Watch Live TV from Brazil

Television in Brazil has grown significantly since the first broadcasts in 1950, becoming one of largest and most productive commercial television systems in the world. Its biggest network, Rede Globo, is the second largest commercial network in the world, and is one of the largest television exporters around the world, particularly of telenovelas, which have become popular in many countries.

As referenced by journalist Eugênio Bucci, the problem of “audiovisual media ownership concentration is relatively sharper” in Brazil when compared to the United States. According to the study Donos da Mídia (English: Media owners), Rede Globo alone controls 340 television stations, more than SBT and Rede Record combined together. This is largely attributed to the fact that television in the country was launched in the early 1950s by the private sector, without much state regulation and control — in a manner very similar to the system of for-profit, private networks of American TV and away from the state-owned, public TV stations in Europe and in the Communist bloc.

The first national public television network, TV Brasil, was only launched on December 2, 2007 (before that, since the 1960s there were local public-educative TV stations controlled by the state’s governments), the same day that digital television was introduced in the country, initially limited to the cities of Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Luís and São Paulo.