ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the aspects of cultural capital that are most relevant to audience choices about global, cultural-linguistic regional and national television, as well as their ability to make sense of what they watch from such different sources. It also extends beyond language to culture, that the cultural capital required for wanting to watch many kinds of imported programs also tends to be concentrated in middle and upper classes. It further defines and operationalizes in in-depth interviews in Brazil the concept of cultural proximity. The chapter examines what has been happening with elite audiences, particularly as they come to have access to the new cable and satellite television services, which offer a new set of global and regional channels. It argues that people in "national" television audiences are divided even more by cultural capital than they are by economic capital. Many rural and extremely poor urban Brazilians are only beginning to acquire cultural capital via media and schooling.
