Globo’s Carlos Henrique Schroder

PREMIUM: Globo’s CEO, Carlos Henrique Schroder, talks to World Screen about the company’s ongoing commitment to serve its diverse audience and the importance of telling clear, engaging stories, whether in a telenovela, a news report, or sports analysis.

WS: How have the facilities and the talent—in front of and behind the camera—at Projac contributed to Globo’s success?
SCHRODER: I think the history of Globo has two pillars. One is journalism, which began with Dr. Roberto [Marinho], who was a journalist himself and built a strong news and information structure—so much so that today we air more than seven hours of daily news. The other pillar was the development of the telenovela, which is a very authentic Brazilian genre. It originated as a radio soap opera and has always enjoyed very strong public acceptance. Globo has been producing novelas for a long time and has been able to offer a product of ever-increasing quality. At first, our facilities in [the neighborhood of] the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro were too small. There were only one big studio and two small studios to produce three novelas. It was virtually impossible. So the idea was to take our studios to a larger area and Projac was built in 1995. This has allowed us to produce multiple novelas at the same time in an appropriate environment. Since ’95 we have had the best structure to develop novelas, and from then on certainly a lot of talent has come over, and a lot of professionals from the industry have come to work with us. The quality of our novelas has grown exponentially and this has allowed them to earn awards in international events, such as the International Emmys.

WS: How does Globo balance its need to entertain its audience against the responsibility to offer information about issues—like organ transplants, which was presented in one telenovela—that are important to society?
SCHRODER: Today we have a programming grid that begins at 5 a.m. with live national news that airs across our network. At 6 a.m., local programming is shown until 7:30 a.m. Then, comes Bom Dia Brasil [Good Morning Brazil, another live national daily news program] and we continue live until 3 p.m. In other words, from 5 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, we have a grid that allows for interruption, if anything happens in Brazil or in the world. It’s almost nine hours of programming that can be interrupted by any relevant news story and we have news for almost seven hours a day. That’s important.

Then, when it’s time for fiction [in prime time], we cannot lose this flexibility. So how do we manage to keep it? Through what we call social merchandising. If the country is experiencing a special situation, or if there is the need to call attention to an issue—if an alert needs to be sent out; if something needs emphasis, help or focus—we can shed some light on it. Our writers come to us, on their own, with suggestions. There is no obligation, nobody tells them, you have to do it. They know that social merchandising works very well for a country that has so many needs, as Brazil does. So that’s when we talked about [organ] transplants. And we have other examples, such as when we discussed leukemia and had a call to action for blood donations. Every time we bring an issue to the attention of the audience, the reaction is instantaneous. People understand that it is an attempt to focus on real-world issues, even though they are woven into a work of fiction.

WS: Pay TV is growing in Brazil. As more of your viewers watch international channels, how do you avoid losing viewers from the Class A socioeconomic demographic, as they are exposed to foreign programming and edgier shows like Breaking Bad, for example? How do you keep your audience at 10 p.m.?
SCHRODER: Very good question. What have we realized recently? First, the penetration of pay television in Brazil, as a whole, is 30 percent. We conducted our own research, however, and in Brazil’s 15 most densely populated metropolitan areas we found that pay-TV penetration is already 47 percent. About half of the country where we measured the audience already has pay TV. Clearly, 95 percent of Class A is already subscribing to pay TV, 80 percent of Class B, and then the percentage goes down for Class C, D and E.

It is obvious that Class A and B are more relevant because of their purchasing power, and their ability to generate more publicity, and are of particular interest to advertisers. So what have we done? We revised our schedule with a range of genres for the post-novela viewer. We didn’t have to change anything in the schedule before our novelas because we are very well positioned until then. After the novelas [which run three in a row from 6:30 p.m. till 10:30 p.m.], we air a number of specialized programs to draw attention to the fact that Globo can also offer bold, innovative, attractive programs—shows that are just as good as the international ones. This is proving to be the right strategy since this year Globo’s audience grew compared to last year. We produced a series of new shows, to be aired between the last novela and the newscast at midnight. Before that, we used to have two fixed programs, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, A Grande Família and Tapas e Beijos. It was 40 episodes throughout the year. Today, we have four series of 13 episodes each. In other words, we increased the amount of shows, to increase variety, so that the pay-TV viewer would begin to return to Globo TV—and that’s exactly what’s happening.

WS: And the writers have more time to make a better product.
SCHRODER: Because they have a shorter production period, only 13 episodes, and the duration of each episode is shorter too, 35 to 45 minutes each. And now, we also have more writers contributing to the schedule. You attract more people this way. So our group of writers became more engaged. We used to have a very large number of writers in house, but few actually participated in the final product. Not today. In addition, Globo used to have a very predictable grid. Now, we can aim shows at the young, the elderly, and the elites. We can mix it up, and that has been attracting viewers back from pay TV. Today, we offer two sitcoms: Tá no Ar and O Novo Zorra. These two were able to attract the highest amount of young people and members of Class A and B that were in pay TV. The result was exactly what we expected.

I would like to highlight something: channels coming into Brazil from abroad have audience, of course, here and there, with products such as series, but deep down, when you look at their daily average audience, it is still very small. Just to give you an idea, today, pay TV’s daily average rating in Brazil reaches up to 10 [rating] points, and that is all channels together. So today, the channel with the highest ratings has about 0.50 point or so. It’s half a rating point. This is important to note. Pay-TV channels taken together may have peaks of audience, but the ratings of any one channel are still too small to be relevant. Today, no channel alone can attract the amount of audience, throughout the day, that Globo can.

WS: When you changed programming at 10 p.m., did you lose viewers in the C and D socioeconomic classes?
SCHRODER: No, because that’s when the way one tells a story comes into play. What have we discussed internally? Class C, D and E represent mass, volume; you cannot lose them. Class C and women, especially, are extremely important to us. Today, our daily audience is divided 60-40, 60 percent women and 40 percent men. The women are at home and watch more television than men. So what do we do (to maintain those viewers and attract others)? The way to tell a story, even if it is difficult to understand, is to work on the language. The language has to be understandable. This is the most important aspect of telling a story.

WS: How does one make language understandable to everyone?
SCHRODER: Every discussion with our writers includes this subject. I have two examples this year: we are currently showing Verdades Secretas, which involves modeling agencies, prostitution and drugs, and, earlier this year, we aired Felizes para Sempre, which was about crime, corruption and politics. But the way we tell those stories, their artistic design, is crafted in a way that can be understood by everyone. That’s the big issue for us; that’s the challenge all around the world, right? There is no use for Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or House of Cards if they are not understood by the average viewer. It’s no use if a story is understood by us [in the TV business] but not by the masses. I think that’s the challenge in the world of television. How do we tell a story that is understood by everyone? That’s the big question. And we have made an effort with our writers, so that their product is not so hard to understand or so narrow that it can be enjoyed only by a close group of friends, but not by a large audience. There is no story that cannot be understood by everyone. No story. It’s all in the way you tell it.

And now I turn to journalism. It’s the same thing, right? If someone says: this piece of news is too dry. Dry? How are you telling the story? You have to talk about Israel, about Egypt, about the recent attacks. They are far from Brazil, but if you describe them in a way that they can be understood, it becomes easier. And the audience grows every time an issue is well explained.

WS: Turning to sports, what lessons were learned in the coverage of the FIFA World Cup last year that you are applying or expanding on in the coverage of the Summer Olympics that will take place next year in Rio?
SCHRODER: First of all, we offered brilliant coverage of the World Cup. You may have seen the numbers: eight out of ten viewers who watched the World Cup watched it on Globo. This took a lot of planning. It was a very large project. The World Cup tournament lasted 32 days, but it took years of preparation. We discussed its format and how we could offer something new to the public. You must have seen the tactical discussion table, the programs that offered analysis, the crowd’s engagement and the country’s engagement. We had a special campaign: “We are one, Brazil is one.” It was our exclusive campaign, from Globo, about the World Cup. So there was all that commitment, we were present in all stadiums, we followed each team. It was indeed a long process, because Brazil is passionate about soccer and Brazilians wanted the World Cup to take a large space in Globo’s schedule.

The process is not so simple when we talk about the Olympics. First, Brazilians are not as knowledgeable about many other sports as they are about soccer. There are sports that Brazilians don’t know. So, during the Olympic coverage, we have to concentrate on the more traditional sports, follow Brazilians athletes who have medal potential and, at the same time, follow the big international stars, the record holders, etc. So we are following everything, but highlighting first the Brazilians who are able to get medals, then sports that people know and then international athletes who have more prominence. We will also be looking at everything all the time, but there is only one city, Rio de Janeiro, and 10,500 athletes. It’s a crazy amount of coverage with 42 sports in competition.