A major personality in French television, as a journalist, producer and director.
Pierre Sabbagh became a war correspondent in the hope of finding his mother Agnès in World War II. He had visited her in Fresnes Prison and the Prison de la Santé in 1942, a few days before she was deported by the Nazis, sentenced to slave labour in Germany. In 1944, he travelled into Germany behind the advancing American army, but did not find her until he returned to Paris in 1945.
Pierre Sabbagh presented and directed the first television news in the world on 29 June 1949.
His greatest success was the creation, in 1966, of the programme “Au théâtre ce soir” (“Tonight in the Theatre”) following a strike on French television and the success of a Belgian television comedy called “La Bonne planque”, which provoked the appetite of the public for this kind of programme: over 300 plays were produced in the series. To his credit also is the first audiovisual game which reunited France of the 1960s in front of the black-and-white screen: “L’Homme du XXe siècle” (“Man of the 20th Century”), a game of general cultural questions which went on for many years and which finished with the final “Super homme du XXe siècle” (“Superman of the 20th Century”) which brought together all the previous winners of whom the comedian, Robert Manuel, beat a professor of complementary medicine, Georges Rivault.
He was Director-General of the television network France 2 between September 1971 and July 1972.
He Died 30 September 1994.

Link to Wikipedia biography