The story of Gustavo Scaglione is just as interesting as the trajectory of Telefe, the Argentinean TV network that Scaglione, together with José Luis Manzano, acquired on October 23, 2025, for a reported U.S.$100 million from the U.S. studio, Paramount.
A sidebar about Scaglione is on page 26, meanwhile here we explore the connecting elements between the city of Rosario and its prominent media pioneers.
Telefe was founded as Television Federal S.A. in 1989 by the Italian-born Pedro (Pietro) Simoncini (1923-2020). In the beginning, Telefe was known as El Canal de la Familia (The Family’s Channel).
The now 65-year-old Gustavo Santiago Scaglione, son of Italian immigrants, was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city, where Simoncini lived, and since 1975 has been the majority (70 percent) shareholder of Canal 5 Rosario. Canal 5 was the city’s first TV station (created in 1964), which became part of Telefe. Simoncini’s Canal 5 is the station that Scaglione took ownership of with the Telefe acquisition.
In 2015, the Scaglione-Daminato family acquired 55 percent (each owning a 27.5 percent stake) of Televisión Litoral, the Rosario-based company that last year purchased Telefe from Paramount for a reported U.S.$13 million.
Gustavo Scaglione married Josefina Daminato in 1996 (both pictured on the cover). Born in 1966, Josefina is the youngest daughter of Carlos Daminato (1925- 2017), an Italian bank agent who inherited Daminato Sociedad de Bolsa S.A., the oldest exchange house in Argentina, founded in 1886.
What is now Telefe’s flagship TV channel in Buenos Aires began as Teleonce (and is still numbered Channel 11 in Buenos Aires) under the indirect ownership of the U.S. TV network ABC (now owned by Disney), with the founder listed as the Italian-Argentinean Jesuit priest Hector Grandinetti.
Newspaper reports in Argentina indicated that when TV channels in the country were being privatized in 1983 (after first being nationalized in 1973), Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Italian-born Argentinean businessman Francesco (Franco) Macri (1931-2019) bid for Canal 11. Macri was the father of former Argentinean president Mauricio Macri, who served from 2015 to 2019.
However, the bid was won by a consortium formed by Television Federal (led by Pedro Simoncini) with 30 percent; Atlántida (of which Spain’s Telefonica owned 30 percent) with 14 percent; and the balance by investors Avelino Porto and Santiago Soldati.
In 1998, Telefonica acquired the rest of Atlántida, as well as 70 percent of Telefe with its eight owned-and-operated local TV stations for a reported U.S.$530 million. That sum included the majority ownership of Azul Televisión (now Channel 9), and some other media entities. Subsequently, Telefonica divested its Azul stakes.
In 2016, Telefonica sold Telefe for U.S.$345 million to Viacom (now Paramount). At that time Viacom was also the major shareholder of the CBS TV network, which in the 1980s was the indirect owner of Argentina’s Canal 13, Canal 11’s main competitor.
The entry of the Scaglione-Daminato family holding (of which Scaglione is the president) into the media business started in 2015 with Televisión Litoral S.A. (TVL), which owns TV’s Canal 3, as well as two radio stations. Subsequently, TVL expanded with the acquisition of Canal 8 (El Ocho TV) in Tucumán, Canal 11 (El Once TV) in Salta, Canal 9 (El Nueve TV) in Bahia Blanca (all Telefe affiliates), and Canal 6 in Patagonia.
In 2024, TVL acquired 10 percent of Grupo América (also known as the Vila-Manzano Group, headed and founded by Daniel Vila and José Luis Manzano in 1996), which also owned Canal 10 in Junín. Earlier, in 2019, Grupo América had sold newspapers La Capital in Rosario, and Uno in Santa Fe, as well as some radio stations to Scaglione-Daminato’s TVL.
Moving on to Scaglione’s life, newspaper accounts describe him as a football (soccer), basketball, and rugby player who entered the business of the air conditioning of busses and trucks after buying a bankrupt refrigeration company. At the National University of Rosario, he studied political science, social communication, and economics.
With his wife Josefina, Scaglione expanded in the 2000s into agricultural business, travel, and tourism, and managed six hotels they bought in the city of San Carlos de Bariloche. This was before buying into TVL, the Rosario media group founded by Alberto Ciro Gollán, a former mayor of Rosario.
To acquire Telefe, TVL partnered with Jose Luis Manzano, with whom TVL shares ownership of Grupo América. The 70-year-old Manzano is a medical doctor and a former Argentinean Minister of the Interior turned financier and media owner, but is not involved with running Telefe. His unauthorized biographical book, Todo Tiene Precio, was published in 1992.
Scaglione’s shares in the Buenos Aires-based Grupo América allowed him, in addition to a regional presence, to enter the national arena, where he became known as “El Pulpo” (The Octopus) for his ability to expand a media conglomerate throughout Argentina and in various sectors: Television, radio, newspapers, and digital media. In this respect, he defines himself as a “multi-sector” businessman, with investments in agriculture, tourism, financial areas, and in more than 30 media outlets nationwide.
Televisíon Federal S.A. (Telefe) was acquired by TVL from the Argentinean group formed by Atlántida Comunicaciones S.A. (79.02 percent) and Enfisur S.A. (20.98 percent). Both companies are owned by Viacom Camden Lock Ltd., a U.K. subsidiary of Viacom Inc. (now Paramount Skydance Corporation).
Telefe, one of Argentina’s six national TV networks, reaches 95 percent of Argentine TVHH (some 44 million people). It produces over 3,500 hours of content annually, and has a library of more than 33,000 hours. It also operates Telefe International, a pay channel available to more than eight million viewers across 20 countries.
(By Dom Serafini)
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