Media territories of the open TV broadcasters in the state of São Paulo and its relationship with regional development

Abstract

Concentrated in the hands of large private communication groups, television networks, with public concession for open TV, besides the national grid also allocate part of their programming to the broadcast of local contents, through their affiliates scattered throughout the interior. Although they are often in the same region or city, TV broadcasters do not always have the same coverage area. In order to understand how these companies articulate themselves to contribute to regional development, this research proposes to map the media territories, that is the geographic coverage area for local coverage, defined by the commercial broadcasters of open television in the state of São Paulo, focusing on the regional journalistic coverage made by three communication networks of the Região Metropolitana do Vale do Paraíba (RMVale). The method is delineated as exploratory, bibliographic and documentary, with qualitative approach. The study found that in the interior of São Paulo, regional news coverage is carried out by 26 TV networks, between own and affiliated broadcasters of four major communication groups: Rede Globo, Band, SBT and Record. In the middle of the great territorial extension of the state, it was verified that the majority works with different areas of coverage that overlap the physical and administrative borders.