Thanks to a merciless bombardment of prime-time soap operas that for decades, day after day, including Saturdays, are fed to the Brazilian public, Globo network has established its monopoly over the airwaves and the way the nation perceives the world. There have been some cracks lately on this hegemony, but it is still very common that at any given time 60% of all TV sets—at the end of A Próxima Vítima (The Next Victim) they were 90%— in Brazil are tuned in on Globo, a network derisively called the Platinum Venus that everybody loves to hate.
Alessandra Dalevi
Every night, at 8:40 PM, almost half of Brazil stops everything they are doing—bring their plates if they are eating—and gather in front of the TV tuned on Globo. It doesn't matter what they are going to be watching tonight. The so-called 8-PM novela (soap opera) for more than 20 years has been the top rated program for Globo network, a virtual monopoly on the Brazilian airwaves that only in recent years has suffered minor cracks. These days the attraction is called Torre de Babel (Tower of Babel), a feuilleton filled with the common places of the genre: infidelities, Homeric retaliation, and impossible coincidences. Torre de Babel is a synthesis of the strengths and the foibles of television in Brazil.
Torre de Babel has been presented as Brazilian TV's Titanic. Budgeted at $17 million, it is Brazil's most expensive novela to date, exceeding by at least $2 million other recent costly soaps. Each chapter costs $100,000, five times more than what the closest competition, SBT (Sistema Brasileira de Televisão—Brazilian System of Television), is spending on Fascinação (Fascination), its own soap being shown at the same time slot.
The tower shopping mall alone, with 600 glass windows and the height of an eight-story building, cost $1.1 million and it was built to be exploded. The structure was erected in one month and a half by 200 workers. A junkyard and a slum were also built by order, adding $300,000 to the scenery bill. Another $230,000 were spent on imported material for special effects.
Globo has presented Torre as the novela with the largest number of top stars ever. Curiously, in 1990 when the TV network had its audience eroded by Manchete's soap Pantanal (Swamp), the leader gave its answer with another largest-number-of-top-star-ever novela starring the same Glória Menezes, Tony Ramos, and Cláudia Raia who are present now and written by Sílvio Abreu, the same author of Torre. Then the soap was called Rainha da Sucata (Junk Queen). Abreu says that he was inspired by the Unabomber (American terrorist Theodore Kaczynki) in composing the plot around the explosion in the tower that permeates the whole story of Torre.
There is a problem though in all these surpassing facts. The 42% ratings share enjoyed by Torre de Babel, which would be a dream number to any of the American networks, has brought author Sílvio de Abreu and the whole Globo production team back to the drawing board. Focus groups are customarily used halfway through a show to gauge the success of a novela and they help decide what changes to make during the course of a soap. This time, the use of this resource was anticipated. Globo's top bosses panicked when Torre de Babel's audience fell to 36% in its fourth day of presentation and to 35% one week later on chapter 10. Globo honchos seemed to be justified in their panic: Por Amor (For Love), the previous 8-PM novela, reached 52 points in its final episode.
Carlos Manga, the dramaturgy nucleus director, personally made changes even in already-shot chapters. Among the changes: Agenor became more simpatico abandoning the spitting habit and cuss words of the initial chapters; nasty former inmate Clementino gained a more docile image and lots of love scenes with Clara; and an oral sex scene between Sandra and Alexandre in the mall's bathroom was left in the cutting room. In an unheard of save-face strategy even in the show opening—in which the credits are presented—the dark sky gave place to a brighter late afternoon landscape.
Newsweekly Veja's TV critic Eugênio Bucci screamed: "Torre de Babel was doing well while the ratings were bad. (...) In retreating as it retreated Globo committed a worse error: it gave up presenting the different and embraced the sameness. Researches are useful for listening to and interpreting the TV viewer not for obeying him."
Behind Globo's rush to the rescue is the fear of losing top publicity money. While the price for a 30-second ad insertion during the prime-time novela is now $102,000, it will have to be lowered at the end of August when it is time to sign new publicity contracts if the ratings continue their downward march.
To deal with some ratings-busting characters, author Sílvio Abreu has used the explosion at the Tropical Tower, which gives the name to the novela. With that he was able to eliminate the lesbian couple Leila (Sílvia Pfeifer) and Rafaela (Christiane Torloni) who die in the explosion. Apparently there was strong reaction to them from the public not due to their relationship—other gay couples have been shown without any incident in the past—but because they are happy and adjusted together. One of the ideas was to kill one of the lovers and give the other a male sweetheart, but the solution seemed far-fetched even for a made-by-polls soap.
Thanks to the public reaction, Vilma (Isadora Ribeiro), who according to the initial synopsis should die in the explosion, was spared. Catastrophes have been used frequently to change directions in novelas. Late Janete Clair, who wrote some of the most memorable and campy soaps, once used an earthquake—an unknown occurrence in Brazil—to completely change her story line. As for Torre de Babel the changes have worked so well that the soap has already reached peaks of 52 points after the alterations.
While Globo shocked the masses, far-away second place, SBT Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão—Brazilian System of Television) launched its own prime-time novela to compete against Torre. It is Fascinação (Fascination), a soap that is everything Torre is not. While Globo uses its top stars, names guaranteed to draw public, like Tarcísio Meira and Glória Menezes, Édson Celulari and Cláudia Raia, Tony Ramos, Adriana Esteves, and Isadora Ribeiro, Fascinação has a cast of mostly unknowns.
Contrasting with the violence, drug-infested, sexual deviant characters of Globo's soap, author Walcyr Carrasco from SBT brings a melodramatic love story set on the '30s with a love triangle involving one man and two girlfriends, one rich and the other poor.
Soap Land
With 16 novelas being shown currently, Brazil only loses to the US (20) and Colombia (18) as the world's soap-opera queen. On second thought, it should get the prize. While the Yankee novelas are spread through a much larger range of channels and are normally shown far from prime time, in Brazil every commercial channel carries novelas and the main ones are all shown on prime time.
For all its fame as a producer of high quality shows, Rede Globo wouldn't survive on the top without its soaps. Brazil's by-far-leading network has six novelas being presented daily. It starts at 11:15 AM with Caça Talentos (Talent Search). At 2:15 PM it is time for O Salvador da Pátria. (The Country's Savior). Then it is novela after novela starting with Malhação (Pumping Iron) at 5:30 PM followed by Era uma Vez (Once Upon a Time) at 6, and Corpo Dourado (Golden Body) at 7. Just a little breather and it is time for Torre de Babel (Tower of Babel) at 8:40 PM.
Second-place in the ratings, SBT has three novelas: Marimar at 11 am, Chiquititas (Little Girls) at 8 PM and Fascinação (Fascination) at 8:50 PM. Record, Manchete, and Bandeirantes, all have a soap apiece. They are respectively Estrela de Fogo (Fire Star) at 8 PM, Mandacaru at 9:40 PM and Serras Azuis (Blue Hills) at 6:45 PM. Thanks to cable Brazilians can now also follow the daily adventures of the grandmother of soaps, American General Hospital (8 AM) and Sunset Beach (9 AM) on TeleUno. At 10 AM Sony channel brings Days of Our Lives. Pay channel Zaz ends the daily novela offering with "Cebollitas" at 10 PM. That gives a total of more than 14 hours of soap every day.
TV
d'AuteurIn the Brazilian TV novela is an author's medium. Soap writers are in demand and some of they are as famous and powerful as the actors they help to project. Top writers not only have freedom to develop their months-long plot, but also have their saying on the choice of the cast and even the director of their novelas. Says Sílvio Abreu, the writer for Torre de Babel: "I am not a writer. I am a novelist. That's why I never create a character without linking it to the image of some actor. After all they are the ones who give life to my creations. I write the whole time thinking in each of them."
And more: "I will not shy away of talking about something only because the public rejects it. I simply write in the novelas what's bothering me. It is not my intention to defend such and such vision or such and such moral. I only want to expose what I consider harmful or positive." Abreu spoke all this on early May, before the first chapter of Torre de Babel was aired and the ratings juggernaut forced him into changes he had vowed not to make.
Differently from the U.S. where soaps are the result of more or less anonymous writers working as a team, Brazil's TV auteur often writes the whole novela all alone. Or at least that's what happened until 1980, when Gilberto Braga, after writing all by himself the anthological Dancin' Days (in English in the original), asked for help when Água Viva (Live Water) got to chapter 30. Star soap authors Walcyr Carrasco, Benedito Ruy Barbosa and Glória Perez still do all the work by themselves, however, putting as many as 16 to 18 hours of work a day to produce a close-to-an-hour show.
Writing novelas is hard work and only the fittest survive. One of the finest soap script writers, Dias Gomes—he is also a renowned playwright—, who wrote the Roque Santeiro (Roque, the Saint Maker) novela and the miniseries Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Miss Flor and Her Two Husbands) said recently: "Writing a novela is very tiring. I hope I will never have to write them again."
It's doubtful that his wishes will be heard. There is a pressing need for good novela writers and few of them available. Some of the talent that might be drawn to the well rewarded task give up when they become aware they will have to forgo a whole year of their lives and dedicate 15 or more hours every day to devise plots and dialogues that will survive the daily massacre of the ratings.
Torre de Babel, the current 8:00-PM story, was written by Sílvio de Abreu, but only because the author that should fill up that prime-time spot, Gilberto Braga, was tied up writing Labirinto (Labyrinth), a mini-series to be aired in November.
By early July, Globo still didn't know who was going to write its next 8:00-PM novela, the noblest of all the time slots for soaps. Benedito Ruy Barbosa and Aguinaldo Silva were asked to present synopses of new stories as soon as possible. Barbosa, who wrote the recent hit O Rei do Gado (The Cattle King), had been promised some rest until 99, but these plans had to be scrapped. Silva wrote A Indomada (The Untamed Woman), which aired in 1997 up to November. To sweeten the deal, Globo promised Silva that his work would be directed by his favorite director: Daniel Filho.
Globo's authors pool still includes Glória Perez, who will write the next 6:00-PM novela; Manoel Carlos who has just finished writing Por Amor (For Love) and Lauro César Muniz, who says he feels exhausted after writing non-stop two novelas: Quem é Você? (Who Are You?) (1996) and Zazá (1997). They are all experienced veterans, in some cases with decades of practice.
Getting new novela writers is complicated. In an interview with daily Folha de São Paulo, Aguinaldo Silva, who wrote classic soap Pedra Sobre Pedra (Stone Over Stone) and the recent miniseries Tieta based on Jorge Amado's book Tieta do Agreste, said: "A novela writer needs to have a spirit of self-abnegation. Writing novelas is a work that requires 10% of talent and 90% of obsession."
Ricardo Linhares and Alcides Nogueira are two of the few emerging names in the soap-writing metier. Linhares, who is writing the next 7:00-PM novela under the "Terra do Sol" (Sun Land) working name, is seen with enthusiasm by his veteran colleagues. Humble, however, he tells that he doesn't feel ready to join the 8:00-PM big leaguers: "I will still need to eat a lot of rice and beans," he said recently.
To get fresh blood, in 1984 Globo created a school for authors in São Paulo, even though its headquarters are in Rio. People from all ages and backgrounds, but mainly students and youngsters, have been drawn to the program. The monetary reward is enticing. A novela writer from the first team can make as much as $100,000 a month when you add to his salary the merchandising he introduces in the novela (for example: a character uses an Apple computer to write a letter).
The number of people interested in the course has jumped from 350 to more than 700 in recent years. From those who apply, only 14 are chosen to participate in the three-month course and no more than three end up getting a contract with Globo. Sometimes they spend months doing nothing while drawing a salary and waiting for their chance to break in the business.
Glory and
DeclineIf Globo is the dominant force on Brazilian TV today, its grip on the audience was still much stronger in the '70s and '80s. By 1989, Jornal Nacional, Globo's prime-time news show was getting ratings of 60 points in its most important market, the greater São Paulo. In 1994 this number had fallen to 45, a 25% decline. During the same period, the 8-PM novela fell 20.6% from 63 to 50 points and the 7-PM novela declined 18.3% from 60 points to 40. The loss of audience started in 1991.
These three programs constitute the backbone of Globo's programming schedule and were of major importance to consolidate the network as the hegemonic force that it has become. It was the late Walter Clark who in 1968 had the idea to present a news show in between two soap operas. The new news program presented by Hilton Gomes at 7:30 PM only got the name of Jornal Nacional in 1969 though. Sandwiching news between soaps was a strategy to get an audience for a journalistic program during a time in which Tupi, Excelsior, and Record still represented a serious competition at least in the state of São Paulo, the most populated one. Up to this date the period is the most coveted by advertisers who pay premium price for a spot during the Jornal or the 8-PM novela.
Projections see a continuous eroding in audience, which will mean ratings of less than 30 points for the 7-PM novela in the year 2000. While the Jornal Nacional has been losing an average of 2.6 points a year, the 8-PM novela loses 1.5 points yearly. At this pace, the Jornal Nacional will also be getting less than 30 points instead of the 37 that it enjoys now. And the 8-PM novela will be only slightly over 40 points.
Globo has been losing its public to several networks and a growing pay TV service. According to Ibope, in 1989 SBT had eight points during the 8-to-8:30-PM slot. More recently the SBT ratings jumped to 15 points during that period, while all the other networks put together had an increase from five to nine points. In an interview with Folha de São Paulo, Laurindo Leal Filho, a telejournalism professor at USP (Universidade de São Paulo), explained why Jornal Nacional has been losing audience: "It lost public because it was not able to create a credibility aura since it was created in 1969. If we had real alternatives from the competition the fall would have been even bigger."
Despite the fall in audience, Globo continues to have record earnings in advertising. While it made $1.2 billion in 1996, this amount increased 20% to reach $1.5 billion in 1997. Rede Globo is the world's fourth biggest private network behind only the three Yankee TV sisters and its owner, Roberto Marinho, is always listed among the world's wealthiest men, according to Forbes magazine, the Bible of the sector. He is also known as a kingmaker for his personal involvement in the election of the last two Brazilian presidents: Fernando Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
In its July 6 issue, Forbes lists him as "one the world's 200 working rich", having a net worth of $6.3 billion. Says Forbes: "At 93, the media baron still carries political clout. His Globo group dominates Brazilian TV and is challenging publishing tycoon Roberto Civita (owner of Editora Abril) with a new weekly newsmagazine, Época, launched in May. With his three sons, he owns nearly all $4.8 billion (net revenues) of the Globo organization."
The Globo TV chain is just part of an ever-growing conglomerate started in 1925 with the creation in Rio of O Globo daily newspaper. Today the Marinho group controls and holds shares in about 100 companies that employ more than 12,000 people. The Globo conglomerate earned $2.4 billion in 1995 making it the 18th largest private company in Brazil.
TV Globo's ranking as the world's fourth largest private network does not translate into equally top-place earnings. A list of the most profitable TVs on the world published in 1995 by Television Business International showed Rede Globo in 32nd place, behind smaller American conglomerates like Cox Entertainment and Comcast. While Time Warner appeared on top of the list with earnings of $4.8 billion a year, Rede Globo had $1 billion to show for.
Globo clings as long as it can to its monopoly over the airwaves. One of its stratagems—a costly one for that matter—is to maintain a cast of 300 under permanent contract even though it cannot use more than 180 actors at any given time. The surplus is the Globo's way of preventing the competition from using these artists in their productions. Aging leading man Tarcísio Meira, for example, makes 50 grand a month working or not. That translates into $14,000 per novela chapter in which he works. "It 's better to pay Tarcísio to do nothing than to have him working at another station," says an executive at the network. Since SBT started its own teledrama nucleus Globo has raised by 80% its budget for acting talent.
End of
an EraOn November 24, 1997, a brief and cold memorandum changed forever the way things are done at Globo. On that date, Roberto Irineu Marinho, the eldest son of patriarch Roberto Marinho, took control of Globo, by ending the executive attributions of José Bonifácio de Oliveira Sobrinho, 63, better known as Boni. Boni had the title of vice-president of Strategic Coordination, but he acted as if he were the network's owner. The memo stripped him from that title giving him a new one: personal adviser for the younger Marinho. Seven months after the changes his new services hadn't been used yet and probably never will.
Roberto Irineu went by the title of vice-president executive, but it was Boni who had the last word and the owner's son had been uneasy about the situation for a long time. Boni had become a synonym for Rede Globo and is responsible for the so-called Globo standard of quality. He was brought to work for the company by Roberto Marinho on March 22, 1967, when Globo was giving its first steps. He was already an experienced executive, having worked at TV Rio and Excelsior.
It seems that Boni's fall started in 1995 after a series of conflicts between him and executive superintendent Marluce Dias da Silva, 48, brought to the network by Roberto Irineu four years earlier to trim expenses and make Globo a leaner enterprise. Legend has it that during a meeting in 1995, after a comment by Marluce, Boni said: "If I had more power I'd fire you."
In May 1997, Boni signed a four-year contract by which he gets a monthly salary of $500 thousand. There is a $30 million penalty for both sides in case the contract is not honored. The fallen all-powerful boss has indicated that he would forgo the penalty if Globo liberates him from the contract. But the network prefers having him doing nothing, but at their side.
In the just-published book Pilares Via Satélite—Da Rádio Nacional à Rede Globo (Pillars Via Satellite—Nacional Radio to Globo Network), Paulo César Ferreira, former partner of Roberto Marinho makes some juicy revelations. Ferreira worked for Globo for 21 years and he had a privileged inside spot from where to look.
Among the bombs: 1. Marinho had in 1969 the help of then Finance minister Delfim Netto to obtain a $3.85 million line of credit, the price for the buyout of American media group Time-Life. Marinho has always denied having received any money from the military government. Rede Globo also never admitted having accepted Time-Life capital. Such investment would be irregular because the Brazilian legislation barred all foreign participation in the media.
2. The so-called Globo standard of quality was not a voluntary effort to improve quality, but an imposition by the military disgusted with the series of exploitation shows Globo aired at the start of the '70s.
3. Globo catered so much to the military that it maintained a military aide called Edgardo Manoel Erichsen. He was in charge of promoting such government-friendly programs like Amaral Neto, o Repórter, which showed the accomplishments of the dictatorship and Olimpíadas do Exército (Army's Olympic Games).
Ferreira also talks about total lack of infrastructure at Globo and tells anecdotes like the one with the company's number one star, Glória Menezes, who was almost bitten by a snake when relieving herself in the bushes during the shooting of a novela.
And Now
the RestRunner-up SBT has adopted a new slogan recently: '16 years in second place so you can stay in first.' Apparently resigned to keep a distant second place to Globo's unbeatable lead SBT (Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão—Brazilian System of Television) has been threatened to lose even this position by Record, an old decrepit network that has recouped some terrain since being bought by controversial Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), which is pouring some good money on new equipment, respected professionals and star hosts.
Among Record's recent acquisitions there are those of highly-regarded news anchor Bóris Casoy, who was lured from SBT and Carlos Massa, better known as Ratinho (Little Mouse). Ratinho usually carries a nightstick that he uses in his indignation rampages and fills up his daily programs with all kinds of psychological and physical crippling for attraction.
At SBT, the boss, former street vendor Senor Abravanel, better known as Sílvio Santos, is also the network's main attraction with a day-long Sunday program that has lasted for 39 years. In May, SBT's owner announced: "I want to be out of the limelight in one year and a half or two." The popular host, though, admits that he might change his mind and stay put "if the repercussion of my departure and the vanity of my possible successors create a problem."
Sílvio Santos has prepared Gugu Liberato to succeed him, but it is no secret that the chosen one has loftier plans, and dreams of one day having his own TV station. More recently, Santos has started training newcomer Celso Portiolli to take his place.
Differently from Marinho and its Globo empire, Sílvio Santos, 67, has a hands-on approach. He not only is the main attraction of his network, he also controls every little aspect of its operation. His collaborators have their hands so tied that in a recent trip of the boss to Mexico, SBT stayed without a prime-time news show, waiting for his return and his decision on what do about the whole news department. At the end the news sector was practically zapped out with the firing of 75 professionals from São Paulo, Rio and Brasília.
Sílvio Santos has also been actively engaged in finding a partner for his network. Disney is one that has been approached. SBT owner's trip to Mexico was for a week-long program of meetings with Televisa's (Mexico's powerful TV network) executives for a possible alliance. SBT already has an agreement with Argentina's Telefe from which he gets Chiquititas, a series with a band of orphanage children, one of the network's hit shows. Thanks to CBS Telenotícias, Sílvio Santos is also being able to guarantee some minutes of news in his schedule. But he is ending this partnership.
Sílvio is known for changing schedules at his whim. One extreme example of this habit is Serginho Groisman's Programa Livre (Free Program), an interview show for youngsters, which in seven years had its day and time changed 36 times. The schedule is so absurd at SBT that Groisman's program for sometime had to conform to the exhibition of a novela at Globo, which also alters times and duration of shows according to the competition. More than once Programa Livre was taken off the air in the middle of an interview.
Impatient to see results and with an eye at the bottom line, SBT's owner trusts his instincts to at the last minute change schedules, cancel programs and not air ready shows. Right now SBT has two completed novelas in the can waiting for his OK. They are Direito de Nascer (The Right to Be Born) and Pérola Negra (Black Pearl), two melodramas.
Sílvio Santos also likes to bestow shows on people who become media stars, even though they have no TV or media experience. It happened twice recently with two girls who generated a lot of publicity after posing in the nude for Brazilian Playboy. For Débora Rodrigues, who was a poor girl working for the landless movement, he created the afternoon Fantasia , a daily show in which dozens of pretty teen-age girls in little clothing sing, dance and appear in enticing close-ups sending kisses and asking amid erotic sighs that people call their 900 number. The program airs opposite Globo's Malhação , a novela in which the main attraction are skimpy-dressed young bodies working out in an exercise academy.
The newest attraction is national sensation dancer Carla Perez, 20, who for three years was the main feature of Baiano musical group É o Tchan. Better known for the size of her buttocks and her ability to shake them, Perez has premiered in June her Carla Perez do Brasil. She has been hired with a monthly salary of $100,000. Inspired by Argentinean show Hola, Suzana, Carla calls people who sent letters and gives them prizes. To get the prize though they have to say, "Alô, Carla Perez." (Hello, Carla Perez). She also does interviews, having started with coach Zagallo just before he left for France with the Brazilian soccer team.
Déjà Vue
Someone who left Brazil as long as 40 years ago might feel tricked by time upon returning today. He will be able, for example, to see on SBT Praça da Alegria (Joy Square), a comedy show created in 1956 and that is part of the Brazilian TV foundation. It is true that due to copyright concerns the program has changed its name to A Praça é Nossa (The Square Is Ours) and that Manoel da Nóbrega, the creator of Praça has long passed way. But it's Carlos Alberto da Nóbrega, the son of Manoel, who directs today the show and some of the original actors are still interpreting the same old characters.
Chacrinha, Flávio Cavalcanti, J. Silvestre, Moacyr Franco, all of these names had a huge following during the '60s and the '70s with their live variety programs. They were disputed by the networks and Cavalcanti and Abelardo Barbosa Chacrinha galvanized the country with their more or less tasteless shows and guests. While suit-and-tie-dressed Cavalcanti played the serious-above-any-reproach journalist and Chacrinha came in a clown suit throwing codfish at the public in the auditorium, they were very similar. Cavalcanti and Chacrinha passed away, but their legacy goes on. Music-inclined Moacyr Franco and J. Cavalcanti even had a recent revival getting their own program again, without the old public adulation, however.
The auditorium program has become a hot item again. There are no less than 27 of these shows being aired right now. Similar to some live programs in the U.S. the new wave of auditorium shows—some of them on prime time—bring more of the worst that real life has to offer: physically handicapped and desperate people, fights between couples, smutty intimate revelations. Anything for a few more points on the Ibope.
Magic Box
The main reason why the Brazilian public gets what it wants on TV and almost instantaneously is Teletron, an audience measuring device used by Ibope (Instituto Brasileiro de Opinião Pública e Estatística—Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics), the Brazilian Nielsen, which follows on real time the evolution of the audience tuning in on a certain program. The recent invasion of the remote control has eliminated the habit people had of leaving the TV tuned on the same channel for days.
The Ibope service allows TV stations—and they use it in the most creative ways—to follow minute by minute their own performance and that of the competition. With these numbers guests who are not popular and subjects that draw little attention are cut short while ratings picker-uppers can be maintained in the air and exploited for half an hour or more. Oddly enough, shows in Brazil can have their time altered on the spot. It is common that high-ratings programs be prolonged to harm the competition. On the other side, the competition is also watchful, waiting for the best time to start its program.
And what are good show baits? First of all, novelas stars, say the Ibope data. Pretty women and successful music stars come next. Tarcísio Meira, a veteran sweetheart of novelas, for example, was able to raise a Domingão do Faustão—a Sunday-afternoon variety program—ratings by 14 points, from 25 to 39. As for the most unpopular characters, politicians come in first, followed by less popular singers. This system has provoked some humiliating scenes for some jewels of the Brazilian culture. Maria Bethânia, Ivan Lins, and Jorge Ben Jor, all heavyweights of the MPB (Música Popular Brasileira—Brazilian Popular Music), among many others, had their participation in live shows abbreviated when their presence made the ratings go down.
Although the Ibope machine is connected to a mere 660 TVs and all from the city of São Paulo, it is believed that it portrays the whole nation's TV universe. Every point represents 80,000 homes in the Greater São Paulo.
Sex
on TVWhile the audience leader Globo has been forced to moderate the amount of nudity and sex it shows, the constraint does not apply to smaller networks, like Manchete and Bandeirantes, whose programs rarely reach double digit.
Veteran novela director Walter Avancini, has become an expert in provoking scandals and getting free publicity and with luck also some public to his novelas at Manchete. His last coup was to cast transsexual Roberta Close in Mandacaru, which doesn't get more than 8 points compared to more than 30 for Globo's novelas. La Close created an instant factoid threatening to sue any actor who refused to kiss her on the mouth.
It was the pressure from a much wider and diversified audience that forced Globo's director Antônio Calmon to stop the erotic teasing in Corpo Dourado, the current 7:00-PM novela at Globo. In that soap, fast-rising star Daniele Winnits often appeared naked on the beach, with an electronic black stripe covering strategic spots on her nude body.
On the wee hours, however, everything seems allowed even on the over-the-air channels. Some pornographic shows have become cult during that time slot bringing to smaller channels ratings they cannot dream of during the day. Bandeirantes, better known as Band these days, is betting that sadomasochism is the ideal recipe for its H show. Hostess Tiazinha gets up to 6 points in São Paulo, which represents 480,000 homes. Band complements its late-night programming with Cine Privê, a selection of pornographic movies sponsored by telesex 900 numbers.
Veteran show host Raul Gil in his Saturday Programa Raul Gil on Manchete is surrounded by six temptations in the shape of six models during his "O Divã do Raul" (Raul's Divan) segment. They are Sônia Almeida, Jennifer Garcia, Magáli Vaz, Vanessa Pontes, Simone Morena, and Simone Loura (morena means brunette and loura, blonde.) Each one has a specialty, Simone Morena, for example specializes in asking risqué questions.
Gugu Liberato from SBT's Domingo Legal has been using eroticism with great success for a long time. One of the most-popular attractions of the show is the one in which gorgeous model Luíza Ambiel in a skimpy bikini struggles with a man to see who can get the largest number of soap bars from a water-filled bathtub.
Roaring
MouseThe biggest phenomenon of Brazilian TV today is Carlos Massa, better known as Ratinho (Little Mouse). He is the son of a bricklayer who worked picking coffee grains, as a clown, and even washing corpses for a living. In 1983, he was selling food on the streets. Five years later, at age 29, he was elected city council of Curitiba, a large city and the capital of the state of Paraná. Since June 1996 he worked at CNT/Gazeta hosting 190 Urgente, the cops-and-robbers show that gave him an audience and drew the attention of the big TV networks. In July of last year Ratinho was making $7,000 at CNT. By the end of the year his monthly earnings had multiplied 37 times and he was already getting $260,000 a month.
In November 1997, it was reported, Sílvio Santos tried to entice the TV host offering him a $180,000 monthly salary plus commissions on 900-number earnings. "I didn't go to SBT so I wouldn't be like a mercenary," Ratinho explained. The host's contract with Record runs until 2002. A clause establishes that he would have to pay a $25 million penalty to unilaterally break the agreement.
Sweet
WhoresDespite the moralistic streak at Globo, the network is not abandoning its lewd characters. Already on the air or waiting in the wings there are four roles for prostitutes, for example. It is a hooker the woman who lends its name to Hilda Furacão (Hurricane Hilda), a very successful miniseries that has just had its run. For novice actress Ana Paula Arósio it was a chance of a lifetime to play Hilda, a married socialite from Minas Gerais, who makes some pocket money in a whorehouse. As a whore, gorgeous model Arósio has become the toast of the country and proved to have the right interpreting stuff.
The next Globo miniseries, Labirinto (Labyrinth), to première on October 20, will have three girls selling their bodies for a living. Once again, two beauties expect the role to work wonders for their careers, even though they are already two global—who work for Globo—high-magnitude stars. They are Malu Mader, who will play Paula, and Christine Fernandes, who will be Dora. Paula will be one of the few to defend a businessman accused of a crime he did not commit. A third lady of the night will be interpreted by Brazilian sweetheart Cláudia Abreu on a cameo appearance.
Labirinto is inspired by the Yankee TV series The Fugitive. In the Brazilian version, André (Fábio Assunção), a man unjustly accused of murdering a businessman during a New Year's Eve party decides to go on the run. He will be helped by a prostitute (Paula) with whom he will fall in love. Hollywood is the clear inspiration for the series, which will have plenty of car chases and car crashes.
Christine is not worried that she will be often seen in bras and panties or even less. Curiously, however, she declined the title role on Brida, a novela premiering August on Manchete network and that is based in the work of worldwide bestseller Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. She refused the role, the actress said, because she did not want to appear naked. And she explains: "It doesn't make any sense to take my clothes off in that plot. I have no problem with nudity, but it seemed gratuitous in the scenes I read. Yet as Dora, everything would fit."
Used to play fairy-like characters, Luana Piovani is all fired up since she was given the opportunity to be Patrícia in "A Professional" (The Professional), an episode of the Mulher (Woman) series. "This role was a gift," she said recently and explained where she was getting the inspiration to compose its character: "Every woman has a prostitute inside herself." Patrícia, a 22-year-old communications college student, sells her body to pay the school. She has seven fixed johns. "It's as if she had seven sweethearts," said Piovani.
Why are prostitutes recurring characters in Brazilian TV shows? "The idea is to show the prejudice society holds against these girls," says author Sérgio Marques, who is writing Labirinto together with Leonor Bassères and Gilberto Braga. In an interview with Rio's daily, O Globo, Marques declared: "We are not taking a deep dive in social problems, but we want to show how people condemned by society may have a stronger and more righteous character than others who are more respected."
Half Century
in the TubeBrazilian TV will be celebrating its 50th birthday on September 18, 2000. Despite of what many people think, TV in Brazil started in São Paulo and not in Rio. "The Globo network came later," says Yara Lins, 68, the first face to air on Brazilian TV saying Tupi's call letters.
The first station was PRF3-TV Tupi, channel 3, belonging to the Diários and Emissoras Associados (Associated Dailies and Broadcasters), then a powerful media conglomerate owned by legendary and folkloric Assis Chateaubriand (1892-1968), Brazil's own citizen Kane. Rio's branch of Tupi was born four months later in 1951. Only in 1953 would appear the first competition to Tupi, TV Record, also in São Paulo.
Imagens do Dia (Images of the Day), the first news show on Brazilian TV, premiered the day after Tupi broadcast its first images. By 1953, Repórter Esso started a brilliant career as the main news program in Brazil, a position it would keep until the end of the '60s, when under pressure from the military dictatorship the program lost its independent voice and gave place to news shows more to the taste of the generals who governed the country. Globo's slick and offend-no-one-in-power approach would thrive and reign supreme during the next three decades. The powerful network has been criticized for being a mouthpiece for the military during the most repressive times of the generals' stay in power. The Jornal Nacional, Globo's prime-time news show, created in 1969, is the station's most enduring first-place winner on its time slot.
Chateaubriand brought the RCA TV equipment from the US that started television in Brazil more as a curiosity. It is believed that only five people had a TV by then and everything was improvised at the beginning. As in the U.S., television in Brazil started by imitating radio. There was no videotape, and programs as well as ads were shown live.
Initially some of the successful live programs were famous plays and educational and kids shows. The videotape would be introduced only in 1962 in Brazil. It took a little more than one year after the 1950 start for a kiss to be shown on the little screen. It was an exchange between Vida Alves and Valter Foster on the teledrama Sua Vida Me Pertence (Your Life Belongs to Me). It was a scandal.
By 1961 Tupi was producing a series called Vigilante Rodoviário (Highway Patrolman), which obtained better ratings than Yankee enlatado (canned stuff) like Rin-tin-tin and I Love Lucy. It was also Tupi, which revolutionized at the end of 1968—the novela premiered on November 4—the language of the soap-opera with Beto Rockefeller in which Beto, the main character, was a contemporary scoundrel who drew more laughs than sighs from an audience that knew only syrupy, melodramatic soaps up to then.
Curiously some of the people who were part of the first TV images aired in the country are still on the top. Hebe Camargo, then a popular radio singer, was turned into a TV hostess. She has become and still is up to this date the queen of live TV interview shows. After being featured on different TV networks through the years she is now a fixture and one of the leaders of audience at SBT. Lolita Rodrigues, a ballerina and soap-opera heroine in the pioneer days, and a colleague of Hebe, still works in novelas although in smaller parts. As for former radio presenter Lima Duarte he is still today the star of the Globo novelas he works in.
For all its power, Rede Globo only joined the competition late on the game. The network started small in Rio in 1965. In the '60s it was TV Record that became the catalyst for a revolution in the MPB (Música Popular Brasileira—Brazilian Popular Music) promoting extremely popular song festivals that launched singer-composers like Caetano Veloso, Geraldo Vandré, and Gilberto Gil.
It was in 1973 that playwright Dias Gomes authored for Globo O Bem Amado (The Well-Beloved One), a classic of soap that introduced memorable characters with a distinctive language and touches of fantastic realism. The revolutionary novela also became a microcosm and sounding board of the world. Soon after the Watergate scandal broke in the news, the mayor in the novela wired the local church confessional for sound.
Dias Gomes' Roque Santeiro (Roque the Saint Maker) was vetoed by the military in 1975 and only had a chance to be aired in 1985 with the end of the dictatorship. In 1976, prolific Gomes, who more than anyone used the concept of novela as an open work to introduce characters, situations and dialogues reflecting the news or the public's reaction, went even further with Saramandaia. He incorporated here a series of elements from the Latin-American magic realism including a man who sneezed ants, a fat lady who exploded, and a werewolf.
In 1992, author Gilberto Braga in recreating the past in the miniseries Anos Rebeldes (Rebel Years) inspired a new generation of students to go to the streets and demand the resignation of then President Fernando Collor de Mello, who had won the election thanks to the personal commitment of Roberto Marinho to this candidacy.
During these five decades, among the most celebrated novelas there were O Direito de Nascer (The Right to Be Born), Tupi, 1964-1965; Redenção (Redemption), Excelsior, 1966-1968; Beto Rockefeller, Tupi, 1968-1969; Irmãos Coragem (Brothers Courage), Globo, 1970-1971; Selva de Pedra (Stone Jungle), Globo, 1972-1973; O Bem-Amado (The Well Beloved One), Globo, 1973, the first novela in color; Mulheres de Areia (Sand Women), Tupi, 1973-1974; Gabriela, Globo, 1975; Escalada (Escalating), Globo, 1975; Saramandaia, Globo, 1976; Escrava Isaura (Slave Isaura), Globo, 1976-1977; Dancin' Days (original title in English), Globo, 1978-1979; Roque Santeiro (Roque, the Saint Maker), Globo, 1985-1986, and Pantanal (Swamp), Manchete, 1990.
According to the 1996 yearly book Grupo de Mídia, Brazil has 257 TV stations that broadcast their own signal and 7,497 that only rebroadcast other stations' material. Rede Globo has the most extensive number of repeating stations, placing the TV network in 99.84% of the county's municipalities. Then comes SBT covering 81.74% of the territory, Bandeirantes (62.99%), Manchete (45.80%), Record (22.42%) and CNT (Central Nacional de Televisão—Television National Hub) (6.61%).
The total hegemony of Globo TV during the '70s had a few cracks—nothing too serious—during the 80s and 90s, challenged—not to seriously—by Bandeirantes network (created in 1969), SBT (1981), Manchete (1983), and CNT (1993). Pay TV started in 1990, but instead of making room for more participants at the media's table it has simply distributed the new reaches to the already powerful players. Globo became a major stockholder on Net Multicanal, and publishing giant April has joined American ABC and Hearst media conglomerates to launch TVA.
The
Auditorium
WarsThe success of TV hosts has created a new class of nouveaux riches in Brazil. Besides considerable paychecks these hosting stars fatten their bank accounts with merchandising and getting a percentage from the ads sold during their programs. Maria da Graça Meneghel, better known as Xuxa, the Queen of the Shorties, working at Globo, has become a multimillionaire industry and the richest of them all. But other emerging names are catching up fast.
In the same area as Xuxa, TV program for kids, there is Angélica and Eliana. Angélica, who also is a hostess at Globo, has become the leader in products licensing in all of Brazil. There are already more than 400 products bearing her likeness or her name. She makes $4 million a year. Working at SBT, Eliana gets a $70,000 monthly salary. She also has licensed more than 100 products, does other shows and has CDs with her songs. Annual income: $4 million.
Gugu Liberato ($14 million a year) is the wealthiest of the emerging stars. He has 41 products licensed and is the owner of Gugu Produções, a company that promotes entertainment events. Gugu, who presents Domingo Legal (Cool Sunday) on SBT, the number one program on Sunday afternoons, would like to have his own TV station and has been trying to buy one for some time. A big chunk of his earnings comes from the 12 minutes he gets in the show to sell as he pleases. A 30-second spot on Domingo Legal costs $90,000, just a little less than on the Jornal Nacional, Globo's daily prime-time news show, where the same ad would cost $110 thousand.
Competing with Gugu at Globo on the same Sunday time slot is Fausto Silva, the host for Domingão do Faustão (Big Fausto's Big Sunday). Faustão also derives his money from a salary plus merchandising added to his program. He is worth $4.5 million a year. The competition among Gugu and Faustão last year ended up in an all-out war that only finished when Faustão provoked a national scandal by showing in his program a sushi bar where the food was served on the bodies of naked women. The long live scenes shot from every angle while three actors ate and talked about the experience was shown on a Sunday afternoon and provoked a deluge of indignant letters to the editor, comments and editorials. The top brass at Globo—so much for the highly touted Globo standard of quality—had to intervene and demand some cleaning up. Since then, at least at Globo, the titillation decibels have lowered on live shows.
A lesser-known character, but who is already earning $6 million at SBT, is Celso Portiolli. The 30-year-old show host has just signed a contract for three years guaranteeing him a $100,000 monthly salary. If he is already earning an estimated $6 million a year is due to a clause that allows him to sell every day 1 minute and a half of publicity in the show he presents. On Sundays he hosts Tempo de Alegria (Joy Time). Earlier this year Portiolli's salary was a mere $8,000. His value shot up, however, when Globo showed interest in getting him. SBT is so fearful of losing the rising star that the network introduced a $30 million penalty to be paid in case he wants to jump the boat.
Thriving in mondo cane, Ratinho (Little Mouse) has become a media phenomenon disputed by different TV networks, including Globo, which reportedly wanted to tame him a little. Now at Record but with a serious offer to jump to number-two SBT, host Carlos Massa, gets a salary of $200,000 and earns some $6 million a year. He arrives at this amount by getting 5% of all the 900 toll calls dialed during his programs. For the networks these crowd-pleasing shows are a cash cow. While a novela might cost about $100,000 per chapter, Ratinho's program, for example doesn't cost more than $25,000.
Colleague of Ratinho at Record, and also appealing to some lower instincts, hostess Ana Maria Braga makes $3 million a year. Among other items bearing her name, Braga has already released a recipe book, an engagement book, and a Christmas CD.
Babel
SynopsisSet in São Paulo, the story of Torre de Babel revolves around a tower and a former inmate who plots to explode it. The ex-jailbird is José Clementino da Silva (Tony Ramos), a fireworks expert who goes to work as a bricklayer at Torre de Babel when his business goes belly-up. A good man until then, da Silva becomes a murderer when he finds his wife in bed with two men. He kills the three of them with an ax. The killing occurs in 1978.
The real action starts 20 years later, after the murderer has ended his prison term and gets out of jail with all sorts of revenge plans against those who testified against him during the trial, in special César Toledo (Tarcísio Meira), the owner of the Tropical Towers shopping mall. All of this happens in the first chapter.
The murderer gets a job as a watchman at the tower and plans to explode it during the night when nobody is there. The plans go awry, however, and the explosion ends up killing many people.
The Names
César Toledo (Tarcísio Meira), the owner of Tropical Towers, has three grown children. He is a pretty decent guy, but he is accused of negligence when his mall explodes.
Marta Toledo (Glória Menezes), César wife, after separating from him gets romantically involved with another woman.
Henrique Toledo (Édson Celulari), a womanizer, he manages the Towers for the father. Widowed he is desired at a distance by Ângela Vidal (Cláudia Raia), a top executive at the Towers.
Alexandre Toledo (Marcos Palmeira), a young attorney who falls in love with Sandra (Adriana Esteves), his father's fiercest enemy. Conveniently, Sandra is the daughter of Clementino, the man who wants to explode the Tropical Towers. She is only interested in Alexandre's money.
Guilherme Toledo (Marcello Antony) is the Toledo's clan black sheep. He is a drug trafficker.
José Clementino da Silva (Tony Ramos), a former inmate intent on getting even with César Toledo whose testimony was fundamental to put him behind bars.
Agenor da Silva (Juca de Oliveira), father of José Clementino who owns a junkyard. Another son, Gustinho (Oscar Magrini) makes a living singing. Agenor and brother Boneca (Ernani Moraes) dispute the same woman: Bina (Cláudia Jimenez). She is a poor waitress who gets suddenly wealthy due to an inheritance.
Rafaela Katz (Christiane Torloni) and Leila Sampaio (Sílvia Pfeifer) live together in a happy homosexual relationship. Rafaela own a shop at Torre de Babel. Leila, who left an abusive husband, is Rafaela's business partner.
Lúcia Prado (Natália do Vale), an attorney and an old flame of César Toledo, she falls in love again with him. They end up becoming business rivals. Lúcia is loved by Edmundo Falcão (Victor Fasano), the owner of a restaurant chain.
Clara Soares (Maitê Proença), Marta Toledo's adopted sister, is governess at the Toledos' house and falls in love with Clementino, her boss and brother in law's worst enemy.
Jamanta (Cacá Carvalho), a mentally retarded man. Nobody pays attention to him even though he has witnessed some key occurrences in the plot.
Celeste (Letícia Sabatella), a prostitute, has a child with Guilherme Toledo, but older brother Henrique is also drawn to her.
FEBRUARY
1998 RATINGSRANKING ...SHOW ........................NETWORK ...AUDIENCE SHARE
1 .................8 PM novela Por Amor ...Globo .............39 ................59
2 .................Jornal Nacional ................Globo .............36 ...............58
3 .................7 PM novela Corpo......... Globo .............33 ...............59
....................Dourado4.................. Praça TV 2nd Edition ......Globo .............32 ...............61
5 .................6 PM novela Anjo Mau.... Globo............. 32............... 61
6 .................Torneio Rio/SP .................Globo............. 30 ...............53
7 .................Globo Repórter .................Globo .............30 ...............48
8 .................Fantástico.......................... Globo............. 29................47
9 .................Você Decide...................... Globo .............29 ...............45
10 ...............Fera Ferida ........................Globo ..............27 ..............58
11................ Tela Quente...................... Globo.............. 27 ...............48
12................ Sai de Baixo ......................Globo ..............27............... 43
13 ................Torneio Rio/SP ..................Globo ..............26 ...............42
14................ Copa Ouro de Futebol .......Globo ..............23 ...............56
15................ Supercine ............................Globo ..............23 ..............40
16 .................Plantão Médico.................. Globo ..............23 ...............37
17 .................Globo Esporte ....................Globo ..............21 ...............51
18 ..................Vale - Felicidade ................Globo ..............21 ..............48
19................... Jornal Hoje ........................Globo .............20 ..............48
20 ....................Video Show ......................Globo ............20 ...............48
21 ....................Riacho Doce ......................Globo ............20 ...............47
22 ....................Temperatura Máxima ..........Globo........... 20 ...............43
23 ...................Praça TV 1st Edition ............Globo ...........18 ...............51
24 ....................Sessão da Tarde .................Globo ...........18................ 49
25..................... Torneio Rio/SP - Sat ..........Globo ...........18 ................46
26 .....................Planeta Xuxa .......................Globo ...........17................ 46
27 .....................Sessão Aventura ..................Globo ...........17 ................45
28 .....................Cine Radical ........................Globo ...........17 .................43
29...................... Domingão do Faustão......... Globo ...........17 .................35
30 .......................Sílvio Santos ........................SBT............ 17 .................29
Source: PNT/ AIP February 98 (Brasil)
