Presenter Silvio Santos was admitted, on Tuesday night (16), to Albert Einstein Hospital, in São Paulo. According to information from Folha de S.Paulo, the veteran presented H1N1.
The SBT press office reported that he is fine. The hospital claims to have no information about the communicator, who is 93 years old.
Career
Silvio Santos is considered one of the biggest names on Brazilian TV, and is also one of the presenters who has been on the air for the longest uninterrupted time on the global stage.
Son of two Jewish immigrants born in the former Ottoman Empire (his father, Alberto, was from a region that today belongs to Greece, while his mother, Rebecca, was from a city that is currently in Turkey), Senor Abravanel, given name of Silvio Santos, was born on December 12, 1930, in the Lapa neighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro.
He had five brothers, but it was with Leon, his younger brother, that he got along best and always found a way to go to movie screenings at Cinelândia for free. During the 1946 elections, Silvio, then 14 years old, saw a man selling plastic cases to store voter registration cards on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and made his first move as an entrepreneur when he decided to do the same. As the police crackdown on street commerce was severe, he and Leon sold their products on the street for only 45 minutes a day, which was the guards' lunch time.
The potential of Silvio's voice soon caught attention on the streets of Rio, and he was invited to audition at Rádio Guanabara. He came first, beating names like Chico Anysio, but soon returned to working as a street vendor, where he earned more. At 18, he was drafted into the Army and began serving at the Parachute School, where he performed some jumps. As his career as a street vendor was incompatible with that of a military man, he returned to work as an announcer on a radio station in Niterói on his days off, to earn extra income.
To go to work in Niterói, Silvio took the ferry every day that crosses Guanabara Bay, and on one of the trips he had the idea of setting up a loudspeaker service on the transport, which until then was silent. In between songs, he advertised some products. The initiative was so successful that some boats now have a bar and bingo. When purchasing a drink or soft drink, the consumer received a bingo card to compete for prizes such as vases and paintings. The idea came from Silvio, of course.
At the age of 20, the young radio host decided to try a life in São Paulo, where he presented shows and raffles in artist caravans. At this time, he ended up graduating as an accounting technician, but decided to pursue an artistic career, getting a new position as a radio announcer at Rádio Nacional in São Paulo. To increase his income, he created a magazine called “Brincadeiras para Você”, which featured crosswords, pastimes and riddles, and was sold by him in the city's stores.
His talent for business opened the doors to the venture that would transform Silvio into a billionaire. In 1958, his friend and fellow radio presenter Manoel da Nóbrega was having difficulty managing a company selling toys on installments. The Baú da Felicidade was a payment system in which the customer paid installments for a box of toys throughout the year and received the products at Christmas time. Nóbrega had sold a lot of meats, but was having difficulty delivering the goods, so he asked Silvio for help to resolve the situation before closing the company. It turns out that Silvio Santos saw a great opportunity in Baú da Felicidade and took full control of the company. It was the beginning of what in 1962 would become the Silvio Santos Group.
The presenter maintained the credit system, but expanded the business, creating stores where people could exchange paid-up payments for toys and household appliances. Furthermore, in 1961 Silvio Santos debuted his first TV program, called “ Vamos Brincar de Forca ” – which would later become the “Programa Silvio Santos” –, where he started to advertise Baú da Felicidade.
Over time, Baú began to distribute not only toys and household appliances, but a huge range of products, including cars and houses. And to meet the demands of the enterprise, Silvio created companies in the most varied areas. Between 1965 and 1975 he founded or bought more than ten enterprises – such as Baú Construtora, the Vimave dealership and Marca Filmes – which in 1972 began to be managed by the holding company Silvio Santos S/A.
The heart of the Silvio Santos Group, however, was its financial division. In the high inflation scenario of the late 1960s, the businessman and presenter realized that it was necessary to invest the money from the Baú booklet installments so that this capital would not depreciate by the end of the year. Thus, in 1969 he founded Baú Financeira, the embryo of what, 21 years later, would become Banco PanAmericano. In 1975, the financial division of the Silvio Santos Group would also be reinforced by Liderança Capitalização, which in 1991 began to sell TeleSena.
A successful presenter and businessman, in the 1970s Silvio Santos began thinking about having his own TV station. The dream came true in 1975, when he won the competition for Canal 11, in Rio de Janeiro. The broadcaster, called TVS, began operating with more than 13 thousand employees and had an initial investment of US$10 million.
In 1981, Silvio won the concession for four more channels, which together would form the Brazilian Television System, or SBT. All of his popularity in front of the cameras even led to invitations for him to enter the world of politics, which almost happened in the 1989 presidential elections. He even launched a campaign on television, but his candidacy ended up being blocked in court on the grounds of that he owned a TV dealership.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Silvio dedicated himself especially to the consolidation and expansion of SBT, but in the 2000s he once again ventured into new areas. In 2006 he founded Jequiti cosmetics and, in 2007, he opened the Sofitel Jequitimar Guarujá hotel.
After five decades of prosperity, however, the Silvio Santos Group went through a delicate situation at the beginning of this decade. At the end of 2010, a R$4.3 billion hole was discovered at Banco PanAmericano, which led the businessman to consider selling his entire empire and moving to the United States. However, he decided to commit several of his companies to pay off the debt and bet his chips on Jequiti, which has been growing at around 20% per year, double the rate recorded by the cosmetics sector. Four years after the crisis, the Silvio Santos Group remains strong thanks to its owner's business talent, having earned US$5.9 billion in 2013, with a profit of US$800,000.
No comments:
Post a Comment