Videoage International December 2020

14 December 2020 V I D E O A G E to renounce his U.S. citizenship, which was later reacquired.) In the beginning he communicated with Dr. Roberto in “broken French” since Marinho did not speak English, but babbled in French. Wallach also managed to learn Spanish, which helped him later on for Telemundo. Wallach and Marinho led Globo TV during Brazil’s tumultuous years under a military dictatorship (1964 to 1985). Wallach remembered years of crackdowns, when Globo TV had to have scripts approved by officials, and censors were literally in the news department. The dictatorship, however, also provided a basis for Globo to grow. From the mid-60s to the 70s, the military government saw television as a way to solidify a national identity. It subsidized the purchase of television sets and pushed microwave and satellite systems, increasing the market that Globo TV could reach. At the same time, suspicion about Globo TV’s U.S. connections was widespread. A month after he arrived in Brazil, Wallach recalled, he was summoned before a congressional panel investigating foreign interventions. He was questioned for five hours about everything from Time-Life’s involvement with Globo to his feelings about the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, the U.S. involvement in the companydidgiveGloboacorporateinfrastructure that allowed the network to grow. Wallach imposed a tight budget and was instrumental in ridding the network of corruption. “Globo’s founding president was a courageous man,” Wallach recalled. “He was constantly debating with the military,” which often threatened to take over Globo TV. In addition, Globo TV’s novelas were not just ubiquitous in Brazil, but thanks to Filippelli, were sold to over 100 countries around the world, from East Timor to Angola to the U.S. Thereza Quintella, Consul General of Brazil in Los Angeles in 2005, recalled a story from Portugal, where the parliament session was interrupted so that legislators could watch the final episode of Gabriela , a 1970s Globo TV novela starring Sônia Braga. “This is the woman who stopped Parliament,” she said. In 1985, five years after leaving Globo, with Reliance Capital Group’s executives Saul Steinberg and Henry Silverman as partners, Wallach acquired KVEA (formerly KMTW, and KBSC), a Spanish-language TV station in Los Angeles. He became its general manager. The following year, Reliance acquired John Blair & Co., which in Puerto Rico owned WKAQ- TV. Reliance also purchased New Jersey’s WNJU- TV in 1986. Two years earlier, Jerry Perenchio and Norman Lear, who had acquired WNJU in 1979, joined KSTS in San Jose, California, in forming NetSpan, the second Spanish-language television network (behind the older Univision). Under Reliance, Wallach’s KVEA and Blair’s WKAQ became NetSpan affiliates. In Puerto Rico, WKAQ was known as Tele- mundo, so in 1987 after Reliance went public, with Wallach’s advice the group decided to rebrand NetSpan as Telemundo (now part of NBCUniversal), but did not include WKAQ as an affiliate. Ironically, “Telemundo” was also the brand name of Cuba’s CMBA-TV, established in 1953 and later affiliatedwith the CBS TV network. Wallach managed his Telemundo affiliate station until his departure in March 1987 over a dispute over Reliance’s heavy debt caused by various TV station acquisitions. Wallace was not in favor of the acquisitions, pushing instead to make KVEA a Spanish-language superstation. In the 1980s, Wallach got involved in another political and financial intrigue, this time in Italy. After leaving Telemundo in 1987, Wallach became a consultant for Italian network Tele Monte Carlo (TMC), whichwas owned by Globo TV. TMC (now La 7) was a small television channel broadcasting to Italy from Monaco that was allowed to broadcast live due to a loophole in the 1974 Italian law stating that foreign television stations were allowed to broadcast into Italy through an Italian company that retransmitted the signal into Italian territory. That Italian company, a subsidiary of TMC, was TV International (TVI). For that venture, Wallach traveled extensively to Italy from 1987 to 1990. In July 1985, Rede Globo took control of TMC-TVI (by investing U.S.$2.5 million and assuming TMC’s $5 million debt). According to Wallach, Dr. Roberto had the opportunity to invest in Telemundo in the U.S., but he rejected the idea. Earlier, in 1982, RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, headed by representatives of the Christian Democracy party (DC), had feared Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest would purchase TMC, and so it acquired 10 percent of TMC and provided it with four hours of daily programs. In exchange, RAI got the right to veto the selling of the station to future buyers, but approved the sale to Globo. From splicing together past reports in VideoAge , it is clear that Italian politicians played Marinho as soon as they realized his interest in entering the Italian TV market. The interest was fueled by large sales of Globo’s programs to private Italian TV stations and the fact that Dr. Roberto’s oldest son, Roberto Irineu, wanted tomove to Italy (he spoke perfect Italian). Filippelli recalled that he’d moved to Italy when he started selling Globo’s content in 1977 in a small townhouse in Rome. Two years later the operations moved to a “splendid rented palace,” which was also occupied by TMC. In 1985 Globos’s sales moved to London, but Irineu continued to live in the same apartment he had rented in Rome’s historical center. In 1994, Dr. Roberto explained to the daily Corriere della Sera theMarinhos’ familial ties to Italy. Marinho’s mother was born in Salerno and immigrated to Brazil at an early age. Globo’s arrival in Italy was welcomed by center and center-left political forces as an alternative to Berlusconi’s growing influence in both the national TV market and in politics. But, while the military dictatorship in Brazil was just one entity that needed to be dealt with, the Italian political scene was more complex, with three major parties, many splintered factions, and different media agendas. The DC and Communist party representatives emphasized their shared Latin roots and Globo’s value as an alternative to U.S. domination, while the Socialist party supported Berlusconi. Later on Dr. Roberto complained about the strong influence exerted by Italian politics on private media, blaming the intrusion for the failure of the TMC project. Starting in 1987 (and lasting until his final exit from Italian television in 1994 due to heavy losses), Marinho negotiated several partnership agreements with Italian economic heavyweights, especially with those operating in the Brazilian market, but to no avail. In 1990, after almost two years of searching for a partner/buyer, and following several ill-fated transactions, Globo finally sold 40 percent of its TMC stock to the Italian Ferruzzi Group, which was expanding into the Brazilianmarket. In 1993, Globo sold another 20 percent of its remaining stock to Ferruzzi and lingered as a minority partner until its final exit in 1994. In June 1993, a few months after acquiring 60 percent of TMC, the Ferruzzi Group went bankrupt, and its CEO, Raul Gardini, committed suicide after his involvement in a political scandal involving kick- backs to politicians became known. In 1994, TMC was sold to producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori, who five years later sold it to Telecom Italia, which, in 2001 changed its name to La 7. In 2013, La 7 was acquired by Urbano Cairo, a former assistant to Berlusconi. Meanwhile, in 1991 Wallach returned to Brazil and, with Dr. Roberto and Boni, jointly founded Globosat (now Canais Globo), a satellite broadcasting service based in Rio de Janeiro. As president of Globosat Wallach launched and operated the first pay-television, four-channel DBS broadcast system covering Brazil. He ran Globosat until 1993, when he went back to Los Angeles to handle small ventures. He finally retired in 1995. Wallach is the author of the autobiographical book, My Chapter in Globo TV ( Meu Capítulo na TVGlobo ), a Portuguese-language book published by Top Books, Rio de Janeiro, in 2011. He still continues to travel to Brazil today. He last visited the country in November 2019 as a guest of the 73-year-old Roberto Irineu, who, Wallach reported, recently underwent a successful liver transplant. Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame (Continued from Page 12) Globo TV’s top management in 1980 (from l. to r.): Jose Bonifacio, Roberto I. Marinho, Joe Wallach, Dr. Roberto Marinho (seated)