Mauro Salles, 90, publicist who helped launch TV Globo, dies

The journalist and publicist Mauro Bento Dias Salles died this Saturday (11), at the age of 90.

Interned since December at Albert Einstein Hospital, in São Paulo, he suffered multiple organ failure, according to the family, who also informed that Salles had been facing a neurological disease for 16 years.

Mauro worked for 12 years at Grupo Globo and played an important role in launching the television station, where he was director of journalism and programming.

On the internet page that Globo dedicates to the memory of its employees and vehicles, the company describes Salles as having “fundamental participation in the conception and launch of TV Globo, as director of journalism and director of programming, a position he assumed until the eve of of the inauguration of the station, in 1965”.

That year, according to Grupo Globo’s Memory Project, Salles also participated in the negotiations between Globo and Grupo Victor Costa for the purchase of TV Paulista, channel 5 in São Paulo.

He was also one of those responsible for hiring José Bonifácio de Oliveira Sobrinho, known as Boni.

In 1966, he left the group to found his own advertising agency, Salles Interamericana, one of the largest in the country.

Led the creation of the Brazilian Advertising Code of Ethics. He is also the author of several books of poetry.

In 1977, Salles took over as executive vice-president of Diários Associados, a group that included TV Tupi.

He returned to the Globo organizations the following year, where he assumed one of the vice-presidencies of the group, being responsible for the television network, radio stations and the branch of the newspaper O Globo in São Paulo.

Mauro Salles is survived by his wife, Thereza, three children, ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.