Changing Class Formations and Changing Television Viewing: The New Middle Class, Television, and Pay Television in Brazil and Mexico, 2003-2013

• In Event: Local and Regional Information, Infrastructure, Ideologies, and Ideas

Abstract

This study will examine how rapidly changing social class structures in Latin America in the last ten years have impacted television viewing. Particularly this paper, part of a larger project, will examine how subscription to cable or pay television has increased enormously in Brazil and Mexico in the last 6-7 years as effects of the substantial growth of the middle class in the last 10-15 years has begun to become very visible in media behavior. This is significant because cable television growth in Latin America had trailed far behind most other regions of the world (Reis 1999), where cable and satellite television grew explosively in the 1990s (Balio 1998). At the time, that was theorized as being due to the fact that Latin America was already covered by well resourced commercial television stations, which provided a great deal of entertainment, which was closely to tuned to national interests, gaining a great deal of advantage from cultural proximity (Straubhaar 1991). If Latin Americans are now turning to cable or pay television, is that largely because of increased affluence that permits them to afford it? Or is it more due to increased education that gives them the cultural capital that might lead them to want it? Or both? This study endeavors to use marketing data to conduct a deeper investigation of social stratification and media use in Latin American cities. By using a marketing study, this study uses existing tools used in the TV business to examine the role of class in multichannel TV adoption.

Authors

• Joseph D. Straubhaar, U of Texas - Austin

• Vanessa de Macedo Higgins Joyce, Texas State U

• Vinicio Sinta, University of Texas at Austin

• Christopher Lee McConnell, U of Texas - Austin

• Jeremiah Spence, U of Texas - Austin