Disrupting Brazilian television: Streaming and the decline of Globo's hegemony in video cultures

Abstract

The Brazilian audiovisual landscape has been monopolized by the Grupo Globo conglomerate and its commercial broadcast network, TV Globo, which established a common video experience centered on the telenovela. Although cable and the internet sowed seeds of discontent in the 2000s, it was only with the advent of video streaming services in the 2010s that Brazil's video landscape was transformed. This led to the multiplication of video cultures and greater access to transnational audiovisual flows. This article frames streaming as a competitive force that has compelled Grupo Globo to diversify its storytelling and representation, highlighting its potential to disrupt Brazil's video cultures and exposing the limits of cultural proximity. It examines how streaming services affect Brazilian video cultures and how preexisting conditions in Brazil provide opportunities and limitations to underline streaming's disruptive potential for Brazil's video cultures and Globo's declining hegemony and ability to adapt to the digital era.

Introduction

Streaming video's ascent and widespread availability have significantly changed video cultures globally. From the transnational expansion of US-based companies such as Netflix and Disney+ to legacy media players’ responses, such as Brazil's Globoplay, Mexico's Blim, and South Korea's Wavve, each country has a particular experience of the introduction of streaming services. These experiences reveal transformations in local industries, audience practices, access and distribution of content, and more diversified audiovisual flows. However, Western nations, English-speaking markets, and US-based streaming services have received the lion's share of scholarly attention. In contrast, this article focuses on Brazil, a country belonging to the Global South, and examines how streaming has changed Brazilian video culture(s) and what influence pre-existing conditions have had on this landscape.

The article suggests that video streaming is a technologically enabled mechanism for globalizing content with implications for the lived experiences of viewers in many nations.

By leveraging technological affordances, streaming services can transcend national borders and offer access to content from around the world. Yet, while video streaming is often understood as a one-size-fits-all solution to media distribution, its intricacies unveil a complex reality. Although predominantly a foreign force of change in many contexts, streaming services encounter pre-existing national realities in each territory. These conditions lead to both resistance and adaptation that result in distinct streaming dynamics in each country. Notably, video streaming isn’t solely driven by Western media but also enables non-Western media services to go global as well as a reconfiguration in domestic dynamics.

TV Globo's (Grupo Globo's broadcast network) domination of the resolutely commercial Brazilian television system has structured their operation of this market. Even given the multiplication of screens and audience fragmentation in the past decade, TV Globo remains the most watched network in Brazilian television. Historically, TV Globo has monopolized national imaginaries about ‘what it is to be Brazilian’ and ‘what Brazil is’ (Vassalo de Lopes, 2003; Porto, 2011), however flawed and partial these imaginaries may be (Joyce, 2012). It has also established a common audiovisual experience around a particular television format, the telenovela, and actively promotes the audience's engagement through various media, including dedicated television shows, magazines, and newspaper sections. Engaging with telenovelas by commenting on storylines, expressing thoughts and criticism, and discussing programs is a popular pastime among Brazilians, and a nationally specific audience practice. Despite Brazil's massive and stratified population of over 200 million viewers, we can identify a pervasive and dominant national video culture associated with TV Globo.

Although this broadcaster has been a long-standing provider of popular content, its dominance has contributed to growing dissatisfaction within the audience, particularly when considering the country's limited adoption of cable television. This combination has amplified several issues, including restricted access to content, delayed availability of widely discussed foreign hits, the cost-effectiveness of cable TV subscriptions and, most significantly, the lack of diversity both artistically and in terms of representation. These factors have collectively fuelled discontent and highlight the need for more inclusive and accessible content.

The convergence of dissatisfactions, industry dynamics, audience behaviours, and the nation's prevailing economic depression have driven streaming adoption in Brazil. By addressing audiences’ dissatisfactions, streaming has disrupted the conditions that have supported Brazil's telenovela culture and allowed for the development of coexisting serial video cultures. These cultures encompass various preferences, with some viewers gravitating towards domestic telenovelas while others seek out foreign serialized fiction. This shift signifies a departure from the traditional dominance of telenovelas and indicates the transformative influence of streaming on the Brazilian audiovisual landscape.

This article first gives a brief overview of Brazil's pre-streaming video culture, including its particular industrial dynamics and their impact on the accessibility of audiovisual content, to contextualize Brazil's developing streaming culture. It then examines how dissatisfaction with mass-oriented broadcast content and limited access to cable, combined with the broad accessibility of streaming, drove Brazil's streaming adoption. The article argues that the multiplication of Brazilian video cultures has resulted from the affordances of video streaming technologies that have simultaneously exposed the limitations of the cultural proximity paradigm. Finally, it identifies the emergence and widespread adoption of video streaming as a competitive force that compelled Grupo Globo to broaden its array of products and, more significantly, expand its construction of Brazilianness.

Brazilian television before streaming

Television was first introduced in Brazil in the 1950s, although it was restricted to the social elite for the first decade. During the 1960s, the medium became an essential part of the country's national culture and was incorporated into everyday life across class lines during the military regime (1964–85). Television played a vital role in the country's national and media integration, thanks to the establishment of a distribution network and the expansion of the industry (Mattelart and Mattelart, 1989). The creation of TV Globo in 1965 with assistance from the regime (Mattos, 2002) was significant. The network belonged to the Grupo Globo media conglomerate, which eventually became one of the largest in the world in the 20th century through vertical and horizontal integration. Over time, it came to own newspapers, radio, and film studios, among other media. Grupo Globo's influence extends well beyond the realm of commerce, and into the political and cultural spheres of Brazil.

During the 1960s, TV Globo became popular through its ‘Padrão Globo de Qualidade’ (Globo Standard of Quality), a list of guidelines that the network followed when making its programming, particularly investing heavily in high-quality technical and visual content (Ribeiro and Sacramento, 2010). Compared to other broadcasters at the time, these guidelines were supported by greater investments in talent, production expenditures, and technology (Straubhaar, 1984). The Padrão de Qualidade is crucial because it established a model of high-quality mass-market popular culture in Brazil that satisfied viewers across the socio-economic spectrum for decades of considerable turmoil during the dictatorship. Moreover, despite TV Globo's role in sustaining the regime (Porto, 2012), its high-quality derived, mostly, from the participation of prestigious artists and intellectuals, many of whom were members of the Communist Party and shared a desire to revolutionize the daily lives of most Brazilians by communicating with the ‘general public’ (Sacramento, 2012) since the network reached a socially diversified audience at the time (Hamburger, 2005).

Ultimately, this strategy helped to establish a hierarchy among national broadcasters, elevating TV Globo's productions above competitor networks’ TV programmes (Freire Filho, 2004). Grupo Globo also played a significant role in this process by leveraging its experience and reputation to position TV Globo as a reliable source of news, entertainment and information. This helped attract viewers and advertisers, thus establishing the broadcaster's dominance in Brazilian media. In essence, Grupo Globo's influence and expertise in various media gave TV Globo a competitive edge, ¹ enabling it to create a lasting legacy in the media industry (Porto, 2012). Public networks, such as TV Cultura and TV Brasil, founded in 1960 and 2007 respectively, lacked the funding typical of Western public media, which contributed to their low ratings and limited social relevance. Indeed, TV Globo's hegemony might be partly attributed to the country's weak public broadcasting sector. Wolton (1996: 159) positioned TV Globo as a ‘public’ television service in the sense that the network not only prioritized high-quality news programming but also offered quality entertainment content that was least objectionable to viewers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

Throughout the 1970s, scholars were concerned about the United States’ influence on Brazilian television as part of the cultural imperialism paradigm, wary of dependency and asymmetries (Caparelli, 1982). Several networks aired ‘canned’ US series, with episodes often airing out of order or even without a regular schedule. Dubbed Hollywood films also aired regularly on broadcast channels, even on TV Globo. However, Straubhaar (1984) contended that US influence started to fade with the 1980s consolidation of Brazil's broadcast television system, which was based on a small number of commercial broadcasters who targeted a broad audience. The existing offerings, although limited, were largely sufficient to satisfy most Brazilians’ needs.

Unlike other broadcasters who couldn’t afford to generate domestic content and continued to rely on imports, TV Globo began airing almost entirely domestic programming by the 1980s. The telenovela format was crucial in this process and became the cornerstone of the country's television storytelling and mass culture. Ongoing telenovelas aired Monday through Saturday evenings, reaching some of the highest ratings, and were popular with both men and women, albeit more so with the latter. For instance, practically every single television set in Brazil was tuned in to the last chapter of the telenovela Roque Santeiro (TV Globo, 1985–86) (Gomes, 1998). Brazil even became a significant exporter in its own right, with TV Globo exporting telenovelas to other Lusophone countries since the mid-1970s (Sousa, 1997). Telenovelas have consequently had a profound impact on Brazilian popular culture, with their widespread viewership spanning across different audiences and socioeconomic groups.

Characterized by having hundreds of chapters (that is, episodes) and large ensemble casts, telenovelas usually follow an open-ended ² melodramatic structure that focuses on family or workplace struggles, heteronormative love stories, and the battle between good and evil. This format has become prominent throughout Latin American cultural industries (Lopez, 2002), with specific national distinctions. In Brazil, the tele-dramaturgy genre was heavily influenced by the melodramatic and fanciful works of Latin American professionals until Beto Rockfeller (Tupi, 1968–69) marked a turning point by incorporating more humour and critiques of Brazilian social, cultural, and political realities (Vassalo de Lopes, 2003). While other Brazilian broadcasters, such as SBT, began importing Latin American telenovelas in the 1980s as a more cost-effective option, they generally did not surpass the viewership of TV Globo's domestic telenovelas (Nantes, 2018).

The telenovela format dominated the pre-streaming landscape on TV Globo, which afforded limited opportunities for alternative genres and formats. Additionally, the representation of protagonists was largely limited to individuals from white, ³ middle-class, and privileged households in heteronormative relationships. Yet this emphasis distanced these telenovelas from the reality of the majority of Brazilians. Of course, telenovelas were not the only thing on television. The importance of newscasts in Brazilian pre-streaming video cultures cannot be overstated. Vassalo de Lopes (2003) observed that TV Globo's prime-time schedule alternated between news and domestically produced telenovelas. The Jornal Nacional, created in 1969 by TV Globo, remains the country's most influential news program. Moreover, soccer matches, a staple of Brazilian popular culture, also became a major component of the national video culture (de Souza, 2010).

Satellite and cable services that offered a greater range of channels began growing in Brazil only in the mid-to-late 1990s, although subscription-supported television services had been available since the late 1980s. ⁴ Despite technological capability and regulatory approval, the country lacked a competitively priced cable service (Reis, 1999) so that a multichannel service was typically regarded as a luxury item, available only to upper middle-class and elite audiences. According to Simis (2000: 12), in 1998, the penetration rate of pay television was around 7%, reaching only 2.7 million Brazilians. Cable providers offered foreign content, mainly current and old television shows and movies from the US, sports championships, 24-hour news coverage, and channels with content aimed at children and teenagers that gave viewers greater choice and made available content lacking from broadcasters. Affluent viewers regarded cable television and its US programming as a means to distinguish themselves from the lower classes and their dependency on broadcast television (Straubhaar, 1991).

Cable and satellite services were the first significant challenges Grupo Globo's monopoly faced over its dominance of the national industry and video culture. In 1991, the conglomerate adapted to the changing landscape by creating Globosat, which enabled it to initially operate its own satellite service and channels, but later it focused on providing channels for multichannel services. Globosat offers dedicated channels for sports, adult entertainment, news, and films. However, even Globosat did not attract many subscribers; only 8% of Brazilian homes adopted this multichannel service. ⁵ The low penetration of pay television did not disrupt TV Globo's dominance in any significant way in the Brazilian market. Consequently, a key feature of Brazil's dominant video culture in the 20th century was the almost monopolistic hegemony of one broadcaster, TV Globo, and one main television format, telenovelas.

Brazilian television in the 21st century

In the 2000s, Brazil's main video culture remained based on the consumption of linear television, primarily TV Globo. Reality shows, especially the adaptation of international formats such as Big Brother, joined telenovelas as the highest-rated productions on TV Globo, a trend not unique to Brazil. TV Globo began producing high-quality telenovelas that addressed complex societal issues that informed and raised awareness among viewers (Baccega, 2003). Telenovelas incorporated themes such as land reform, violence against women, and the country's pension crisis, which attracted younger viewers and guided the public debate about these issues (Vassalo de Lopes, 2011). The shift towards more progressive themes was motivated, in part, by the need to retain a younger audience that was losing interest. The strategy proved successful with telenovelas achieving high ratings, for instance, Senhora do Destino (Lady of Destiny) (TV Globo, 2004–5) had an average of 50 points and reached approximately 2.5 million households (73.7%) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil's most populous city.

Other broadcast networks used a range of strategies aimed at counterprogramming TV Globo, but their smaller audiences led to lower budgets and thus fewer programming options. Several continued to air US series, especially police procedurals and family sitcoms. The US imports that garnered significant attention during the early 2000s were primarily series from broadcast networks that were designed to appeal to a broad audience. However, SBT, RecordTV, and Band often aired these productions as a makeshift solution for any unanticipated scheduling conflicts (Croitor, 2001), which annoyed viewers who had limited access to these programmes. SBT also began to invest in domestic remakes (formats) of Mexican telenovelas, after audiences viewing imported Mexican originals began to decline. RecordTV found success with biblical telenovelas years after being acquired by Bishop Edir Macedo, the head of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. The network marketed these shows for a conservative audience (Greco et al., 2018) that was growing dissatisfied with the progressive themes in TV Globo's telenovelas.

Cable subscriptions began to grow in the mid 2000s, during a period of economic growth (both in terms of overall GDP and per capita GDP) and following policies enacted by Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that increased the buying power of Brazilians. Between 2006 and 2014, cable subscriptions rose from 4.7 million to 19.6 million subscribers, or roughly 10% of the country's population, ⁶ according to the Associação Brasileira de Televisão por Assinatura (Brazilian Pay-TV/Telecom Association). ⁷ Access still remained limited to the upper classes, but cable television piracy – colloquially known as ‘gatonet’ ⁸ – became immensely popular in Brazilian favelas (slums) and boosted lower-class access (Facina, 2020), though no official figures are available. The practice was fuelled by highly sought-after content, including US movies, television series, and major sports championships.

As cable subscriptions increased, policymakers demanded more regulation to protect the local audiovisual industry and promote domestic content. In 2011, President Dilma Rousseff signed the Pay Television Law to enhance competition, promote Brazilian culture, and strengthen independent production, while expanding access to pay-TV (Carter, 2017: 6). Although the law has had far-reaching effects (Lima, 2015), such as establishing quotas for Brazilian content, some channels have taken advantage of loopholes by repeatedly broadcasting the same Brazilian films to meet the requirement.

US series received a halo of prestige as a result of largely airing on cable, which afforded additional cultural capital. Shows such as Friends (NBC, 1994–2004), The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002/2016–18), and Lost (ABC, 2004–10) came to indicate refined cultural taste, albeit with a caveat. This elevated status was more closely linked to their inaccessibility rather than their content alone. In other words, at that time, the elevated cultural cachet was not necessarily based on shows that were considered ‘prestige’ or ‘quality television’, as framed by scholars (e.g. McCabe and Akass, 2007). Although imported productions featured prominently on cable networks, they suffered from distribution asynchrony, airing weeks, months, or even years after the production first aired in its country of origin. Most US shows only became truly popular – for example, part of Brazilian television discourse – in the late 2000s, with the introduction of broadband technology and the possibility to illegally download (i.e. access) series and reality shows and view them simultaneously with US audiences.

The ability and desire to participate in online and social media conversations particularly exacerbated frustration with distribution asynchrony, sudden cancellations, and spoilers from US-based fans commenting on the newest episode on social media. Although such engagement was a niche audience activity, primarily comprised of those among the upper middle and elite classes in Brazil, social media allowed new connections and audience desires. As access to mobile internet increased in the 2010s, social TV practices such as commenting online during a broadcast became more common in Brazil, especially for domestic productions (Finger and Canatta, 2012). For instance, over 100,000 tweets discussed the popular telenovela Avenida Brasil (Brazil Avenue; TV Globo, 2012) during its finale (Sigiliano and Borges, 2016).

Dissatisfaction with the unaffordability of cable television and with the temporal lag in broadcast distribution led to a persistent piracy culture in Brazil (Mizukami et al., 2011), particularly among teenagers and young adults belonging to the middle and upper middle classes. Piracy culture grew exponentially with digital access, enhanced by the possibility of peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing, illegal online streaming links, and the increased storage capacity of servers. It was strongly driven by the lack of authorized access or delayed availability. Informal economies of sharing audiovisual content with fan-made Brazilian Portuguese subtitles, particularly for TV shows, became socially acceptable as a way to access foreign storytelling without delay (Mendes Moreira de Sa, 2011). Fans played an important role in the availability and circulation of these products by easing access and reducing asynchrony. The lack of strong regulatory policies to prevent piracy allowed this culture to become a consistent audience practice among those who could afford a desktop or laptop with a broadband connection (a luxury item in Brazil until the mid-2000s) and, more importantly, the skill set to safely download these productions without malware.

Given the greater choice emerging from cable and piracy, there was limited room for TV Globo to innovate with alternative formats or storytelling structures without risking its claim on a mass audience. Innovating, for TV Globo, meant tackling everyday struggles, such as domestic abuse, substance abuse, and neurodiversity that attracted viewers’ attention while still reproducing the standard telenovela storytelling norms. Nonetheless, the focus on genres and formats perceived as most widely acceptable did not satisfy the audience's taste for specific genres that had become available with the greater range of US imports, especially more niche series that attracted high levels of unauthorized access (science fiction, supernatural, teen).

The persistent dominance of Brazil's broadcast television and its continued ability to construct a mass national audience distinguished it from other countries, such as the US, where video culture had fragmented and broadcast hegemony had experienced significant decline by the start of the 21st century (Lotz, 2007). There was a slight, yet progressive, decrease in Brazilian broadcast networks’ audience as viewers faced more choice, but broadcast television maintained its hegemony, continuing high ratings and, more significantly, saw its revenues increase in this period (Becker et al., 2015).

From the mid-noughts to the early 2010s, Brazilians’ consumption of on-demand video was largely limited to YouTube and a couple of other smaller websites that provided pirated links. This limited availability resulted from the lack of broadband internet infrastructure with sufficient speed to support high-quality video transmissions in Brazil, and the cost of smart devices. Brazil's geography also created challenges, as its population is sparsely distributed across one of the largest countries in the world. Expanding internet penetration, both fixed and mobile broadband, into rural and remote areas was slow and expensive. In 2010, only 34.2 million Brazilians (17% of the population) had access to broadband internet (fixed and/or mobile) (Mendes, 2011). This figure fell below the average of 21% among ‘developing nations’, as well as the average for ‘Western nations’, which stood at 71% according to the International Telecommunications Union. ⁹

The industrial and technological conditions in Brazil initially hindered the growth of video streaming services and enabled a more unified mass video culture to persist much longer than in many other countries. Nonetheless, an inflection point occurred by 2016, when Netflix's subscriptions nearly doubled in a year (Castro, 2016), Amazon Prime Video debuted in the country, and, more importantly, Grupo Globo's video streaming service, Globoplay, began to gain market share after its introduction in late 2015. These streamers’ affordability, relative to cable, and ability to please dissatisfied audiences fractured Brazil's pervasive video culture.

Streaming and the multiplication of video cultures

Video streaming technology emerged in Brazil in the context of growing dissatisfaction among viewers and market hegemon Globo was forced to deal with audience fragmentation as a result. Several factors drove fragmentation in the Brazilian video environment between 2011 and 2022, including greater accessibility to foreign content, accessibility of content on a variety of devices, and the emergence of more affordable options.

While the rise in cable subscriptions initially contributed to fragmenting the Brazilian audience, subscriptions began to drop sharply in 2015. There are multiple reasons for this decrease, some consistent with the case in other markets where streaming services disrupted multichannel services that underserved consumers. Other factors were particular to Brazil; the severe economic depression Brazil has faced from mid-2014 made cable even more unaffordable and is arguably the most important factor.

The advent of streaming technology provided considerable opportunities for the audiences’ fragmentation. Launching comparatively early in Brazil in 2011, Netflix initially struggled to gain subscribers, despite its low price compared to cable. Many of the infrastructural features common in the US were not yet norms in Brazil, such as credit card usage for online purchases, smart TVs, and broadband connections. Netflix partnered with regional telecommunications firms that provided high-speed internet statewide to deploy web servers nationwide to boost its numbers. The streaming service ultimately gained a foothold by leveraging the existing niche audience in Brazil that was already watching US content (legally and illegally) by offering a library of popular titles that had aired on Brazilian cable television (Meimaridis et al., 2021). It also offered an extensive collection of foreign films, some of which were dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese and licensed Brazilian telenovelas from RecordTV and SBT, and films from independent production companies to provide domestic content.

Adoption was limited and initially grew slowly but started gaining subscribers more rapidly after 2015. By 2021, Netflix had reached an estimated 19 million subscribers in Brazil, which thus became the company's second-largest market by subscriber numbers (Lang and Hopewell, 2021). Yet, considering Brazil's population size, the service remains quite narrowly used and largely limited to the upper middle class and elite (Straubhaar et al., 2021), although password sharing enabled greater access, at least until 2023. Even though no class-specific subscriber estimates are available, Brazil's lower and middle classes, particularly among the youth, seem to have more access to streaming than have ever used cable. Other subsequent US-based streamers, such as Amazon Prime Video (available since 2016), HBO Max (available since 2021), and Disney+ (available since 2020), have been able to acquire subscribers, although they, too, have a fairly narrow subscriber base and no official numbers are available.

Conversely, YouTube's popularity in Brazil has grown with the increase in mobile internet usage. The multifaceted service is utilized in varying ways in different countries, depending on underlying dynamics. Since it does not require a subscription or high-speed internet, YouTube is available to most Brazilians, particularly among the country's youth and the lower economic classes, for whom the platform enables access to content that is not available on linear television and provides a venue to share original domestic content. In Brazil, YouTube has been valued as a space for Brazilian creators to innovate and push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of cultural diversity, representation, and storytelling, especially showcasing aspects of Brazilian culture that have been neglected by broadcast television (Lunardi, 2022). The enduring success of the YouTube channel Porta dos Fundos (Backdoor) is a good example in this regard. The sketch comedy channel has taken advantage of YouTube's technological affordances and audience reach to establish a significant presence on both linear and non-linear television. For its part, Porta dos Fundos challenges TV Globo's hegemony (Carter, 2017) by presenting audiences with novel aesthetics alongside taboo issues like racism and misogyny. The channel's innovation, however, is not only a response to cable's incapacity to produce original content, but also a result of the prevailing broadcast landscape in Brazil, which still caters primarily to a broad audience.

In response to foreign companies’ expansion in the local market, Brazil's legacy entities created their own services. The country's largest domestic streaming platform is Globoplay, available since 2015. ¹⁰ During the streamer's first years, it offered both TV Globo's linear programming and a content library composed of domestic and foreign titles. Grupo Globo's telenovela library, which dates to the 1960s, is the company's greatest point of differentiation from foreign services as none have a substantial archive of Brazilian programming. Moreover, Globoplay began to integrate several of Globosat's linear channels into its content library through premium subscriptions that are cheaper than cable television packages. According to Globoplay's representatives, its Brazilian library has over 4800 titles, the majority of which are domestic, although 45% are foreign, mostly from the United States. ¹¹ Since 2020, the streamer has become a multi-territory service and is currently available in 23 countries. Despite this expansion, Globoplay's main audience remains Brazilians living abroad and Portuguese speakers, owing to the lack of subtitled versions, or versions dubbed in other languages as of 2022.

The Brazilian audiovisual sector has witnessed a surge in investments and creative freedom, particularly in formats and genres. This innovation is not restricted to YouTube. Since 2016, US-based services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have produced Brazilian originals, mostly scripted series, documentaries, stand-up specials, true crime docuseries, and movies (De Marchi and Ladeira, 2023). Globoplay has also invested in docuseries, exclusive telenovelas, and scripted series, including genres such as thrillers (Ilha de Ferro [2018–19] and Aruanas [2019]) and horror (Desalma [2020–22]), mostly unexplored by TV Globo previously.

The investments by foreign streamers and Globoplay in scripted series formats are revealing. Streaming services have enabled Brazilian viewers’ coterminous engagement, which has reduced dissatisfaction with distribution asynchrony of foreign content. As internet access became more widespread and piracy increased, a new breed of fan emerged in Brazil, the so-called ‘series fan’, as postulated by Castellano et al. (2018). The authors are not referring to fans of a single production, but rather to fans of the TV series format in general (as opposed to the telenovela), whether the production is domestic or foreign. Series fans are a niche video subculture in Brazil, but they have expanded the Brazilian cultural norm of conversations about shows and viewing, particularly among younger audiences with a larger online presence. Thus, streaming services and social media are enhancing a video culture that might not have been able to exist before these technologies, particularly because of the distribution lag. Brazilian users now comment on both popular national shows and foreign productions released globally, participating in conversations that transcend national borders.

These transformations in distribution are not exclusive to fictional content. Streaming video services have also modified the access and distribution of sports programming. These modifications have increased access to less ‘privileged’ sports on broadcast television. Video streaming services have made sports programming more accessible than ever and provide bundles that have a better cost-benefit ratio than expensive pay-per-view packages. Globoplay stands out in this regard, with its hybrid package offering full coverage of the 2020 Summer Olympics through access to Globosat's sports channels. The increase in accessibility has also led to the fragmentation of sports content into several distinct outlets, making it difficult for elderly users to access the content. Carrança (2022) points out these users’ frustration in finding and accessing the games of the Campeonato Brasileiro (the Brazilian Championship, the country's largest men's soccer championship), which are now scattered between four broadcast networks, nine cable TV channels, and seven streaming video services. Furthermore, some teams have their own streaming services, such as Flamengo's FlaTV+; the team has a fanbase of 32.5 million people, or around 16.2% of the country's population.

The rise and popularity of video streaming services in Brazil may be attributed in large part to the declining purchasing power of Brazilians, the rise of new, more affordable services that offer access to extensive libraries, and dissatisfaction with both broadcast and cable television's limitations and failure to develop content for niche tastes. In in many other countries, cable or satellite television diminished the dissatisfaction that festered in the Brazilian market until the arrival of streaming. Video streaming is consequently providing a profound transformation of the Brazilian audiovisual landscape and allowing the coexistence of multiple video cultures.

Globoplay and Brazilian video cultures in the streaming era

The current investigation revealed the pre-existing industrial, social, cultural, and political conditions shaping the implications of streaming for the Brazilian video landscape. In this section, I argue that the rise of video streaming services in Brazil has brought about significant changes to the country's video landscape, leading to shifts away from the limited scope of Brazil's linear television. While TV Globo and its telenovelas remain a significant cultural force, the popularity of streaming services has broadened the audience's access to foreign content and exposed some limitations of the cultural proximity paradigm. Moreover, the emergence of foreign streaming services and the development of original content by Globoplay have increased diversity in terms of both storytelling and representation in Brazilian audiovisual production.

In spite of the shifts introduced by streaming and audience fragmentation, Brazil's broadcast television, namely TV Globo, still obtains high ratings that traverse class, race, age, and gender divisions. In fact, Grupo Globo reaches 100 million Brazilians on a daily basis (half of the country's population) (Svartman, 2021). The recent success of the telenovela Pantanal (Wetlands; TV Globo, 2022) is a good example. Pantanal, a remake of a telenovela from the 1990s, became a nationwide sensation in 2022. Through its 167 chapters, it brought an increasingly politically divided nation together in front of the television screen in a way that had not been seen in Brazilian television since Avenida Brasil. ¹² The remake remained faithful to the original material and effectively challenged the belief that telenovelas’ audience was in decline by attracting coveted demographics and increasing interest among men, affluent viewers, and younger generations. ¹³ In 2022, Grupo Globo announced that Pantanal would be licensed to Paramount+ for distribution in South American countries where Globoplay is not available (Vaquer, 2022). This reveals that, rather than the ‘streaming war’ framing Brazilian journalists have embraced, Globoplay prioritizes and underscores the potential for enduring collaboration between local and international players.

Legacy telenovelas may appeal to both new and old audiences, the latter via the nostalgic experience of revisiting a show from their youth. Old telenovelas from TV Globo also found success on Globoplay after the streamer began releasing remastered productions from the network's archive in 2020. Many of these titles have been unavailable since their original airing, some only available on Globosat's cable channel Viva. This initiative has popularized telenovela marathons in Brazil, despite these productions’ 60-minute runtime and the fact that some have over 200 chapters. This phenomenon may indicate that while most viewers are happy with TV Globo's content, the on-demand experience has broadened their choices and expanded their appreciation of the network's offerings.

These examples reveal how TV Globo and its archive can still satisfy certain Brazilian audiences. However, this is just part of the story, since many Brazilians now have access to a range of foreign content previously unavailable to them. To explain why the upper middle and elite classes in Latin American countries have a preference for foreign content, Straubhaar et al. (2023) proposed concepts like distinction, cosmopolitanism, and their being cultural omnivores. Alternatively, I argue that video streaming services have enabled a far larger Brazilian audience to participate in transnational flows of audiovisual consumption and a greater array of stories than offered ever before. This is particularly true for those in the lowest socioeconomic strata, who were previously dependent on broadcast television that was quite homogeneous. Despite the presence of foreign content from the US and Latin America on Brazilian television, a broad Brazilian audience lacked access to transnational audiovisual flows until the mid-2010s – a time during which there was expansion and growing heterogeneity in the fiction available in the commercial distribution of content. Video streaming platforms provided new access to productions from a variety of cultural industries.

Historically, the scholarly literature on Brazilians’ preference for local audiovisual content has been characterized by the cultural proximity paradigm. Building on de Sola Pool's (1977) research on audience preferences, Straubhaar (1991) asserted that viewers tend to choose programming that is most akin to or proximate to their own culture. However, there are limits to cultural proximity. For example, La Pastina (1999) observed that the audience from the north-eastern Brazilian backlands preferred Marimar (El Canal de las Estrellas, 1994), a Mexican telenovela that aired on SBT, to Rei do Gado (Cattle King; TV Globo, 1996–97), one of TV Globo's most popular productions. Possible explanations for this preference were that the Mexican telenovela reproduced traditional sexual values consistent with the region's Catholic heritage, ¹⁴ and also because of the overall affinity for and attraction of melodrama (La Pastina and Straubhaar, 2005). Nonetheless, scholars have characterized cultural proximity as a dynamic phenomenon that may be influenced by various other cultural forces (Iwabuchi, 2002: 133) and as a concept ‘developed from empirical evidence, but evidence collected at a time when far less channel/program choice existed’ (Lotz et al., 2022: 513).

The advent of streaming video services in the Brazilian market exposes the limitations of cultural proximity even further. Broadcast television in Brazil provided its viewers with limited choices (ideological and artistic) due to the prevailing economic norms associated with mass consumption. During conditions of content scarcity, this limitation worked well to satisfy audiences; limited distribution and accessibility largely influenced the preference for culturally proximate productions in Brazil. Post-scarcity, the accessibility and availability of professionally dubbed and subtitled programmes on streaming services have opened up new content, more diverse in its stories, narrative features, and characters. Notably, this is a function of the extent to which Netflix offers a wide range of content produced around the globe by offering libraries where the majority of titles are not from the US (Lotz et al., 2022: 514) and the extent to which US-produced titles significantly diversified from the typical ‘Hollywood’, mass-audience product from the early 2000s.

In addition to audiovisual works from the US and Mexico, many Brazilian audiences now have access to content from South Korea, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Denmark, and many other countries well beyond those with geo-cultural or geo-linguistic similarity. The availability of video streaming technologies has transformed the Brazilian audiovisual landscape by increasing the number of cultural industries distributing their products in the country, allowing access through more affordable subscriptions, and requiring far fewer special skills than illegal torrent downloads. With greater accessibility to different formats (mainly, but not exclusively, scripted fiction series), streaming services have contributed to making the consumption of foreign productions less niche.

Recent scholarship highlights the popularity of culturally distant programmes in Brazil, such as Turkish dramas (Ferreira, 2021) and South Korean dramas (Mazur, 2023), which confirms earlier findings by La Pastina and Straubhaar (2005). These studies suggest that the worldwide attraction of melodrama as a macro genre (Martín-Barbero, 1987), and prioritizing a conservative representation of sexual values, might outweigh geographic proximity. Furthermore, TV Globo's shift towards more progressive issues in the 2000s disappointed conservative viewers, who now have access to content that reflects their values. This illustrates the limited range of ideas that can be pursued when targeting a mass national audience and explains the resulting fragmentation when more diverse choices become available.

A broader range of content on foreign streamers, including a greater variety of narrative formats, genres, settings, and diverse characters and experiences, has become more accessible. However, the changes brought about by these services go beyond accessibility of foreign content. Companies like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have started producing Brazilian original content that brings this diversity into play and can be more culturally specific, reflecting the country's unique cultural identity, rather than merely using it as a backdrop. These services address audiences’ dissatisfaction with the lack of representation across several areas, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Considering Globo's long-held monopoly on defining ‘Brazilian-ness’ in a way that is largely centred on the experiences of São Paulo's and Rio de Janeiro's elites, streaming platforms have invested in a Brazil poorly represented by broadcast television but that is also more evident on YouTube. For example, Cidade Invisível (Invisible City; Netflix, 2021–) features depictions of gods and mythology from Brazil's indigenous culture, or O Cangaceiro do Futuro (Time Hustler; Netflix, 2020–), which was also mostly filmed in the state of Ceará, in Brazil's north-east region. Both productions reinforce Brazil's diversity and the need to decentralize production in the continent-sized country.

Of course, this globalization process is not without drawbacks, and US-based streaming platforms producing local stories has also brought controversy. This is especially evident in Coisa Mais Linda (Girls from Ipanema; Netflix, 2019–20). The Netflix Original was first written entirely in English and was only translated into Brazilian Portuguese after receiving approval from the company's overseas executives (Guaraldo, 2019). ¹⁵ This foreign intervention resulted in a portrayal of ‘Brazilianness’ that relied heavily on clichés, including depictions of Rio de Janeiro, samba, and bossa nova (Greco et al., 2020). Consequently, the representation of Brazil and its people in the series was overly stereotyped and failed to capture the country's rich cultural diversity and complexity.

The foreign competition has also encouraged Globoplay to invest in catering to audiences dissatisfied with broadcast content. To attract the ‘series fan’ the company has provided non-telenovela scripted series such as the medical drama Onde Está Meu Coração (Where is My Heart?; Globoplay, 2021–) and series aimed at youth audiences, such as As Five (The Five; Globoplay, 2020–). To deal with the criticisms of the lack of diversity in TV Globo's telenovelas, Globoplay has also produced content with greater racial diversity, as in Encantado (Charmed; Globoplay, 2023–). The platform increasingly aims to address viewers’ past dissatisfactions by leveraging TV Globo's expertise, tradition, and domestic advantage in the Brazilian market in a way that counters the globalizing force of foreign streaming services by offering on-demand affordances (Mungioli and Ikeda, 2022).

While Globoplay has attracted viewers with a library mostly filled by domestic productions, it has also diversified its content to meet the changing demands of audiences in the era of post-scarcity. In other words, cultural proximity remains significant in Brazil's TV industry, yet media companies and scholars must also account for the broader audience and content landscape. This paradigm, then, should be considered alongside other factors, such as greater accessibility and diversity, in an increasingly globalized world.

Conclusion

The establishment of video streaming in Brazil has increased competition in the country's audiovisual landscape, posing an unprecedented challenge to the broadcast networks’ hegemony. It has brought about the development of local original productions with more diversity, the broadening of access to content from multiple cultural industries, and the erosion of time between exhibition windows. All of these transformations contribute to allowing Brazilians to access diversified flows of audiovisual content, particularly productions from other cultural industries. Moreover, it has also allowed Brazilians to participate more fully in conversations about these productions.

As a result, video cultures in Brazil have become more multifaceted and TV Globo's dominance has been challenged. Nonetheless, broadcast television continues to reach the most people over the greatest distance, which helps to explain the continued dominance and durability of the video experience it provides. According to Kantar Media Ibope, in 2022, linear television accounted for 78.7% of video consumption in the home, while streaming services accounted for 21.3%. ¹⁶

The impact of video streaming technology and foreign streaming services has varied across different countries, contingent upon their respective pre-existing conditions. In Brazil, the emergence of video streaming has been a disruptive force, pushing traditional broadcasters like TV Globo to re-evaluate their approach to programming and adapt to new market conditions. In this sense, streaming became a competitive force that at last forced Grupo Globo to diversify its offerings and, more significantly, expand its construction of Brazilianness, creating more inclusive and representative content that reflects Brazil's rich cultural heritage and diverse communities. One such effort is the decision in 2023 to cast black actors and actresses in leading roles for the first time in all three prime-time telenovelas in TV Globo's 73-year history. ¹⁷

The transformations seen in Brazil's video industry offer valuable insights into the potential of streaming to foster greater diversity, participation, and representation in media, while also posing new challenges for traditional broadcasters and regulators alike. Moreover, they also illustrate the power of streaming technology in driving change and disrupting entrenched market norms.