Shifting the center: the impact of the Pay-TV Law on the Brazilian audiovisual field

Abstract

Although the Brazilian mediascape has been in transition since the early 1990s, the passage of the Pay-TV Law (Law 12.485) in 2011 established a new era. The Pay-TV Law has led to the rise of new distributors and production companies, a proliferation of viewing options, and a diversification of narrative formats. This increasingly competitive era has accelerated the fragmentation of TV Globo’s hegemony over the symbolic constructions of Brazil as an imagined community. In addition, this fragmentation has led to more diverse depictions of the country and its people, moving beyond the racially and geographically limited representations of TV Globo’s telenovelas, and thereby expanding the broader social imaginary. The series 3%, from a 2011 YouTube web pilot to its 2016 release as Netflix’s first original Brazilian series, is one prime example of production occurring beyond TV Globo’s reach, the ongoing transformation to the field, and the broadening depiction of how Brazil is imagined that began with the passage of the Pay-TV Law in 2011.