For some time now the waters have been troubled in Mediaset. Since he 23 months ago Telecinco lost the leadership of the audiences in favor of Antena 3, the audiovisual group has been immersed in a series of changes to try to recover the coveted first place in the ‘ranking’. Not only did the CEO leave Paolo Vasileat the head of the ship now adrift for 23 years, but we have also seen how programs that had been benchmarks of the Telecinco style were closed, such as ‘Save me‘. After a summer setting historic audience lows (in July, with a ‘share’ of 9.3% and in August, 9%), hopes were pinned on this September 2023 with a renewed television schedule. Ana Rosa Quintana moved to the afternoons with ‘TardeAR’, Jorge Javier Vazquez He would stand up to the all-powerful ‘anthill’ of Pablo Motos with his ‘Chinese Tales’, ‘Big Brother VIP’ returned, they had ‘La que se cerca’, the most successful comedy on Spanish television…
The new CEO of Mediaset Spain, Alessandro Salemwas realistic when he recognized, in the presentation of this new stage, that they had a “travel through the desert”. But surely they did not expect that they would start the course with a 9.6% share, the lowest share in September in their history, and third in the ranking (the same position they achieved this summer), surpassed by Antenna 3 (13%) and TVE-1 (10.5%). In fact, Telecinco has been the channel that has fallen the most this September compared to a year ago, losing 2.5 share points. So the drama continues.
Jorge Javier, the first ‘victim’
The first victim of this season has been Jorge Javier Vázquez, whose ‘Chinese stories’ have been struck down just three weeks after their premiere for their discreet audience data (an average of 912,000 viewers and a 7% screen share). But the result of the rest of the bets is not anything to write home about either.
According to Barlovento Comunicación, based on data from Kantar, if we compare the results of the two new morning programs with respect to last year’s figures, the trend is downward. Until this Monday,’The critical look of Ana Terradillos has achieved an average of 12.2% and ‘We’ll see’with Joaquin Prat, 12.7% in its first band and 11.3% in the second. Remarkable figures, but they are far from the 17.2% of ‘The Ana Rosa Program’ on the same dates in 2022.
In the after-dinner hours and in the afternoons‘This is life’presented by Sandra Barneda and César Muñozhas averaged 9% from September 1 to this Monday. ‘Afternoon’, with Ana Rosa Quintana, he has scored 10.3%. On the same dates, in 2022, ‘Sálvame’ surpassed them with its edition ‘Limón’ (11.6%) and ‘Naranja’ (13.8%).
Prime time hasn’t given him much joy either. to Telecinco this September. So what ‘GH VIP’ (with an average of 12.5% in its Thursday galas and 12.4% in the Sunday debate) is performing slightly better than the ‘reality’ that the network had on the air at this same time a year ago, ‘Nightmare in paradise’ (10.6% of the program and 11.3% of the debate).
Another bet of the season, ‘The musical of your life’ in charge of Carlos Sobera, has an average of 9.4% share and 745,000 viewers in its first four programs. AND ‘The one that is coming’ has registered 9.7%, perhaps because the same season has been available on Amazon Prime Video for almost a year?
Not even ‘Entrevías’ leads
Even the premiere this Tuesday of the third season of ‘Entrevías’, its star series, has been left without the leadership of the day by scoring 11.2% of ‘share’ and without being able to surpass the Turkish fiction on Antena 3 ‘Siblings’ (14%). The data for the premiere of the first season (19.7%) and the second (14.6%) are far behind.
“Telecinco has historically clung to a format that worked very well for them, with a very clear way of working and producing, which even guided the rest of the network’s content. Because many Telecinco spaces lived from the same formula or even the same program. And by the time that ends, the novelty has not connected in the same way,” he analyzes Elena Neiracollaborating professor of the Information and Communication Sciences Studies at the UOC.
Differentiate
“What you have to do now is differentiate. They had a very differential program like ‘Sálvame’ and now they are doing a bit of what others do. And no matter how much you want, Ana Rosa is not Oprah [Winfrey, la estrella de la televisión estadounidense]because there are television personalities that work in everything they touch and others don’t,” considers the researcher specialized in new audiovisual distribution models.
“The fundamental problem is that the network has not known how to anticipate the generational change and experiment with other audiences and formats. Although it must be taken into account that loyalties are increasingly difficult to maintain on television,” adds Neira, alluding to the competition of the platforms (according to the latest Barlovento barometer, the number of streaming users has grown to 31 million and the 82.9% of Spaniards have access to paid content).
Related news
Núria García, professor at the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the Autonomous University of Catalonia (UAB), provides other possible reasons for the decline of Telecinco. How to move ‘Pass word’ to Antena 3, in 2020, “a program with a large audience and that hooked the news” and the “exhaustion towards confinement formatswhich some experts even attribute to the pandemic” and that have characterized the network, which always has a ‘reality show’ on the air.
We already know that for projects to settle we have to let them mature, but will Telecinco have more patience or will there be new ‘victims’ after Jorge Javier during this “journey through the desert”?