The identification with the audience: local television production and sustainability of affiliated broadcasters

Abstract

In this article, we study some strategies used by local television broadcasting stations, integrants of Brazilian television networks, to insert local contents in their programming, as a way to obtain legitimation in the communities they reach, as well as a way to maintain themselves. We focused our research in a local broadcasting station of the Rede Brasil Sul de Comunicações, affiliated to Rede Globo in Brazil. The broadcasting station is located in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul state. Besides having a decentralized editorial production policy, with reporters and studio away from its headquarters, the local broadcasting station uses its commercial break to present contents produced by itself. These contents match the identities currently adopted by micro-regional audience. To illustrate this practice, we take as an example a production that has been broadcasted for the last five years. Its subject can be described as the ancestors memory preservation through the maintenance and restoration of the architectural patrimony, as well as the narratives associated with it.