Joe Wallach will be featured in the December 2020 Issue of VideoAge as the newest inductee into the publication’s Hall of Fame. Few people would drive from Los Angeles to the south of Utah at the “ripe” old age of 97 in the middle of a pandemic. Then again, Joe isn’t your average former TV executive.
After fighting in the European theater in WWII, he moved to Brazil to take care of Globo TV’s finances and help it become one of the world’s largest TV networks. In the process, he helped keep the military dictators and the revolutionaries fighting against the regime at bay.
After Globo TV he tackled Spanish-language TV services in the U.S. by helping create Telemundo against all odds. He then went to Italy as a consultant for Globo TV and got tangled up in a complex political net when the Brazilian firm acquired Tele Monte Carlo. Dealing with Brazil’s military dictators paled in comparison to Italy’s complex web of politics. Wallach’s next challenge was to help create and manage GloboSat, the first pay-TV service in Brazil.
That was his last big chore before retiring in 1995. He returned to California, but remained active by presiding over college lectures (like the May 10, 2007 event hosted by the UCLA Latin American Institute) and book-writing (he wrote an autobiography, which was published in 2011). In addition, he has not given up traveling to Brazil (his last visit was in November 2019).
It is guaranteed that Joe Wallach’s life story in VideoAge will make for riveting reading. The piece will recall his years as a U.S. broadcaster (running KOGO on behalf of Time-Life, and KVEA as part-owner with Telemundo), as a Brazilian broadcaster with Globo TV, as a satcaster with GloboSat, and as an international TV consultant in Italy. And he could do it all in their own languages. The impressive, incredible Wallach speaks English, French, Portuguese, and can even understand Italian.
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