Roberto Pisani Marinho (Rio de Janeiro, December 3, 1904 – August 6, 2003) was the president and founder of the biggest Brazilian TV channel, Globo, a television network with 113 stations and associates. He came under criticism in the documentary Beyond Citizen Kane for his role at Globo.
Although Roberto Marinho was a skilfull businessman, he liked to call himself a journalist. His father, Irineu Marinho, started a newspaper called O Globo in Rio de Janeiro on July 29, 1925, but died three weeks later. At the age of 21, Roberto fancied being a journalist, appointed himself a trainee reporter on the newspaper his family had inherited and worked himself up to become chief editor only six years later. He expanded into commercial radio in the 1940´s and moved into television in the 1960´s. On April 26, 1965, thanks to the Military Regime, he founded Rede Globo TV, which became the principal TV station in Brazil and the third largest in the world.
By the 1970´s he was thought to be one of South America´s richest men and certainly one of the most important media moguls of the world. Nowdays, the holding Organizações Globo controls not only the newspaper and the TV Globo but also a chain of radio stations such as Rádio Globo and Rádio CBN as well as many other cable TV channels. Globo Television reaches almost every home in Brazil through 113 stations and associates. The network is powerful enough to decide when Brazil´s soccer matches kick off.[1]
With the production of novelas (soap-operas), TV Globo found a way to flex its true power and has since exported many of them to various countries. "The Slave Girl Isaura" is one of the topmost sucesses of the company since it was sold to more than 80 countries, including China, already in the 70´s.
These days, Globo’s reach is incalculable and has immense social and political influence (on par with Italy’s Fininvest, now Mediaset, run by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi).
Jacarepaguá Airport in Rio de Janeiro is named after Roberto Marinho.