RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In the looming brutal media battle for the November 2022 presidential election of the largest Latin American economy, where the conservative Bolsonaro government faces an overwhelming number of hostile media giants, TV Brasil,
a Brazilian public television network owned by the state-owned Empresa Brasil de Comunicação, will mean an important lifeline for the current administration.
TV Brasil should reach all Brazilian cities next year. The forecast is from the president of Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), Glen Valente, and was presented during the meeting of the National Network of Public Communication (RNCP) of TV and Radio.
This is the second edition of the event, and is taking place in Brasília, on November 24 and 25, and gathers around 60 institutions, including TV and radio stations. The idea is to discuss strategies to strengthen the network of broadcasters that make public communication in Brazil.
The president of EBC highlighted the progress of the broadcaster, which went from 27th place in 2017 to 6th place in 2021. “Today we are at the same level of reach [of audience] of the large communication groups,” said Valente.
He pointed out that it is not only TV that should grow next year. Expansion is also planned for radio. “Our idea is to have radio reception in all the capitals, a national presence.” The expansion started this year with the launch of five new radios in the extended bandwidth.
EXPANSION WITH QUALITY
Part of this expansion will be done through the Digitaliza Brasil program, created to expand the digital television signal to the entire national territory. According to Valente, some cities in the interior of Brazil only have one TV channel, which often “picks up poorly”, and no radio because it is economically not viable.
For him, the program “brings citizenship and contributes for the whole of Brazil to have content and information in a slightly more republican way, that is, listening to both sides,” he said.
According to the executive manager of Programming Planning and RNCP, Vancarlos Alves, Digitaliza Brasil gives the opportunity to reach municipalities that, in many cases, are not the target of interest of large companies for commercial reasons “We are franchising quality programming open to citizens. It is a public mission,” he defends.
According to Alves, this mission must be accomplished with the help of the RNCP affiliates. “The EBC wants, more and more, to carry regional content and bring more of this accent, this culture, to the TV Brasil screen.”
MORE ATTRACTIVE PROGRAMMING
For Roni Baksys, EBC’s general director, there is no point in having a signal in all Brazilian cities if the station cannot meet the “tastes” of the Brazilian population living there.
For this reason, the company has invested in cutting-edge products such as soap operas, documentaries, and films. According to Baksys, the strategy is to capture the public and then share quality information.
The RNCP affiliate stations play an important role in the production of this content. According to Valente, the idea is to integrate the material produced by the partners to TV Brasil’s programming. “Instead of buying off-the-shelf content, we will take original content and give it national visibility.”
For EBC’s Journalism Director, Sirlei Batista, this is a “win-win” partnership. “EBC wins as a network [that receives more regional content] and each broadcaster in the states wins [that have their content reproduced nationally]. And this is very important for us”, she said.