TV Bahia
TV Bahia is a television station in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, affiliated with TV Globo. Is the flagship station of Rede Bahia de Televisão, a statewide television network composed of another five stations owned-and-operated by Rede Bahia. TV Bahia's studios and transmitter are located on Prof. Aristídes Novis Street in the Federação district, in Salvador. Its terrestrial signal, through the station in Salvador and translators, reaches 133 cities in the state. Currently, besides being the leader in Salvador, it has the largest ratings among Globo's stations in Brazil.
TV Bahia is the fourth oldest television station in Bahia, having officially started broadcasting ten months after receiving the authorization for channel 11 VHF in Salvador from the federal government, on March 10, 1985. It was inaugurated as an Rede Manchete affiliate, starting its operations with the most modern equipment among the state's television stations at the time.
It became a partner of Rede Globo in 1987, after a troubled transition process, marked by a long judicial and political dispute initiated by the owners of TV Aratu. With the Globo affiliation, it made its first big expansion of local programming, premiering two editions of the now-traditional newscast BATV and Jornal da Manhã, its first morning newscast. The affiliation with the Rio de Janeiro network turned TV Bahia into the station with the largest audience in Bahia.
History
Rede Manchete (1985–1987)
On May 7, 1984, Televisão Bahia Ltda. received a concession to operate a television broadcasting service in Salvador in a decree issued by then-president João Figueiredo. Initially, the station's shareholders were the entrepreneurs Antônio Carlos Magalhães Júnior and César Mata Pires. The company, which was authorized to operate on channel 11 VHF in Salvador, also had Luís Eduardo Magalhães and Oscar Maron as shareholders.In August of the same year, however, it was reported that the Federal Government was considering revoking the concession of the future station due to the adoption of a critical stance towards the regime by former governor Antônio Carlos Magalhães, which at first, prejudiced affiliation negotiations with Rede Manchete.
Finally, the license was maintained, and the creation of TV Bahia was officially announced to the market on January 9, 1985, at a dinner held at the Bahiano Tennis Club. The new TV station in Salvador would be the first partner of Rede Manchete in Bahia, and the event included a speech by Rubens Furtado, then-director general of the Rio de Janeiro network.
TV Bahia was installed with the most modern equipment among television stations in the state of Bahia at the time. In its early days, the station had five editing islands, state-of-the-art VT equipment, a 300-kW transmitter, and the tallest TV antenna in northern and northeastern Brazil. On February 2, the day of the Iemanjá Festival, TV Bahia conducted its first experimental operations on VHF channel 11.
Initially, TV Bahia was to start its activities on February 28, 1985, but the inauguration was delayed. The station finally signed on for the first time on March 10, 1985, at 6:45 pm, with the transmission of an inauguration ceremony presented by Xuxa Meneghel, then host of the children's program Clube da Criança on Rede Manchete, as well as Governor of Bahia João Durval Carneiro, former governor Antônio Carlos Magalhães and Catholic cardinal Avelar Brandão Vilela.
After the ceremony, TV Bahia broadcast its inaugural program: Bahia de Todos os Santos, a documentary directed by filmmaker Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The first local program after the station's inauguration was the sports journalistic program Manchete Esportiva Bahia, a local version of the program with the same name from Rede Manchete, aired live at 12:30 pm on March 11, 1985, and hosted by Ivan Pedro.
TV Bahia began its activities with coverage in the cities of Feira de Santana, Ilhéus, Itabuna, Jequié and Vitória da Conquista. Programming was retransmitted to the interior of the state via translator stations maintained by the Bahia State Telecommunications Department, which used microwave links from Telecommunications of Bahia, the same structure used by the other stations in the capital.
In its first year of existence, TV Bahia achieved significant ratings in Salvador. In the first month, Manchete Esportiva Bahia achieved vice-leadership several times, beating the traditional Telesportes, from TV Itapoan. Also in March, TV Bahia was the ratings leader on Tuesday evenings. During the year, the station also reached the second place in several programs, including Bahia em Manchete.
TV Globo (1987–present)
On November 10, 1986, Rede Globo made official the non-renewal of its affiliation contract with TV Aratu, which had been its affiliate since 1969, ordering that the station cease broadcasting the network's programming on January 20, 1987, after the end of the extension of the end of the partnership. Globo had already expressed to TV Aratu its intention not to renew the affiliation contract on February 24 of that year, alleging dissatisfaction existing since 1984 on the part of Globo regarding technical and commercial problems of the then Bahia affiliate. The station chosen to replace TV Aratu was TV Bahia. As Globo's final decision occurred shortly before Organizações Globo's purchase of NEC's Brazilian branch, in December of that year, opponents of ACM, to which TV Aratu was associated, raised suspicions that Globo president Roberto Marinho's decision was a way to thank him for the minister's alleged support of the transaction, in order to try to reverse the loss of affiliation.On January 13, 1987, congressman Luís Viana Neto, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, one of the shareholders of TV Aratu and member of the political group of then governor Waldir Pires, went to Brasília, along with 19 other deputies, to complain to president José Sarney regarding the situation. On January 15, Judge Luiz Fux of the 9th Civil Court of Rio de Janeiro granted TV Aratu an injunction preventing TV Bahia from retransmitting Globo's programming. The injunction was overturned on January 23, after TV Globo filed a writ of mandamus in the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro to ensure the transmission of its programming by TV Bahia. At 5:58 pm, TV Bahia began to broadcast Globo's programming, after airing a statement informing the viewers about the new affiliation, which was also officially announced in the day's edition of Globo's national newscast Jornal Nacional. TV Aratu, however, ignored the decision, which meant that viewers in Bahia had two channels broadcasting Globo for three days in a row across the state.
By order of the regional directorate of National Department of Telecommunications, TV Aratu was forced to stop broadcasting Globo's programming on January 26. The station, then, began to broadcast the programming of Rede Manchete, and continued in court trying to nullify Globo's writ of mandamus. On March 31, judges Jorge Loretti, Narciso Pinto and Astrogildo Freitas of the 5th Civil Chamber of Rio de Janeiro, suspended Globo's writ of mandamus after judging that the network filed an appeal after the deadline. TV Aratu returned to rebroadcasting Globo programs, but TV Bahia did not immediately comply, resulting in both channels broadcasting the same programming until April 4, when TV Bahia resumed broadcasting Manchete programming. The court battle lasted for another three months until judge Nicolau Mary Júnior granted the injunction in favor of Globo on July 6; at that time, TV Bahia definitively resumed the affiliation with the network, becoming the state's highest rated TV station.
In June 1990, with the approach of the electoral period in Bahia, several candidates for state and federal deputies were installing pirate satellite dish systems in cities in the interior of the state that did not have translator stations, in order to insert, during the breaks and local spaces of Rede Globo's national programming, irregular advertisements of their candidacies. The practice led TV Bahia to install a transcoding system that prevented the unauthorized retransmission of the Globo signal.
With the repositioning of the Grupo TV Bahia, which took the Rede Bahia branding on July 2, 1998, TV Bahia became the network head of Rede Bahia de Televisão, officially leading the five Rede Globo affiliate stations in the countryside. Two months earlier, part of the shares of TV Subaé in Feira de Santana had been acquired by the conglomerate, which made the station no longer an affiliate and become an owned-and-operated station of the state network led by TV Bahia since 1988.
On June 23, 2000, DTH operator Sky started to carry the station's programming, making TV Bahia the fifth Globo station uplinked on the service, after the network's owned-and-operated stations in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in addition to Rio Grande do Sul affiliate RBS TV. In 2001, TV Bahia didn't manage to record images of the coverage of a conflict between military police and students of the Federal University of Bahia that occurred during a protest against the then senator ACM. Although other local TV stations in Salvador also missed the first conflict, rumors circulated that TV Bahia would lose its affiliation with the Rio de Janeiro network, due to a supposed destabilization in the relationship between the groups that allegedly was generated from the lack of images. The situation, however, was denied by Globo, which stated that TV Bahia was the best performing affiliate of the network. The contract with Rede Bahia was renewed on June 21.
In 2008, a dispute among TV Bahia shareholders began, with parties vying for control of the business. ACM Júnior won out, and four years later, in June 2012, César Mata Pires sold his stake to Campinas, São Paulo-based Grupo EP, owner of EPTV, a network composed of Globo-affiliated stations serving cities in São Paulo state and one in of Minas Gerais. Amidst the internal conflicts, there was an investment of R$9 million in a new transmitter, a new 160-meter antenna, and a new master control.
In the 2014 edition of the National Programming Award, held by Rede Globo, TV Bahia was awarded as the station with the largest ratings among the affiliates of the Rio de Janeiro network throughout Brazil. In the same award, it was recognized for the call for the broadcast of the match between Juazeirense and Juazeiro, considered the best of its kind among the network's partners, and for the entertainment program Mosaico Baiano, which was one of the three best regional online programs of the year.
In May 2019, Rede Bahia carried out layoffs of several journalists and other employees of TV Bahia, after the company lost money in 2018. Documentation Center and marketing team employees were fired, in addition to veteran newscaster Anna Valéria, who had been at the station for 31 years. That December, TV Bahia started to live broadcast its programming through Globoplay, Grupo Globo's streaming platform.
On January 4, 2023, TV Bahia announced new changes in top management positions, which took effect on April 1. Eurico Meira da Costa left Rede Bahia after five years, and was replaced by news manager Ana Raquel Copetti, who became mews director. The sports sector is no longer linked to the news department, being now part of the programming area. Sports manager Alexandre Boyd became the Programming, Entertainment and Sports director, replacing Carlyle Ávila, who also left the station.
In March 2023, already recovered from financial and ratings problems caused by a good phase of competitor RecordTV Itapoan, TV Bahia became one of the three most watched TV Globo stations in Brazil, according to the Kantar IBOPE Media measurement. The affiliate reached the third highest ratiings among affiliates and Globo's O&O stations, behind only the network's main flagship station, TV Globo Rio de Janeiro, and the affiliate RBS TV Porto Alegre. The local programs with the highest ratings shown by TV Bahia were the local newscasts Jornal da Manhã and Bahia Meio Dia, while on the national program the highlights were the rerun of O Rei do Gado on Vale a Pena Ver de Novo and the seven o'clock soap opera Vai na Fé, respectively. On December 6, TV Bahia was awarded by TV Globo as the network's station with the largest ratings, surpassing all those that are part of Kantar IBOPE Media's National Television Panel.