Of all the battles with which the Spanish can strike each other mercilessly, such as in Goya’s paintingThis week we had a fantastic one in the most unusual scenario in life and death matters. Two television programs face each other in prime time, as if it had never happened before, and people are sharpening their axes because they are very clear about which side of the story is right. Some even use that expression on social networks. Who are you with? As the bad and rude joke goes, the current law applies to those who are indifferent.
The first week of broadcasting of ‘La Revuelta’, David Broncano’s programme on TVE, has been inevitably marked by its first direct duel with ‘El Hormiguero’ presented by Pablo Motos, the undisputed television success of the last decade with 18 years of life on the screen. In some way, both programmes have come out victorious. The audiences of the first programme have been spectacular, better than its creators expected. The Antena 3 programme, which already knew that it was also playing for it, has had its best start to a season ever. It doesn’t matter. It is the television Thunderdome and there are people who think, who wish, that only one can come out alive.
On Twitter, the premiere was viewed with the serenity that characterizes most of its users. “There are two Spains: that of the Revolt or that of the Hormiguero. You choose” (6,000 likes). The people who enjoy La Revuelta are “the summary of the most complete degradation of the human being,” said someone who identifies himself as a “doctor in journalism” (it doesn’t seem that his studies have been of much use to him). “Does anyone doubt that if we were in 1939, Hitler would have gone to have fun at the Hormiguero?” (8,000 likes). Not even the creator of the film Godwin’s law could have foreseen something like this.
There were also those who took it as a joke. “I piss myself on my TL (Twitter’s timeline) celebrating Broncano’s hearings every day at 8 in the morning as if our lives depended on it.”
Who started this madness, which was also so funny? From the very beginning, the Popular Party denounced that it was a political operation hatched in Moncloa with the worst intentions. Pedro Sánchez had put on the disguise of a television programmer and had decided that he needed to recruit a soldier to finish off Pablo Motos. No, he was not thinking of Óscar Puente or Tezanos and his creative surveys, but of a comedian who had been making a comedy programme on Movistar for seven years. One who had never been known for using political content in his scripts.
It was Alberto Núñez Feijóo who brought the matter to Congress with a comment in a debate on foreign policy: “Between the programme that they want to bring to TVE nights plus the earpieces that they have brought to this Parliament, the ELA law was financed and there was money left over.” Isabel Díaz Ayuso said something similar, also using ALS patients. It is a textbook example of demagogy to criticise an expense that you reject by comparing it with another that everyone should support. Not to mention that RTVE’s budget is closed and is only used to finance public radio and television, not the care of patients or the hiring of doctors.
In some media, this theory was fully subscribed to: “Moncloa exerted pressure ‘by land, sea and air’ to sign David Broncano: “This is how the dismissal of Elena Sánchez was planned,” El Mundo headlined in March.
In April, Motos could no longer contain himself and brought up the issue on his show. “The problem is that Moncloa wants to finish off Pablo Motos,” said one of his collaborators indignantly. Perhaps because he had been at the top of the ratings for so long, the presenter made a mistake typical of an insecure rookie. Instead of ignoring a new attempt to dethrone him – let them come, we are waiting for them here – he showed that he was afraid or that he considered it unheard of that someone wanted to take some share points from him.
As politicians know well, sometimes there is nothing better than suffering attacks from the rival you are most interested in. Both the right and Motos’ programme were giving Broncano the best possible publicity long before he set foot on the set. The kind you can’t pay for and which is also free.
The genesis of ‘La Revuelta’ was so traumatic that it decapitated RTVE. Added to previous clashes at the top, it led to the dismissal of the president, Elena Sánchez, and its content director, José Pablo López. TVE really needed a programme like Broncano’s to defend its night-time audiences. And it cannot be said that it went all out, because the budget of the new space was lower than that of the one it replaced.
Once the trenches were organized and the weapons distributed, ‘La Revuelta’ arrived and hostilities began. The first thing was to check the audience figures for the premiere. It is not realistic to expect a programme to start off as a huge success, but on television people do not sleep thinking about how it will start. If you start badly, you probably won’t survive. The previous Monday, TVE had had an average of 9.4% and its star programme of the night, the ‘Grand Prix’, 10.5%. A 9%-10% would have given Broncano a chance to breathe a sigh of relief. A 12%-14% would have been a good figure to start the journey.
Badabing! The average audience was 18.1%. The figures were even better in audience segments where TVE has been in decline for years. 25.9% among the public between 13 and 24 years old and 29.3% among those between 25 and 44. Bringing a programme to a new public that had lost interest in general television is like the El Dorado of the business. Something that many try to achieve, but that is almost never achieved.
“Nobody expected these figures. Not even the craziest of us had aimed so high,” Miguel Campos, the programme’s scriptwriter, said on Wednesday in this newspaper’s podcast. Marta Barandela, editor-in-chief of this newspaper and a regular viewer of ‘La Resistencia’ (the programme that Broncano and his team previously made), pointed to one of the reasons for its success: “The element of chaos and surrealism that surrounds the whole programme and that has a lot to do with Broncano’s humour.”
As a main course, Broncano invited a blind surfer for the interview –two words that the public did not know could go together–, while ‘El Hormiguero’, which had a 23%, featured Victoria Federica, the granddaughter of the former king Juan Carlos who, in the absence of another job, goes through life as an influencer. A revealing contrast. granddaughter He did not offer any great phrases, beyond that This summer he discovered fideuá and that he likes everything about Spain, but he is a ‘celebrity’ who can have a pull among a part of the public. Aitor Francesena, five times world champion in adaptive surfing, turned out to be a whirlwind, as if he had been born to appear on television.
The networks used the tricks of the trade. TVE cut the length of the newscast so that ‘La Revuelta’ would start earlier, a decision that the newsroom will not have liked. Antena 3 eliminated an advertising break in ‘El Hormiguero’, which is a tactic that loses a lot of money and cannot be extended forever. If someone at Telecinco had asked Paolo Vasile to eliminate a block of adverts to boost the audience of a programme, they would have kicked him off to Siberia to give the weather report in shorts.
One of the traits attributed to the British sense of humour is that it admits that you have to know how to laugh at yourself. It is not enough to just make fun of others. That idea is not so deeply rooted in Spain. In Broncano’s programme, that chaos and surrealism was applied from the first day to the team itself and the controversies it had brought with it. They already announced that what they were going to do was “the same shit” as at Movistar.
One of them, Grison, opened his shirt on Monday to Showing a tattoo with Pedro Sánchez’s face“to justify this first month’s salary.” It seemed difficult to get over that moment, but he only had to wait a few seconds. He opened it on the other side and Pablo Motos’ face appeared. “To ensure my job for next year.” The theatre collapsed and Broncano started playing the bass drum. You can’t be more of a hooligan in prime time.
On Wednesday, something unprecedented happened. Broncano beat Motos (19.9%-18.2%). He had also enjoyed the previous day, beating him in the time they spend on screen, and behind him in the average audience by just one tenth. On Thursday, ‘El Hormiguero’ reacted strongly by having a powerful interviewee, the footballer Lamine Yamal. The average of these first four days is 20.5% for Motos and 18.4% for Broncano. ‘La Revuelta’ could not imagine a better premiere in front of a television aircraft carrier. The pirate ship is celebrating. Rum for everyone.
Some have been irritated. The supposed defenders of the free market did not want anyone to compete with Motos, and much less on public television. An ABC columnist despised Broncano’s team, defining it as “rough people acting like fools” who is presented to us as the cream of the nerdy intellectual class.” The TVE Libre Platform, which defends the interests of the PP on the channel, congratulated him for the article and described the program as “showy Chavismo”.
Another columnist stressed the political conspiracy. The program is “a platform” for Sanchismo: “The bias will come; for now what matters is to deactivate the bomb that Every night he broke the official slogans with a devastating shock wave.” It is not known what Motos will think about the definition of his program as a battering ram of the right against the Government.
Interestingly, the analysis of the two programs published in ABC was very favorable towards both. “We are facing a Nadal-Federer, but on television, where both presenters, veterans in their format, face each other in an open-air setting with the necessary professionalism and the key elements to succeed.”
‘El Hormiguero’ is conceived as an entertainment programme for the whole family, but for some reason its creator included a few years ago a political discussion, which is always biased against the Government, and during the pandemic it became an icon of the right for its criticism of Sánchez (until he himself fell ill and changed his discourse a little).
It is impossible to convince politicians, and those who behave in the same way, that television is a source of entertainment above all, and that is how viewers consume it. They firmly believe that it is thanks to it that elections are won. Disdaining its influence, also in politics, is something that only idiots do, but we must not forget that people now have countless ways of finding out what is happening. When a politician blames television for all his problems, it is usually because he does not want to take responsibility for his personal failures.
In 2021, at a time when no one was even close to him in terms of ratings, Motos ended a program with a strange sermon to show his fed up “with political correctness,” which meant that he could not stand the criticism that was raining down on him on social media. “Living resentful is like digging a hole for yourself “which is becoming increasingly difficult to escape,” he said in a way that revealed… his resentment.
As for Broncano, he’ll probably spend this weekend playing the bass drum.
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