ABSTRACT
When Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill coined the term 'BRIC' (Brazil, Russia, India, China) in a 2001 paper, it was partly in response to the September 11 attack. The BRICS nations are emerging in a somewhat, but far from completely, transformed world or global system. Global format producers are another distinct category that provides a significant fraction of imported television formats on which national production is often actually based. Geo-cultural regional film, television and Internet producers and spaces are based on shared languages, histories and geographic proximity. In all these BRICS countries, except possibly Russia, a major outcome of economic change in the 1990s and 2000s was substantial growth in the lower middle class and middle class. This middle-class growth created a basis for an expanding consumer economy, along with growth in advertising and in media. All of the BRICS countries have worked on improving their technological infrastructure rapidly.
