Brazilian media mogul Silvio Santos, who started as a street vendor and went on to become the owner of a prominent media empire, has passed away at the age of 93 his broadcaster SBT said on Saturday.
Santos’ media empire included one of Brazil’s largest television channels.
“Today heaven is happy with the arrival of our beloved Silvio Santos,” SBT said on the social media platform X. “Rest in Peace, you will always be eternal in our hearts.”
According to Reuters, Santos’ medical report stated that Santos died of bronchopneumonia in the early hours of Saturday, after he had been hospitalized in Sao Paulo with a case of H1N1 flu since the beginning of August.
Senor Abravanel adopted the stage name Silvio Santos for his media career and was the founder of the SBT TV channel in the 1980s, which went on to become one of the most popular and viewed TV stations in all of Brazil, with served as one of the only legitimate competitors for viewers to TV Globo, which is one of the largest media conglomerates in the Americas. Santos started out in radio before moving to TV.
Santos also regularly served as a host of his own TV shows until around 2022, including popular game shows, and became known for his gimmick of throwing paper airplanes made of money into the audience, up for grabs.
Santos also owned a cosmetics company, a financial firm and real estate asset and was valuated at Forbes back in 2016 for $1 billion.
Santos made headlines back in 2001 when he was kidnapped for several hours by the same person who had kidnapped his daughter a few days prior, a kidnapping that was broadcasted live by local Brazil TV stations.
