In July 1985, both the Italian and Brazilian press reported that the Brazilian television network Rede Globo had purchased a license to operate Telemontecarlo (TMC), a small television channel broadcasting to Italy from Monaco. Unlike private Italian stations, TMC was allowed to broadcast live due to a loophole in the 1975 Italian Law 103. The counsel for Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI), the Italian national public broadcasting company, headed by representatives of the Christian Democracy party (DC), had feared Berlusconi`s Fininvest would purchase TMC, further eroding the public broadcasters’ standing. Instead, after several months of negotiations with various foreign media groups, RAI’s counsel finally approved the sale of 90% of its shares to the South American Rede Globo. The entrance of a Brazilian television network into the Italian market was seen as its first step towards further expansion into the European television market, which at the time was undergoing privatization, opening it up to foreign investors. Globo’s arrival in Italy was welcomed by center and center-left political forces as a non-American alternative to Berlusconi`s growing influence in both the national communications market and in politics. In Brazil, the expansion of the local network was marketed as a national achievement and odyssey that Brazilians should be proud of.
In October 1987, two years and three months after TMC was acquired by the Brazilian group, an executive director of Globo criticized this European “adventure”, explaining why such a project could not be successful under any circumstances:
“Imagine for a moment that Emilio Azcarraga, the Mexican television mogul, were to buy a television station in Paraguay where he begins to broadcast television programs in Portuguese to Brazilian audiences sponsored by Brazilian advertisers. In such a case, Globo would not only have shut down the television station, it would have shut down the entire country if necessary”.
This analogy illustrates the blurry connections among central and peripheral countries and private communication enterprises, as well as the manipulation of the state apparatus by media tycoons. If we accept this description as a truthful account of events, we may conclude that the “Italian adventure” was an absurd, irrational endeavor. While businessmen do, on occasion, make decisions considered unwise from a purely commercial perspective, this paper considers the multiple transnational political, economic and cultural links between Brazil and Italy that encouraged this particular unorthodox move.