Grupo Bandeirantes

The Bandeirantes Group is one of the main communication Groups in Brazil, however it has been suffering economic problems and also problems related to the inheritance and succession in the Group’s control. The group owns TV stations (the free TV Band and the cable TV BandNews, among others), Radio stations and Networks (Band FM, BandNews FM, Bandeirantes AM, Nativa FM, among others), new medias and printed newspapers, the most important being Metro (a joint venture with Swedish Metro International), a freely distributed newspaper published in São Paulo, Campinas, ABC, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Espírito Santo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Brasília and Maringá.

The Group’s history started when João Jorge Saad – son of filho de imigrantes Lebanese immigrants and clothing seller – received from his father-in-law, the former governor of SP Ademar de Barros, Bandeirantes Radio, purchased in 1948 on the hands of Paulo Machado de Carvalho, who had also founded Record TV and the Jovem Pan Group. In 1951, Saad took on stock control of the radio and started his search for a TV concession: he got a concession in SP during Getúlio Vargas’s government (1950-1954), but the concession was canceled during Juscelino Kubitschek’s government (1956-1951), and regained during João Goulart’s (1961-1964). However, the station would only go on air in 1967. Just like with other National TV Stations in Brazil, Bandeirantes’s transformation into a Network capable of reaching the whole national territory happened during the Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), when Saad, that already had two other concessions (BA and MG) obtained the concession of Guanabara TV (RJ) and the military government gave the infrastructural and legal conditions to the formation of the TV Networks, through the Affiliates System.

Saad diversified the business throughout the years: Band FM Radio (1977), Educadora FM Radio (1978), Primeira mão (‘First Hand’) Newspaper (1980), Ipanema FM Radio (1983), Band Vale FM Radio (1997), Canal 21 (1998). He was the second president of ABERT – Brazilian Association of Radio and TV Stations, from 1970 to 1972. The entity had been founded ten years earlier to assure the approval of 1962’s Brazilian Telecommunications Code, accordingly to the broadcasters’ interests , and to form an institutionalized channel of political negotiation other than Assis Chateaubriand’s personal action, then the owner of the biggest media conglomerate in Brazil. (See the Diários Associados Group Profile).

João Jorge Saad passed away in 1999, when Band TV Network had 11 owned stations and 68 affiliated, competing for the second place in ratings with SBT. The presidency of the Group was taken on by his son, João Carlos Saad (Johnny Saad), that continued to diversify the business, investing mainly in Cable TV channels, such as BandNews TV (2001) and the Terraviva channel (2005), directed to the interests of agribusiness, and and digital media and out-of-home companies.

In the last few years, the Group has been passing through economical problems, despite the increase in ratings of its Radio Stations and the success of Metro Newspaper. Band TV reaches only the fourth place in ratings, behind Globo Network, SBT, and Record TV, and has only one really successful show, the reality show Master Chef (in partnership with Dutch Endemol). The group also faces family problems: João Jorge Saad’s second wife, Andrée Gabrielle de Ridder, who works at the company, claims 50% of her ex-husband’s properties. Johnny’s siblings, on the other hand, accuse him of getting the biggest slice of the cake and the presidency of the Group and of trying to sell out part of the companies to other partners, who are not members of the family.