Studies of television in Brazil reveal a significant change over time in their criteria of analysis and legitimation. Television has shifted to being studied and represented in terms of independent genres - soaps, news programs and live audience shows - distinctions that were practically non-existent in the first research studies conducted in Brazil. This separation into genres indicates that the change observed in these studies takes a specific direction. They not only start to legitimize television; through their analyses, they also reproduce in the same terms, the power relations observed within the field of television as a whole.
Television; Legitimation; Power relations; Language
