 95

percent of the affiliated stations. For instance, Rede Globo de Televisão (hereaf-

Sales Augusto dos Santos is a professor of social sciences at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa.

Ivonete da Silva Lopes is an adjunct professor in agricultural economics at the same university.

They thank Reinaldo Gandra, Erick Fontenele, Carlos Eduardo P. Leitão, and Tito Abayomi de S.

Leitão for valuable information on the topic and for producing graphs and tables that were critical

for their argument. They are also grateful for the comments and suggestions offered by Ricardo

Antunes, Javier Campo, Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli, and João Roberto Martins Filho. Frutuoso

Santana is a translator living in the New York City area.

768466LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18768466Latin American PerspectivesSales and Lopes / The Financing Of Tv Brasil

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