“I wrote a script in which I wanted to show workers striking, which was totally forbidden,” he said in an interview. “So I had a boss at this factory who demands that all of the women come to work in high heels, because high heels are more elegant. Well, none of the workers want to wear high heels, of course — they work at a factory. So they call for a strike. When I went to Brasília they said, ‘You’re telling people it’s O.K. to strike.’ I said: ‘No. The situation is absurd. It’s a joke, obviously.’ And they said, ‘O.K.’ And that’s how I showed a strike on television.”

In 2013 Globo apologized for supporting the military government, calling it “a mistake.” Not everyone has forgiven. That year, during antigovernment protests, a Globo office in Rio was attacked and burned. In the current political crisis, some have sharply criticized Globo for being aligned with the right-wing elite. But fans have long outnumbered detractors, especially in the countryside, where people were given their first glimpse of a prosperous, vibrant Brazil through Globo and its telenovelas.

Millennials are slightly less devoted to the shows, which is one reason that ratings for the network have declined slightly over the years. But broadband and cable have been slow to spread, so potential rivals, like Netflix, have yet to make real inroads. Last year, Carta Capital, a left-leaning magazine based in Rio, estimated that an astounding 60 percent of all advertising expenditures in Brazil were spent on Globo television channels.

Today, the company is run by three of Roberto Marinho’s sons, each of whom is worth more than $5 billion, according to Forbes. (Their father died in 2003.) They sit atop an organization of eight companies with about 19,000 employees. To sustain telenovela ratings — and fend off scares like that provided by “The Ten Commandments” — the brothers are plowing money back into Globo Studios.