TELEVISION FICTION IN BRAZIL: TOWARDS 360° PRODUCTION AND VIEWING Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes 1 1. Brazilian Audiovisual Context in 2016 The year 2016 was marked by the deterioration of the economic crisis started in 2015 and the spread of corruption scandals at all political levels, culminating in the institutional breakdown represented by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. In this year also, Brazil hosted the Olympic Games for the first time ever. Both facts had a significant impact on the audiovisual sector, in particular a 3.5% increase in viewing time in free-to-air TV. This can be put down to two reasons: reduced leisure expenses, with people spending more time at home, and increased viewing of information programs, which surpassed fiction and entertainment. However, in terms of audience there was widespread growth. Running counter to the mood of uncertainty and political and economic disputes, free-to-air TV showed positive and unexpected dynamism in the production of fiction. Genres and formats were continuously explored, enhancing trends identified by OBITEL in previous years. Examples include the production, distribution and consumption of transmedia fiction and on demand content, the offer of mobile devices and the constant release of a host of series and miniseries over the year, not only on free-to-air TV, but also on pay TV and the internet. Such dynamism evokes a communication strategy from the early 2000s in which press services, web content management, editorial production, marketing, advertising and public relations no longer worked separately, but in an integrated manner that covered communications as a whole, called 360º at the time. With the convergence of different media, transmedia strategies in TV fiction and the outpour of UGC (user-generated content), we retrieve the notion of a comprehensive spread of content expanding in both production and viewing. 1 Professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Coordinator of The Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction-OBITEL. Research Team: Clarice Greco, Daniela Ortega, Fernanda Castilho, Ligia Prezia Lemos, Lucas Martins Néia, Mariana Lima, Tissiana Pereir.a