10.2: A Brief Overview of the Latin American Television Industry

Throughout Latin America since the 1950s, television has been the primary audiovisual medium. During this decade, the growth of a national television institution was central to the process of modernization and nation building across the region.¹¹ Simultaneously, U.S.¹² technologies and the commercial model of broadcasting ¹³ were important engines for the growth of the medium across the region; Sinclair and Straubhaar have described this process as an interdependent relationship in which U.S. economic, commercial, and technological interests intertwined with the interests of national economic and political elites.¹⁴ Within this pattern, national markets developed in relatively distinctive ways.¹⁵ The development of Latin American television was shaped by specific conditions that include market size (population and purchasing power), market structure (monopoly, oligopoly, and competition), broadcasting regulations (private-commercial, state-owned, or hybrid), social and political instability (military coups, social movements, revolutions, and repression), and the visibility and impact of previously established cultural flows across the region, particularly radio and film.

As for content, U.S. programming became a television staple across Latin America during the early years, but national productions took the lead in countries where producers were able to achieve comparable production values.¹⁶ Primetime television in major markets, such as Mexico and Brazil, has been largely monopolized by national networks that produced most of their programming in-house. These not only dominated their national markets, they also became leading exporters, and their studios became the primary employers of the television labor force in their domestic markets. In smaller markets with lower production capacities, prime time has been populated with content coming from these major regional producers rather than U.S. studios, due largely to audience preferences for culturally proximate programming.¹⁷

In major markets in Latin America, the leading networks were free to produce and broadcast their own content with little regulatory oversight. They built impressive studio facilities and dominated distribution, thereby limiting the possibilities for independent producers. However, the development of the industry across the region did not follow the same patterns. In Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela, hegemonic networks dominated domestic markets from the very beginning; in contrast, in Argentina, Chile, and Peru, TV production was disrupted or fragmented as a result of dramatic political changes brought about by military coups in the 1970s and authoritarian forms of government throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.¹⁸ Colombia, which was similarly affected by political uncertainties, developed a hybrid television model wherein networks were state-owned but the content was largely produced by private production companies (programadoras).¹⁹ In the long run, certain levels of media atomization, with an array of independent production entities and market competition, boosted creativity and stylistic diversity in these countries.²⁰

During the 1990s, the implementation of media policies of privatization, deregulation, and liberalization coupled with new technological scenarios triggered the emergence of new windows of delivery through broadcasting, cable, satellite, and the Internet. Deregulation also encouraged a trend toward vertical and horizontal integration that enhanced the muscle of the already powerful national networks, allowing them to build alliances and expand into new sectors.²¹ However, new national television networks have been launched in parallel, establishing new competitors that are scrambling to secure talent and content to ensure their economic survival. This scenario has been complicated by the slow but steady increase in the presence of transnational networks through cable and satellite television. An increasing localization effort made by global conglomerates (Comcast/NBC-U, 21st Century Fox, Disney/ABC, Sony, Viacom, and TimeWarner/HBO) has resulted in them tailoring programming that could be successful locally in a Latin American market, as well as luring audiences in the U.S. Hispanic market and other countries in the region. Independent producers have thus become a key resource within specific national markets to achieve a successful presence locally and to reach a larger, regional market. This has produced a struggle for talent in which dominant national television networks have tightened their grip, leading to lawsuits against actors and producers working with competing networks.²² Therefore, global conglomerates, such as Sony, 21st Century Fox, and Comcast/NBC-U, have had to look elsewhere for professional teams and talent, increasingly establishing alliances, albeit temporary ones, with indies that house professional labor and talent, through joint ventures, coproduction, or takeovers.