Blender judicially notified Tomás Rebord to appear as host of the program formerly known as There Is Something There. He said that they went, along with a clerk, and stated that there were no cameras, no sound, or personnel. What was going to be a show of strength by the company ended up being, in fact, proof that it had fired the only people capable of keeping the channel standing.
The conflict between Blender and Tomás Rebord began last weekend, when Augusto Marini’s channel, also owner of Carajo, fired almost 20 employees who were demanding salary increases. It escalated with a twist rarely seen in disputes between media companies and their hosts. The company chose the judicial route: it formally notified Rebord to come forward to do the program formerly known as There is something there today. The move had all the logic of a classic corporate move: if the driver does not show up, he breaches the contract. If presented, the channel regains control of the screen.
What they did not contemplate is that Rebord would send his team along with a notary.
According to what the driver himself published on his social networks, a notary appeared at the studio to leave a reliable record of what she found. What he found was in the document letter he sent to the company: there were no cameras, there was no sound, there were no personnel. The studio was empty. «These are the problems that usually appear when you fire the entire staff overnight,» Rebord wrote, with an irony that did not need much elaboration. «You basically can’t do the program.»
But Rebord didn’t stop there. In the same post he clarified that, despite being in what he himself defined as his «top-secret-vacation period, expressly agreed since March,» he had no problem going on air that night at 9 p.m. remotely, as they had agreed for special occasions. With a punchline that mixes denunciation with sarcasm: he announced that the special program was going to be about the province of Misiones, its productive scheme and its financing system. The same province where Augusto Marini, the businessman who bought Blender and carried out the layoffs that unleashed this entire crisis, is from.
The sequence of the last few days draws a pattern that is difficult to ignore. Blender fired twenty workers for demanding compliance with already agreed salary agreements. The host Fiorella Sargenti stopped her live program to denounce him. The screen went black. Rebord, from abroad, called the canal authorities all day and no one answered. And when the company tried to recover the initiative through judicial means, the result was a study without equipment and a letter from a notary certifying the void.
How much longer can Blender endure operating with this logic? The question is not rhetorical. In a few days, the channel lost its technical team, part of its hosts and, above all, the narrative. Marini, who is moving between million-dollar contracts with the national State and the expansion towards the City Canal, now has a problem that cannot be resolved with a judicial summons: the conflict is already public, it is documented and has a driver willing to go with a notary to prove it.
To understand who Marini is, what links he has with the La Plata judiciary and how he came to control this media ecosystem, The full note is at Vivelaplata.com.ar.
