Experimental transmission of the V World Social Forum (WSF 2005) marked the first steps of TV Brasil – International Public Channel. During the six days of the Forum, over 90 hours of programming were aired.
Broadcasts included live coverage of the principal activities of the event, 26 exclusive interviews, 15 debates, and a daily 30-minute news report.
The studio set up by TV Brasil in Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, received the diversity of intellectuals and participants who attended the WSF 2005.
Important thinkers, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, from Argentina, Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Souza Santos, and Manuel Castells, from Spain, were interviewed by the TV Brasil team.
Politicians, representatives of non-governmental organizations, performers, and leaders of social movements also had a chance to expound their ideas.
Themes such as South American integration, Latin American dictatorships, and the erradication of hunger and poverty were probed in greater depth in the debates.
Among the high points of the conferences that were broadcast live were those of the Portuguese writer, José Saramago, the Uruguayan, Eduardo Galeano, and the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.
The public could also accompany these presentations in real time on the website of the Agência Brasil.
Each day the TV Brasil team, made up of 40 professionals, strove to offer a diversified panorama of the event, which brought together over 155 thousand people from 122 different nations from around the world.
The day’s most important news items were covered on Brazil News, a half-hour news report shown on TV Brasil at 9:30 P.M. and retransmitted by NBR (Radiobrás’s cable TV station), TV Senado (Senate TV), and TV Justiça (Court TV).
The Porto Alegre experience and the contacts made possible through this trial run will contribute to the implantation of the project to establish TV Brasil’s transmissions on a permanent basis.
The forecast is for the Brazilian international channel to begin these transmissions by midyear.
“The evaluation of this experimental phase will serve TV Brasil’s management committee as a concrete reference to define the programming we want to broadcast. How the team should be organized and, most importantly, what was the receptivity to the programming, the quality of the satellite signal, and our efforts,” says José Roberto Garcez, head of the Radiobrás news department and member of TV Brasil’s management committee.
The trial run was the new Brazilian state broadcaster’s pilot project directed especially at the countries of South America, for the purpose of fostering integration among the nations of the continent.
TV Brasil represents an unprecedented initiative uniting the communication organs of the three branches of the government: TV Justiça (Court TV), TV Câmara (Chamber of Deputies TV), TV Senado (Senate TV), and Radiobrás (Brazilian Communications Enterprise, linked to the Executive).
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil