|
 Tereza Cruvinel, the chairwoman of Brazilian state-owned communications company Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), announced Thursday, October 15, during an event at the Brazilian foreign office (Itamaraty), in Rio, the creation of an international channel by TV Brasil.
The new channel will target Brazilian emigrants, who currently total approximately 3 million, according to the government. Africa should be the first continent to receive the broadcasts, in 2010.
"It is going to be a channel with a schedule adjusted to the local times of the countries that will receive the broadcasts and with contents geared towards the Brazilian audience living abroad," said Cruvinel, during the 2nd Conference of Brazilian Communities Living Abroad.
According to the chairwoman, TV Brasil Internacional should operate by cable or subscription, with broadcasts scheduled to start next year. The programming grid should include shows screened in Brazil, adapted to local times, in addition to other contents made for the emigrants, some with their collaboration.
"The audience is as Brazilian as we are. Thus, same as the Brazilians have channels for communicating with the EBC, we want to create something like an e-mail address so that they may send guidelines, videos and suggestions," she explained.
The Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, believes that by means of a Brazilian public television abroad, the government may expand its dialogue with the its nationals living abroad, favoring the promotion of consular services and of campaigns, such as encouraging participation in elections and education, through distance learning courses, for instance.
A resident of Orlando, in Florida, the Brazilian journalist Paulo Corrêa celebrates the initiative and calls for shows featuring Brazilian cuisine on TV, regional varieties and Brazilian culture in general.
"We cannot remain held hostage to Brazilian commercial television channels here," he claimed. "We want our children to become familiar with more diversity from Brazil, with the Brazilian people, rather than only with the soap operas show," he criticized.
The chairwoman of EBC stated that due to logistics issues pertaining to satellite availability, Africa should be the first continent to receive TV Brasil's international channel. However, according to her, reaching America is also part of the plans. For such, she called on the support of the National Congress and of the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
ABr
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.