Media and Religion in Brazil

January 27, 2012

Each day our students will blog about some of their experiences on the Brazil Travel Course. Our entry for Tuesday, 1/24 comes from

Petr Vostry and Vaclav Mares.

Tuesday January 24 was the last day of corporate visits. We visited TV Globo in the morning and the
Cristo Redentor
afterwards.

TV Globo

TV Globo concentrates mostly on national audience but it is also broadcasted abroad. The whole media group comprises of various media channels such as radio, newspapers, music, books, magazines, TV broadcasting, and pay TV.

The company presentation (including the short promotion video) was very professional. Both speakers proved their dedication to the company’s passion, ideas and values, which are “Inform, Educate and Entertain”. TV Globo was founded in 1965 as local TV station in Rio. In 1969 its broadcast became national, and it now covers 99% of territory and population in the country. It employs around 20,000 employees and generated USD $6.9 billion in revenue in 2010, with 62 % coming from commercial advertisement.

TV Globo is the flag ship of the media group. Its audience share is 45% in prime time (6 pm till 12 pm) and its share of TV advertisement market is 74%. This provides TV Globo with a very favorable power ratio of 1.6 (power ratio = TV advertisement market share / Audience share) in the 5
^th
biggest advertisement market and 3
^rd
biggest TV advertisement market in the world.

The biggest challenge which TV Globo has recently faced is a change of habits in the advertisement market, mainly the decrease of TV advertisement share in light of new communication media channels like the internet. It is a recent worldwide trend and it is a little bit slower in this particular area in Brazil in comparison to other developed countries. TV Globo is currently adapting to the internet environment, as well as portable devices like smart phones and portable TV sets. It is changing from a TV station to a Media Station.

Despite weaker regulation of TV media market as compared to the Czech Republic, TV Globo acts in line with government’s and audience’s needs. TV Globo dwells on keeping of national identity as domestic production forms 90% of broadcasting time. Brazilian families don’t mostly have sufficient money to visit cinemas so TV Gloxbo produces substitutes in the form of series called “telenovelas”. Company also responsibly accepts its national role and allows government to incorporate requested social values into telenovelas and other programs to influence society’s behavior.

After the presentation we were shown interior stages, costumes warehouse, directors’ rooms and we had also occasion to see exteriors built outside in the country.

Corcovado Mountain

Our last organized trip led us to Corcovado Mountain with statue of Christ the Redeemer and marvelous view of the city. We enjoyed the place very much. It also gave us a chance to think about religion and its influence on business with Brazilian. Our guide Pablo was very kind to share high-level information with us. General in Brazil, Catholic Church counts for 80% of Brazilian, the rest belongs to Evangelic Church. Doing business with Catholics looks pretty similar to US approach. They separate business and religion and concentrate primarily on financial aspects and results. Evangelists are different. They could be offended if you were talking solely about financials and you would omit to respect their ideas and emotions in business decisions.

To sum up – the Brazilian society is open minded and religion is not a seriously limiting factor. It need not be closely watched when establishing of business relations in Brazil.