Record TV
Record TV — known in Brazil simply as Record, and formerly as TV Record and Rede Record — is a Brazilian free-to-air television network, and the international face of that network, Record Internacional, carries its programmes to Portuguese-speaking audiences around the world, including in the United Kingdom and across Europe. Founded in São Paulo in 1953 by Paulo Machado de Carvalho, Record is the oldest television network still in activity in Brazil. It enjoyed a celebrated era in the 1960s as the home of televised music festivals, declined into financial difficulty in the 1980s, and was bought in 1989 by Edir Macedo, founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, whose investment rebuilt it into a genuine national network. Since 2007 it has ranked among Brazil's largest networks by audience and revenue. Its international service, created in 2002, is present in more than 150 countries, and in Europe it has the distinction of being the only Brazilian television channel broadcast free of charge, without subscription.
Origins: Brazil's Oldest Active Network
TV Record began broadcasting in São Paulo in 1953, founded by Paulo Machado de Carvalho, who had also founded Rádio Record. It was the fourth television station to operate in Brazil, after TV Tupi São Paulo (1950), TV Tupi Rio de Janeiro (1951) and TV Paulista (1952); unlike those pioneers, it has never left the air, giving it the longest continuous history of any Brazilian network. In the 1960s the channel became genuinely popular, at times leading the audience with its music festivals, including programmes devoted to MPB — Brazilian popular music — and to Jovem Guarda, the youth music movement of the era. Record's role in televising those festivals made it a formative influence on Brazilian popular music itself. In this period Record headed the Rede de Emissoras Independentes (REI), a chain linking independent stations in various parts of Brazil, an early attempt at the national reach that would define its later history.
Decline and the Silvio Santos Years
The network's position weakened in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s the businessman and television host Silvio Santos acquired half of the channel's shares through a partnership with Machado de Carvalho — a reminder that Record's ownership history connects several of the biggest figures in Brazilian media. By the second half of the 1980s, however, the station was in an unfavourable financial situation, its audience and revenues far behind the dominant Rede Globo. The network that had once led Brazilian television with its festivals had fallen to the lower ranks of the country's networks, and its future as an independent force was in doubt. That decline set the stage for the most consequential transaction in Record's history.
The Edir Macedo Takeover
In 1989 Record was sold to Bishop Edir Macedo, founder and leader of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, who founded Grupo Record the same year as the parent of his media holdings. Macedo bought a debt-ridden network; contemporary and later reporting put the purchase price at 45 million dollars, and the transaction itself became controversial, leading to a Brazilian tax investigation into loans used to fund it and, in 1997, a prosecution seeking to strip Record's broadcasting licence on the argument that the constitution forbade religious institutions from owning broadcast stations. The case dragged on for more than a decade before a federal judge ruled in Macedo's favour in 2011. Whatever the controversies, the acquisition transformed the station. The new ownership spurred major investment in Record's structure through the 1990s, buying stations and signing affiliations to build a true national network where previously there had been a São Paulo station with partners. In 2007 Macedo also founded Record News, a 24-hour free-to-air news channel, extending the group further.
A National Network and the Fight for Second Place
The rebuilt Record achieved its owners' ambition in the 2000s. From 2007 to 2015 it stood as the country's second-largest network in audience and revenues, behind only Globo, before being overtaken by SBT; from 2012 onwards Record and SBT disputed tenths of a ratings point in the IBOPE rankings, taking turns in second place, a contest that continued into the following decade. Industry profiles describe today's group as extending well beyond the flagship network: Record also runs a cable news channel, radio stations, newspapers and a film production company. Its main network programming follows the standard commercial Brazilian mix — telenovelas, including biblical serials for which it became known, reality formats and journalism — produced for a mass national audience and exported through its international arm. Record was also one of the pioneers of digital television in Brazil, and its signals came to be distributed by satellite operators including SES, which carried both its domestic content and the international channel.
Record Internacional: The Channel Abroad
Record Internacional was created in 2002 as the network's international service, and it is the form in which Record TV reaches the United Kingdom. It is a Brazilian pay-TV and free-to-air channel broadcasting 24 hours a day by satellite and cable, entirely in Portuguese. Its schedule is built from the programmes of Record and of Record News, supplemented by independent programmes produced abroad for expatriate audiences. The service is present in over 150 countries, with nine satellite signal distribution channels feeding different regions, and its principal offices abroad have been located in Florida in the United States and, for Europe, in Lisbon and Paris. In the United States its coverage has used satellites including NSS-806 and EchoStar, with distribution through operators such as Comcast and Dish Network; in Europe, Record is the only Brazilian television channel available without any subscription fees, a fact that made it the default Brazilian channel for anyone in Britain or on the continent with a satellite dish and a connection to Brazil.
Africa, Asia and the Portuguese-Speaking World
Record Internacional's strategy gives particular emphasis to the Portuguese-speaking world. In Africa it broadcasts to Mozambique, Uganda, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Madagascar; in Mozambique, TV Miramar, part of Record International, operates ten stations with several successful local programmes of its own — a model in which the international service takes root as a local broadcaster rather than merely relaying São Paulo. Its transmissions reach across Asia as well, a coverage historically provided by the Asiasat 2 and JSAT satellites, and distribution partnerships extended its Asian presence further in the late 2000s. Carriage listings illustrate the spread: operators in Angola and Mozambique, open signals in Cape Verde and Uganda, and places on the main Portuguese platforms — Meo, Vodafone and NOS — in Portugal itself, the European country with the closest linguistic and cultural ties to Brazil. The station is also an affiliate of CNN International, a link noted in profiles of the network's international operation.
Programming for the Diaspora
For its audiences abroad, Record Internacional performs the role common to diaspora channels but on an unusually large scale. Brazilian communities in the United States, in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, and in Japan and beyond, watch the same telenovelas, entertainment programmes and news that define Record's schedule at home, alongside programmes made specifically for viewers abroad. Sport, music and religiously inflected programming from the Macedo group's output all travel through the service, as do the network's successful domestic formats. In Europe, where the channel is free, its audience extends beyond the Brazilian and Portuguese communities to anyone following Brazilian culture, and its continuous Portuguese-language presence made it a reference point for how a Latin American network could hold a global audience together around a single national schedule.
Record TV in the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is part of Record's European footprint: the international channel is received across Europe free of charge, and London's Brazilian and Portuguese communities form part of the audience its European offices in Lisbon and Paris were established to serve. British viewers encounter Record not as a UK-licensed domestic channel but as an international satellite service — the same arrangement by which most of the world's large broadcasters reach expatriate audiences in Britain. Its presence in UK channel directories reflects that reality: a Brazilian network, produced in São Paulo, distributed globally, and watched in London living rooms by viewers for whom it is television from home.
Legacy
Record's story has three distinct acts. The first is creative: the 1950s pioneer whose 1960s music festivals helped shape Brazilian popular music, and which survives today as the country's oldest active network. The second is industrial: a failing station bought in 1989 by a religious leader, rebuilt through heavy investment into a national network, and established from 2007 as one of the two or three largest broadcasters in Brazil — a transformation accompanied by legal battles over the purchase itself that lasted into the 2010s. The third is international: since 2002, Record Internacional has carried that network to more than 150 countries, free across Europe, rooted through local operations such as TV Miramar in Mozambique, and recognised as the principal global voice of Brazilian commercial television alongside its great domestic rival. For viewers outside Brazil, Record TV and Record Internacional are effectively one and the same — the channel through which Brazilian television reaches the world.
