Pay-Television Welcomes Brazil

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the pay-television sector. Though it first arrived to Brazil in 1990, for the better part of two decades Brazilian pay-television was largely characterized by slow growth, access limited to the country’s most affluent classes, and a programming-grid chock-full of content imported from the United States. The Pay-TV Law’s establishment of quotas for locally produced content, however, has helped to carve out a space for the production and distribution of Brazilian content. With this in mind, the chapter analyzes 1 contra todos (1 Against All, Fox Brasil) and Lama dos dias (Mud of the Days, Canal Brasil). In addition to satisfying the content quotas outlined in the Pay-TV Law, both series benefited from government financing mechanisms, were directed by celebrated Brazilian filmmakers, and explicitly, albeit in distinct ways, contemplate the nation and Brazilianness.