The View from Brazil

Globo TV International is ramping up its documentary slate. Raphael Corrêa Netto, the international sales director, speaks to TV Real Weekly about what the Brazilian broadcasting group has to offer the factual market.

Selected as the host for both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, Brazil will be under the spotlight over the next few years. It is also, together with Russia, India and China, among the fastest-growing economies in the world. As interest in the country peaks, Globo TV International is bringing to the international market a host of documentaries spotlighting Brazilian society, culture, nature and more, under the GloboDOC banner.

There are seven new GloboDOC titles available for the worldwide market, says Raphael Corrêa Netto, the international sales director at Globo TV International. The slate includes Oscar Niemeyer: The Sculptor of Monuments, a biography of the famed Brazilian architect, as well as a profile of the scientist Miguel Nicolelis and a look at the indigenous village of Kamayura, among others.

The new raft of titles follows on the success of the three-part GloboDOC Carnaval, which goes behind the scenes of Rio’s famed street festival, and the first season of GloboDOC, which has been licensed into Asia, Latin America, Europe and the U.S., where it aired on Galavision.

"We are in an evolutionary process," says Corrêa Netto of Globo’s documentary ambitions. "We have been able to strengthen and broaden what we wanted to approach in regards to sharing a little bit of Brazil with the world."

Corrêa Netto says that Globo is making a major documentary push this year, with plans to participate in MIPDoc, Sunny Side of the Doc, Hot Docs and other factual markets. In a crowded landscape, he continues, "what distinguishes our content is Brazil."

The GloboDOC strand, Corrêa Netto explains, taps into the resources of Globo’s free-to-air stations to deliver "a unique look at Brazil and its people" with an international feel. "We have in our owned and operated stations, plus the affiliate stations, the ability to cover Brazil," Corrêa Netto says. "We produce 5 to 6 hours of news daily on the free-to-air channel. In addition, we have a 24/7 news channel. So we have a very strong production team in place that is generating news all the time. We [set up] a team of writers, editors and a head producer to create the themes and scripts and edit the content specifically for the international market. They use the same resources, they may use the same news team on the road, but they create in a specific language" the GloboDOC titles for the worldwide market.

Since Globo first introduced its factual offerings, Corrêa Netto says that he and his team have learned that "people want to see Brazil through the eyes of the Brazilian people. There is a tremendous opportunity to go deeper within the themes. In GloboDOC Carnaval, we were showing what Carnaval is in regards to how it effects people throughout the year, how they put it together and how they interact in their daily lives with the event itself."

Globo has also embarked on a foray into the unscripted formats arena. Corrêa Netto concedes that it has been a challenging market for a new entrant in the past year, given broadcasters’ reluctance to take risks and the overall downbeat economy. Nonetheless, he sees Globo’s attempts to crack the formats business as a learning curve that informed the company’s decision to bring a new title, Profession Reporter, to the market. "We’ve had very good feedback so far," says Corrêa Netto of the show, which was launched at NATPE.

However, Corrêa Netto notes that for Globo, a behemoth in the novelas landscape, "We are not here to compete with the big nonscripted format players. We are here to strengthen our catalogue, to have another opportunity to work with either current customers or open new possibilities. It’s the same as our standing with documentaries. We not here to compete with the BBC, Discovery or Nat Geo, we are here to complement and to fill a niche that we believe we are able to fill since we do have a strong brand, which is Brazil. As long as we have a very good idea which we find is appealing for the international market, we have the opportunity and the obligation to provoke the market, and to discuss possibilities for cooperation."

Indeed, since Globo embarked on the expansion of its catalogue two and a half years ago, the company now generates ten percent of its international sales revenues from genres other than telenovelas. "I think so far we have been able to accomplish what we wanted, which was to have a greater catalogue and talk to more customers, open new markets, and fulfill new means of distribution. We have been growing the business. We started from scratch and went to something significant."