This paper presents the results of a study performed in Brazil's most notorious shantytown (or favela), Rocinha, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Over 150 residents with pay television subscriptions responded to questions regarding their television viewing habits before and since subscribing. The author contends that pay television was used primarily to gain better or increased access to Brazilian programming and a small number of particular types of foreign programming. She questions whether pay television viewership in Rocinha should be characterized as evidence of cultural imperialism and suggests that, in places such as Rocinha, where having access to only broadcast stations can effectively mean having access to a single television channel, it could be useful to extend conventional notions of the "digital divide" to include non-"interactive" media such as television.
