Making Surf Media in Brazil: Social Agents and the Organization of Surfing in the 1980s

In this article I explore the discourses of those social agents who established a niche surf media in Brazil in the 1980s. The niche surf media played a crucial role in organizing and commercializing surfing in Brazil, and I examine the social, economic, and political spaces in which the agents of this media operated and worked to create and maintain dedicated surfing television shows, radio programs, magazines, and newspapers. My analysis draws primarily on oral sources and interviews with the key individuals who produced the niche surfing media in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. As well as delving into the concept of social memory, I identify the main factors that contributed to the various successes (and failures) of different niche surfing media outlets—insider surfing knowledge, media acumen, ability to attract and hold advertisers—and I reveal something of the conditions of media production. Historians of sport have largely overlooked the latter that producers themselves often conceal and that are not easily discernible from looking at the final products.