Wágner Malyan

Vagharshak "Wágner" Malyan (Armenian: Վաղարշակ Մալյան; born June 19, 1942, died February 3rd, 2023) was a Armenian-Brazilian media proprietor, investor, musician, singer-songwriter, impresario, and producer of records, film, and television. He was the presenter of one of the longest-running TV programs in Brazil, O Programa do Sr. Wágner (1978-2023) until his death in 2023, and the founder of the TV network Rede Horizonte, along with it's holding company Grupo Wágner. He was also the founder of the Fundação Wágner Malyan.

He has been listed on the Forbes magazine list of three times, with the magazine saying "the Armenian immigrant has shown his adopted homeland how he can bring smiles on everyone's faces."

Early life
Vagharshak Malyan was born in the 's in the city of  (modern-day, ). His father, Barsegh Malyan, was born in (in today's ), and his mother, Satenik Ambartsumian, was born in. His father's side of the family had escaped from the during the.

In 1950, many members of the Malyan and Ambartsumian families immigrated to, with much of the members of both families settling in the. Both of his parents (Barsegh and Satenik) died in the city of (Satenik in 1985 and Barsegh in 1998) and are buried side by side in the.

Vagharshak attended a boarding school in, where he gained his nickname "Wágner". Wágner, as he had come to been known, had been expelled for injuring a bully and was forced to attend a juvenile delinquents camp near. There, the head instructor told him "You're not one for being educated, you're one for being a businessman."

Music career
In 1968, Wágner started his music career as a drummer for the psychedelic rock band Janela Quebrada (Portuguese for "Broken Window"). Later that year, the band traveled to the and performed in nightclubs in  and  and was signed by. Janela Quebrada recorded a English-language single, "Riding a Lightning Bolt", but it was only released in the United States. In 1970, the band returned to Brazil and broke up, so Wágner chose to become a music promoter/manager.

Throughout the 1970s, he worked as a music producer under his record label Gravações Wágner, founded in 1972 in São Paulo. The label's artists included Diego Meirelles, Nick Alex, Roman & Ilaria, João Paulo Mariano, Raquelinha, Salma Pallache, Paulo Sérgio Saraiva, and Banda do Mario Madruga.

In 1976 and 1977, he used the name Stanley Sámuel for music/lyrics writing credits on a total of seven albums he produced. Since then, he has reused the Stanley Sámuel name for his composing credits on many Rede Horizonte programs.

Creation of Rede Horizonte
In 1978, Wágner acquired the licenses for six new TV stations in Brazil - in the cities of, , , , , and. With them, he created the new TV channel Rede Horizonte. Up until 2004, much of the programs' music was composed by Wágner and his partner Gianni Panariello.

In 1990, Rede Horizonte began airing the Australian soap opera , dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese as Vizinhos Amigáveis, which is one of the network's most popular foreign series. At the same time, Rede Horizonte, through Wágner's company Media Wágner Produções de Televisão, began producing new telenovela series such as Tik-Tak-Tok and O Mergulho.

Personal Life
Wágner was married to lyricist & telenovela writer Adalgisa Goulart de Malyan from 1970 until 2006, when Adalgisa died of pneumonia. He later re-married to the actress Jennifer Bandeira in 2014. Among his children from his marriage to Adalgisa included the dubbing actor Iury Goulart, who has worked in the Brazilian Portuguese dubbing industry since 1993. Wágner was awarded the title in 1996, and in 2014 he was awarded the  by Armenian President  during Serzh's appearance on O Programa do Sr. Wágner.

Wágner was one of Brazil's biggest pinball aficionados, having aggressively promoted pinball for several years. He was friends with fellow Brazilian TV personality & businessman, and the two competed in the Brazilian pinball tournament Confusão em Minas in in 2004, 2005 and 2008

As a television tycoon, Wágner also has been known to show a inventive mind. With the popularity of several shows programmed on Rede Horizonte in the 1990s, he began importing and localizing kiddie rides from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Australia for usage in Brazil. In the early 2000s, Malyan designed a set of kiddie rides and pinball tables built by his company's division Recreações Wágner for Latikuu Leisure Inc., using a variety of recycled parts.

On March 17, 2020 during the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic, announced that Wágner and his wife Jennifer Bandeira were among a few locals that had tested negative for the coronavirus, the two confirmed that they had tested negative later that day.

Wágner passed away peacefully in February 2023 because of natural causes. His inheritance was conceived to his children, and his son Serginho became the new CEO of Grupo Wágner.