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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This
profile considers the Brazilian broadcaster and publisher
Organizações Globo.
It covers -
introduction
Globo is the dominant commercial television broadcaster
in Brazil, overshadowing
the Abril group's TVA. It claims
around 75% of Brazilian television advertising spending.
Measured by audience it is considered by some commentators
to be the fourth largest television network in the world,
although in terms of revenue it is smaller than most US
groups profiled on this site and in audience ranks well
behind the state-owned networks of China and India.
the group
Like the Venezuelan Cisneros
group it is a conglomerate.
In Brazil it owns radio stations, daily newspapers (O
Globo, Extra, Valor Economico), Época
weekly magazine and other publications, the Cabo Globo
and Globosat cable and satellite tv services (70% of the
Brazilian market), the Som Livre record company, film
production interests and a theme park.
It also has manufacturing, property, insurance, banking
and construction interests. Overall employment is around
23,000 people. An indication of holdings is here.
development
The Rio-based Organizações Globo
SA group dates from 1925 when Roberto Marinho (1904-2003)
took control of the family's O Globo newspaper.
His father had founded O Globo after selling
the O Noite paper but died soon after.
Keeping on the right side of the government and enjoying
the economic boom of the early 1940s, Roberto expanded
into radio - establishing a national network from 1944
onwards - before moving into television during the 1960s.
Daniel Herz's book The Secret History of the Globo
Network (not sighted during development of this profile)
is reported as claiming that much of the network's early
success was attributable to a controversial joint venture
with Time-Life. That partnership,
subsequently disallowed by Brazil's Supreme Court under
that nation's restrictive foreign investment regime, reportedly
involved direct investment by Time of over US$6 million
between 1962 and 1966. Globo's US partner also provided
personnel, technical support and training regarding broadcast
technology, marketing and administration.
TV Globo - initially through terrestrial broadcast but
later through cable and satellite - was stunningly successful,
in particular through wall-to-wall telenovelas (soap operas),
explored in Elizabeth Fox's Latin American Broadcasting:
From Tango to Soap Opera (Luton: Uni of Luton Press
1997).
Despite problems with exchange rates (significant given
massive borrowings from the US and limited success with
investments in Europe, where a stake in Franco-Italian
tv broadcaster TeleMonteCarlo was sold to the Ferruzzi
family) and the Brazilian economy the group has subsequently
expanded into telecommunications and online services.
An indication of its history is here.
studies
There is no substantial English-language study of the
Marinho family or Globo group. Latin Politics, Global
Media (Austin: Uni of Texas Press 2002), co-edited
by Elizabeth Fox & Silvio Waisbord, is essential reading,
as is the succinct Political Clientalism & the
Media: Southern Europe & Latin America in Comparative
Perspective (PDF)
by Daniel Hallin & Stylianos Papathanassopoulos and
papers in Television, Politics & the Transition
to Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Uni Press 1993) edited by Thomas Skidmore.
Helena Sousa's paper
Crossing the Atlantic: Globo's Wager in Portugal
offers intelligent comments on Globo's experience in Portugal,
supplemented by her 1996 dissertation
Communications Policy in Portugal & Its Links
with the European Union: An Analysis of Telecommunications
& Television Broadcasting Sectors from the Mid-1980s
until the Mid-1990's.
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