Rede Excelsior was a Brazilian television network founded by Mário Wallace Simonsen on July 9, 1960, in São Paulo, São Paulo. Its last broadcast happened on September 30, 1970, when the Brazilian military dictatorship put an abrupt end to it.
History
In 1959, the Victor Costa Organization, owner of TV Paulista, channel 5 of São Paulo (later acquired by Rede Globo), was awarded by the federal government with a second television channel in the city, channel 9. Possession of more than one TV channel by a single group was not prohibited by the broadcasting laws of that time.
The Victor Costa Organization already owned the Radio Excelsior (currently the CBN station) and therefore, it was determined that the name of the future TV station would be Excelsior. "Excelso" is Portuguese for sublime. However, even before the launch of the channel, it was bought by a group of businessmen led by the Simonsen family, owner of over 40 companies, the most famous of them being Panair do Brasil, then the country's largest airline company. The group featured entrepreneurs like José Luis Moura, a coffee exporter from Santos, Congressman Ortiz Monteiro, founder of TV Paulista, and John Scantimburgo, owner of the newspaper Correio Paulistano.
TV Excelsior was acquired for ₢$80 million, a sum extremely high for the time. In addition to the station's license, the purchase also included some equipments, among them cameras, a tower and a transmitter. The transmission system was installed at the corner of Consolação street with Avenida Paulista, the studios were set on Avenida Adolfo Pinheiro, and the station's commercial and administrative center in downtown.
With the 1964 political-military movement, the broadcaster began to have problems with censorship. Programs such as those by Moacir Franco, Derci Gonçalves and Costinha were highly targeted, the texts of the soap operas were constantly censored and some had to be transferred after 10 pm. As a form of denunciation, the excerpts cut from the programs were not reissued, in their place animated figures appeared with their mouths and ears covered and the caption “censored”.
Excelsior TV remained with good ratings and, in 1965, the program Moacir Franco show reached a rate of 77% of the audience in the city of São Paulo and 97% in the city of Santos. On the other hand, that was a year of serious problems for the other companies in the Simonsen group. This process ended with the kidnapping of the group's assets, including Rede Excelsior, which at the time was composed of broadcasters in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. The group negotiated the debt in court and the broadcaster returned to the air.
Soon afterwards, Excelsior TV officials tried to create a foundation to buy the station and took the proposal to the then President of the Republic, Humberto Castelo Branco, who did not accept it, claiming that such a procedure was not permitted by law. So, Carlos Lacerda tried to stay with the Rio de Janeiro broadcaster, while, in São Paulo, Ademar de Barros wanted the São Paulo broadcaster. Both were governors and used the debts that the broadcasters owed to the states as an argument, but their proposals were not accepted by the federal government.
Still in 1965, Excelsior launched the 1st Brazilian Popular Music Festival, which had as its winning song Arrastão, music by Edu Lobo performed by Elis Regina. In the same year Mário Simonsen died in Paris. His son Wallace Simonsen then sold the station to Edson Leite, Alberto Saad, Otávio Frias and Carlos Caldeira (the last two were owners of the Folha da Manhã group of São Paulo newspapers). The station's direction was with Edson Leite and Alberto Saad.
Continuing investment in telenovelas, in 1966, in the midst of several internal crises, Excelsior launched the longest telenovela in the history of Brazilian television: Redenção. (Redemption) The novel was an original by Raimundo Lopes with 594 chapters, featuring Márcia Real, Flora Geni, Rodolfo Mayer, Vicente Leporace and Procópio Ferreira, among others. Redemption was in the air from May 1966 to May 1968.
In 1967, even though the broadcaster had a lot of debt, its new studio was opened in the São Paulo neighborhood of Vila Guilherme. The complex consisted of 12 studios, had 40 vehicles and more than five hundred employees worked on it. The Brazilian Television System (SBT) studios started to operate there later.