ABSTRACT
The realization of multilocale ethnographic texts, of even regional analysis as it now exists, may entail a novel kind of fieldwork. Arembepe was unique among the field sites in that in many households Globo's signal was the weakest of the available channels. The best reception the author got in Arembepe using his set's own antenna was on Bandeirantes with Silvio Santos second best. The second site added in 1986 to enlarge the picture of TV impact, from rural-agrarian areas to urban-industrial Brazil, was Americana-Santa Barbara d'Oeste in So Paulo state. Americana stands less than two hours west of So Paulo city, on excellent highways. Its name derives from Confederate loyalists who left the southern United States for Brazil at the end of the Civil War. In Americana-Santa Barbara, we studied a group of textile factory workers and another group that had retained strong ethnic identity.
