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Actually, on the first years, not many people in Brazil watched television, precisely because of the huge size of the country and the lack of financial means to set up a network of translators.
Both this station, and the first station, which went on the air in São Paulo four months earlier, belonged to the same group - and until 1956, they didn't have the same programming. First Rio - São Paulo transmission only happened in 56, and the distance between these two cities is only 400 kilometers.
After 56, much of the programming remained local.
Other stations went on the air in other states, and two curious things began to happen: first, in small towns people raised money to build repeating stations to bring in the television signals from the main cities. Second, when the technology of video-tape appeared, we began to have a more "national" programming, because the stations outside Rio and São Paulo started to buy the tapes of programs aired by stations of those two cities.
Only by 1969 we started to really have national coverage of live TV. Which was just in time, because we were able to watch the Moon landings together with the rest of the world.
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