• Changes: The fall of Xabier Fortes after the pulse of Rosa María Mateo

Enric Hernández, year I. The head of Information and News of RTVE, under the command of the sole provisional administrator Rosa María Mateo, is finalizing the design for the next season, the first in which he can show off his unpublished powers, as head from two of the main areas of the corporation. The attempt to reinforce the Catalan presence on the public network and the overturn given to the entire morning grill threaten to hide the familiar faces of the current programming. Whole winners are Mònica López, Lluís Guilera, Gemma Nierga, Arsenio Cañada or Iolanda Mármol, the latter incorporated from El Periódico . As EL MUNDO has learned, Xavier Sardà also enters the campus desired by Hernández.

For now, this journalist has already changed regional newscasts, sports hosts and more than one correspondent; When he signed for the public last September, the grid was already outlined, but for the next season he wants reforms and make the decisions to achieve them, often supported by Pep Vilar , one of his trusted men within TVE and who served as a link with Mateo to enter the corporation.

Igartiburu's new role

Despite the technical complexity of television, in this medium it is customary to refer to the need to have faces , calls to generate empathy or interest among viewers; because the current faces of the public network may lose visibility to the point of being unrecognizable 1: Xabier Fortes has been relegated to 24 Hours, María Casado already uses a leave of absence to promote a production company by Antonio Banderas, and Anne Igartiburu, a reference From the social chronicle with Corazón , he will have to adapt his work to the plan that Hernández has on the table: a space of several hours that occupies the entire morning strip, such as The Ana Rosa program on Telecinco or Public Mirror on Antena 3; a container block that would be made from Prado del Rey, which would be set with a subsequent contest and which has been tearing down the different morning formats of La 1 in recent weeks.

Mònica López, to date specialized in meteorological information, will present such an ambitious project, for which Hernández has even resorted to her first signing from outside TVE. Iolanda Mármol , from El Periódico and already trained as a public socialist, will be the one who coordinates all the political information in the morning, as this newspaper has learned. Ana Rodríguez, from the production company Tesseo, will co-direct with López this new format to the liking of Hernández

Overdue terms like Lorenzo Milá's

There are also changes in the correspondents: the former presenter of the news broadcasts Lorenzo Milá leaves the Plaza de Roma , like José Ramón Patterson the one in Brussels and Miguel Ángel Idígoras the one in London. The correspondent contracts last five years plus one of extension, according to the internal regulations consulted by this newspaper and as corroborated by RTVE, so that the surprise is relative, since the functions of these reporters would have already expired (especially in the case of Idígoras, as he arrived in the United Kingdom in January 2013).

Arsenio Cañada , who this year had already become the coordinator of all the sports information on RTVE, since this week also presents the news of that area in the nightly edition of the News, replacing Sergio Sauca.

The territorial disconnections of the news programs are also redone. Hernández wants the regional teams to prioritize the channel 24 hours; On the contrary, the traditional regional disconnection at 2:00 p.m. in La 1 will be reduced to just 12 minutes, a reduction in visibility that will be offset by more information starting at 4:00 p.m.

Many public for Catalonia

The project is in that asymmetric sense. Different sources consulted by this newspaper point out the push that Hernández intends to give to information in Catalan, something that was already included in Mateo's forecasts, all this with the aim of opening a gap for non-independence public information on TVE in a territory dominated comfortably. on TV3 .

That purpose goes through the reaffirmation of the Sant Cugat del Vallès center and the production of around six hours a day of programming in Catalan, through La 2. It does not seem to matter that TVE may end up competing, not with TV3, but with itself. same, because that programming for La 2 would coincide with the morning project in La 1 for all of Spain.

Specifically, the former director of El Periódico wants Gemma Nierga , ex de la Ser and current collaborator of Ràdio 4 de RNE, to also participate in the Catalan television disconnection from La 2, but he would need someone else to reinforce the strip. As this newspaper has been able to know, that is one of the options that were considered for María Casado once the end of the morning was communicated to her . Casado, today under Banderas, was not convinced by that alternative, nor was it worth it to Marc Sala , who has had to leave La noche en 24 because Fortes will stop there once the breakfasts are over .

This duplicity also wants to be put into practice with the debate that the Catalan Lluís Guilera would lead from Catalonia to all of Spain. There would be another debate, this one also in the Catalan language, focused on the public of that community, and the driver you want to count on is Xavier Sardà .

A plan based on a game and on budgets that do not exist

Drop down

At the beginning of 2019, the sole provisional administrator of RTVE, Rosa María Mateo, already warned of her intention to double the hours of broadcasting in Catalan and to increase the disconnections that the public chain was carrying out in Catalonia, a goal that should be achieved in the present year. Mateo announced exactly an increase of the current 20.5 hours to double in the course of the first year, and up to 80 hours in the second, significantly increasing, progressively, own production in Catalan as well as dubbing in all spaces, news, magazines, debates, documentaries and films, and fundamentally in La 2. Just for this chain Hernández's plan is concentrated on the same line.

In the opinion of the provisional administrator, who in less than a month celebrates two years at the helm of RTVE without the existence of a board of directors to vote on its measures, the chain must become "the television of all Catalans, a medium established in this society, which will speak even more in its language, in Catalan, and which will give voice to each and every one of its citizens ".

However, this theoretical project should be financed through a fixed line of general budgets, budgets that by 2020 have not even been presented. The cost of that investment in Catalonia would exceed 15 million a year and perhaps reach 18 million, so current economic circumstances do not invite these injections. In any case, RTVE has continued forward, even in spite of the clear obstacle that means that at the beginning of the new season only 50% of a squad is present, which has yet to recover after the state of alarm.

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