Television Above and Below the National Level In places where the national state has not become a strong pole of identity,

local and supranational regional cultural identities are often particularly strong. In much of Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America, national tele vision does not reach much of the population, or it reaches them only in national languages that they do not speak comfortably. As a result, much of

the population either ignores television, tries to create local productions, or seeks out television from neighboring or related countries in languages that

they do speak. For example, in Mozambique, only 25% to 35% of the population speaks Portuguese, roughly the same percentage that has access to television. Consequently, the reach of television is so limited that many people focus on local languages and local cultural forms, which are more likely to be expressed on radio than on television, if they appear in mass media at all. Given limited resources for production, television in Mozambique has

always depended on imported · programming for much of its schedule. Although many of those imports used to come from Europe or the United

States, Mozambican television has turned increasingly to imports from Brazil, which exports a great deal of soap opera, music, and comedy. That Brazilian programming has the advantage of being in the national language, Portuguese, as well as drawing on a common cultural heritage of symbols, references, and even jokes that build on their common history as former Portuguese colonies. This situation contributes to the growth of a transna tional Lusophone, or Portuguese-speaking cultural-linguistic market that includes Brazil, Mozambique, Portugal, and others. This kind of transna-

Creating National and Regional Television Industries 77

In a few wealthy countries, such as Canada, Spain, or Great Britain, there are enough resources to permit local production in subnational languages,

such as French (in Quebec), Catalan, Welsh, or Scottish (Moragas Spa et al.,

1 999), or a number of regional languages in India (Kumar, 2006). In some countries, minorities are part of large diasporas, such as the overseas Chinese in Malaysia or Canada. These immigrants tend to use a variety of tech nological options, from video to satellite channels to Web pages, Internet music downloads, and Internet streaming video to gain access to television

produced in the languages they speak and reflecting the cultures with which they identify.

Local television is still more limited by costs of production. It is less devel oped in most countries than national television due to the need to spread costs across a larger audience to achieve economies of scale. Local television genres are also in a way limited by the need for a strong visual component,

whereas musical genres can be remarkably varied. Television genres have developed remarkably over the past 20 to 30 years, however. A number of

low-cost genres have evolved, which can be produced almost anywhere with the simplest and cheapest of equipment: news, talk, variety, live music, and games. More and more nations are producing an increasing proportion of their own programming using such genres. Table A.1 shows that a signifi cant number of countries are doing more than half of their own program ming, both in the total broadcast day and during prime time, where audience

viewing is concentrated and the most popular programs are usually placed. Some genres also lend themselves to more localized programming on provincial-level or municipal stations. Latin America, for example, has expe rienced an increase in local news and discussion programs on television sta tions. For public stations, such programs are a natural line of programming, if resources from public or state sources allow. For private stations, the via bility of such local programming depends on costs of production balanced against audience demand and advertiser willingness to pay. Indications from an early study (Huesca, 1 985) in one fairly poor Latin American country, Bolivia, is that local programming in news and public affairs varied con siderably, particularly depending on who owned and controlled the station and what their resources were, but many stations were doing quite a bit. Furthermore, stations were able to draw on some resources and programs produced by alternative producers. Bolivia, like Brazil and a number of other countries, has had a growing tradition for several years of alternative video production by nongovernmental organizations, activist groups, church groups, unions, and so on (Alvarado, 1988). As one of the main alternative video producers then in Brazil, Luiz Santoro ( 1 989), observed, many such groups saw alternative video as a means toward producing materials for television

78 Chapter 3 alternative video producers have circulated materials on public access cable

and, more recently, on the Internet. As alternative regional satellite broad casters grow, alternative video or television may also find a possible outlet there (Downing, 2001 ). For example, the new regional satellite broadcast

channel in Latin America, Telesur, sponsored by Venezuela and several other Latin American governments, has begun to use such materials to create alter natives to the existing regional commercial channels (Aharonian, 2006) .

Television Above and Below the National Level In places where the national state has not become a strong pole of identity,