Former TV Globo director José Bonifácio de Oliveira Sobrinho, known as Boni, has revealed that dismissing the late comedian Dercy Gonçalves was the most difficult firing he had to execute during his career at the network.
The 90-year-old television executive explained in a social media video on Wednesday that he admired her work and considered her a close friend, but network leadership was left with no other solution.
According to Boni, the program had originally aired live across Brazil. However, frequent interventions by the military government forced TV Globo to record the show in advance so state censors could review episodes before broadcast.
Censorship cuts steadily escalated until government officials routinely discarded about one hour of footage from every three-hour show. Boni said the situation eventually worsened to the point where the station had no complete program left to broadcast on air.
At the time, TV Globo was experiencing severe cash flow difficulties. Boni explained that the company could not afford to maintain financial support for Gonçalves while her show remained off the air without commercial sponsors.
Impact of state censorship
Boni said he had to call Gonçalves into his office and inform her that the network could not keep her under the circumstances. He promised to bring her back to TV Globo as soon as conditions permitted, a commitment he later fulfilled.
Dercy Gonçalves, who lived from 1907 to 2008, was a celebrated Brazilian comedian and actress famous for her irreverent humor and long career in theater and television. TV Globo, founded in 1965, grew to become Latin America's largest commercial television network. Brazil was governed by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, during which state censorship strictly regulated news and entertainment programming.
Broadcasting memories on social media
Boni has recently used his personal Instagram account to share behind-the-scenes stories from his long career in Brazilian broadcasting.
In addition to recounting the dismissal of Gonçalves, the former executive discussed the conclusion of the children's program Xou da Xuxa and disclosed that he once sold tons of fan mail received by presenter Xuxa Meneghel in 1987. He also described the origins of the fanfare used for the network's breaking news segment, Plantão da Globo, and addressed public comments calling him senile.
