Streaming gives survival to the fifty color TV

It was February 8, 1972 when teacher Lúcia Tescari decided to take her youngest son Fábio, aged 2, to a historic event: the purchase of a color television at the Isnard store, on Rua 24 de Maio, downtown São Paulo.

The seller was Lúcia’s brother, Júlio Ernesto, who earned a good commission for the unprecedented feat. It was the first color TV not only of the Tescari family, but one of the first acquisitions of the device in Brazil, registered by leaf.

Fifty years later, Fábio still keeps the newspaper in which he appears on the front page with his mother, who died in 1995, and the memory of the house full of family and neighbors in the years following the purchase of the device, adorned with jacaranda wood. He loved watching Sesame Street and Os Trapalhões, while his father didn’t miss the news.

Today, however, Fábio, a professor at Insper, is content to follow the Premiere Play sports channel on his laptop when he ends his journey of online classes. The TV is reserved for Friday nights, when a home cinema session is promoted with his wife and two children, aged 12 and 7. The latter decide what to watch on Netflix.

The Tescari family’s journey with TV says a lot about the change in society’s behavior in the last 50 years, since the launch of color television in Brazil. From being the main information and entertainment center in the house, the TV gradually lost its space to mobile devices, especially smartphones and tablets, with access to social networks. But the fact that the TV has become smart, connected to the internet and, therefore, to streaming and gaming platforms, has helped the device to secure its place in the living room.

According to data from the consultancy GfK, in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, TV sales grew 1% compared to the previous year, totaling 12.147 million devices at an average price of R$ 1,919.

In 2021, TV sales dropped 23%, to 9.342 million sets, while the average price rose to R$2,300. At the same time, according to consultancy IDC, smartphone sales fell 3.5% last year, totaling 44.5 million, at an average price of R$1,530. Already the sale of tablets soared 27.5%, to 3.7 million units in 2021, at a price of R$ 972, on average.

By becoming a subscriber to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney and Globoplay, the user decides when and on which device to watch the desired content – ​​something unthinkable in the 1970s, when watching the TV program at a certain time was part of the ritual. of socialization.

“But, with the pandemic and the need to get entertainment inside the home, TV gained new breath”, says Henrique Mascarenhas, commercial director of GfK in Latin America. With everyone gathered at home, streaming, with monthly fees ranging from R$10 to R$40, has become a more economical alternative for entertainment, even to compensate for the period in which theaters were closed.

Netflix, which does not disclose local subscriber numbers, claims to have gained more than 36 million customers in 2020 and 18.2 million in 2021. Today, there are 222 million in about 190 countries.

In Brazil, the use of platforms has encouraged the search for larger-screen televisions. “The sale of televisions from 50 inches upwards already concentrates half of the total sales”, says Mascarenhas.

Retail confirms interest. Rodrigo Portos, commercial director at Via – which brings together the Casas Bahia and Ponto networks – says that there is an increase in demand for TVs over 50 inches and for devices with high resolution screens, equipped with QLED and OLED technologies.

“These new technologies and the fact that we have a sporting event this year – the World Cup in Qatar, in November – should lead to an increase in demand in the second half of the year,” says Portos. “The football-loving consumer is always looking for the best device to enjoy the matches.”

Fábio Gabaldo, commercial director of Magazine Luiza, says he has seen a significant increase in the search for 4K resolution TVs since the last World Cup, in 2018.

“The greater availability of 4K content in the last World Cup and on streaming platforms has contributed a lot to this demand, especially for TVs over 55 inches.”

For GfK’s Mascarenhas, the World Cup serves as a catalyst for TV sales in several global markets, including Brazil. “That’s when manufacturers decide to invest in new technologies. This year, for example, is 8K, with very high image definition”, he says.

The economic and political uncertainties of this election year, however, put the market on hold. “The sale of electronics as a whole must go sideways”, he says.

In the Manaus Free Trade Zone, televisions remain the most important product in the industrial complex, with revenues of R$ 21.8 billion from January to November 2021. But production fell 17.5% in the same period, to 9.7 million units.

If it depends on consumers like Fábio Tescari, it takes more than a World Cup to convince him to change his device. “I’ve had a 42-inch Sony TV for over 12 years,” says the son of the first color TV buyer in Brazil. “I changed the smartphone five months ago”.