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Don Francisco Is 'Gigante' in Spanish-Language TV Had Mario Kreutzberger followed the career path his father wanted him to take, Spanish-language television would not be what it is today.
Kreutzberger traveled from his native Chile to New York in 1959 to study design; his father, a Jew who fled Hitler's Germany in the late 1930s and settled in South America, wanted him to go into the clothing business. Kreutzberger arrived in Manhattan and found a cheap hotel room with a radio -- except there was something strange about it. "It had a glass in the center," Kreutzberger told an adoring audience Wednesday night (March 5) at the Museum of Television and Radio's William S. Paley Festival. "And when you turned the knob you were able to see as well as listen. I said right then, 'My father is wrong.' " Kreutzberger knew at that moment that he wanted a career in television, and he doggedly pursued one when he returned to Chile. The rest, as they say, is history: For more than 40 years, Kreutzberger has been the host of longest-running series in TV history never to air a repeat, "Sabado Gigante."
/>On "Sabado," which airs on Univision in the United States and is beamed to 100 million viewers in more than 40 countries, Kreutzberger is known as Don Francisco. He says he adopted the name in his early days in Chile, when "Sabado Gigante" was the only thing on his station's airwaves on Saturdays -- eight hours, all of it live.
"When I first started, I used my real name, and after a few weeks I was nervous because no one recognized me on the street," Kreutzberger says. "So then I started putting 'Don Francisco' underneath my name, and still no one recognized me. Finally I put 'Don Francisco' over my name, and in a few weeks, that was it." By the early 1970s, Kreutzberger was such a well-known face that the military junta led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet asked him to announce that it had seized power from the government of President Salvador Allende. Kreutzberger, who has avoided politics throughout his career, convinced Pinochet's representatives that it would be inappropriate for a comic figure such as himself to make such a serious announcement. More recently, though, he has welcomed political figures on to "Sabado Gigante." Kreutzberger interviewed both George W. Bush and Al Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign, acting as "a bridge between the audience and the people who want to reach them," he says. "Sabado Gigante" is like nothing on English-language TV. The three-hour program mixes music, comedy, games, audience participation -- they even sometimes sing along with product-placement jingles -- and other elements. Kreutzberger compares it to making soup. "You can add ingredients or take them out as you like, but you always have the same base," he says. After 24 years in Chile -- where Kreutzberger also hosts an annual Jerry Lewis-style telethon that has raised millions of dollars to help disabled children -- "Sabado Gigante" moved to Miami in 1986. And since the show is broadcast all over the Spanish-speaking world, Kreutzberger and the show's producers remain mindful to include elements that reflect the broad nature of Latino culture, abiding by the idea of "separated by distance, united by language." Kreutzberger recalls one of "Sabado Gigante's" early tapings in Miami. The producers were unsure whether the audience, which was still getting used to Don Francisco, would sing along with him when he pitched a product during the show. "Then I saw there was a group of maybe 80 or 100 people in the audience who were all singing along," he says. "I noticed they had little flags by their sides -- they were Chilean flags. They had come to support us on our first taping, and from that, I knew it was going to work."
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