When the Censor Is Not the Censor: Variety Shows’ Censorship on Portuguese Television During Salazar’s Dictatorship (1957–1968)

<italic>The Portuguese dictatorship of Estado Novo (1933–1974) marked a crucial period in the culture industry and its mediations, presenting new challenges for a censorship system initially designed for press and public performances. Television, or the state-sponsored RTP, became a significant challenge. RTP framed and continuously reshaped its own censorship bodies within the regime’s structure to address the nuances of everyday production with its diverse players and content. This article contributes to the underexplored field of television censorship studies, especially within the Portuguese context. It examines censorship in action in television production beyond formal structures and agents, focusing on variety shows—a popular genre that connected various fields of popular culture and industry at the time and served as a precursor to the development of censorship frameworks in other countries. Using partial and fragmented archival sources, the article explores the theoretical dimensions of regulatory and constitutive censorship and follows agents who traverse and link various fields to ensure television censorship operates in informal and less visible ways.</italic> [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]