• TV What is behind the latest "failures" of RTVE? Millions in programs that do not reach even 8% of audience

Bad news for Toñi Moreno: his program on RTVE, Plan de tarde, closes, four months after its premiere. This has been decided by the public entity after failing to overcome audience data that have been falling since its premiere and that for the Public Corporation made it impossible to continue maintaining it. As this newspaper has been able to confirm, RTVE communicated it to the producer, Tesseo, this Monday at noon.

Although RTVE's contract with Tesseo (Lazos de sangre), the producer in charge of Plan de tarde, was 13 programs for a total amount of 1,957,711 euros, the interim president, Elena Sánchez insisted that the program go ahead. Thus, of 13 deliveries that were agreed, RTVE has issued 15. However, the bad audience data that on average have not exceeded 7%, well below the screen share of the chain, have led RTVE to definitively take the decision to cancel it.

A hard blow for Toñi Moreno after having left Mediaset and having opted for his return to the public entity after several years trying his luck in Telecinco. "It's a gift," said the presenter at the presentation of the new program last January.

Toñi Moreno thus returned to RTVE with Plan de tarde, a live magazine on Sunday afternoons in La 1 with the aim of entertaining and accompanying and, at the same time, facing the leading magazine of the weekends, Emma García's program on Telecinco, Fiesta. The intention of Plan de tarde was to create a space to approach the social chronicle and comment on the latest news of our celebrities, with specialized journalists and interviews with the protagonists.

It started well, with a 9.4% share of the screen, but, as the programs went by, the audience index was falling until the achievement of the program was unsustainable.

The unexpected decision that, according to La Vanguardia, has caught the team and the producer of Plan de tarde by surprise, since they expected the program to last until the beginning of the summer season, has been taken after a bleeding fall in audiences that last Sunday hit bottom by marking a 5.4% share.

In addition, it is even more surprising when a few weeks ago Elena Sánchez, after being asked in the Joint Commission of Congress about the future of Toñi Moreno's program, asked for "patience" to try to overcome the low audience ratings that were not achieved or increased despite the news of recent weeks such as, for example, the surrogacy of Ana Obregón, among others.

"The change of programming, offering instead of a film a new magazine, entails the need for time to make itself known, consolidate and retain viewers, even more so when it is weekly," said the interim president of RTVE, which confirmed that the Public Corporation was working "to improve the performance of the program by adjusting the pace, The story, the staging, the type of interviewees and tertulianos, the realization, the transitions... All with the aim of improving audience data."

In this way Plan de tarde joins a long list of programs that have been canceled by RTVE this season. From the contest All against 1, through Let's get along well, the program of Ana Morgade that was canceled after a single broadcast, having made "less audience than teletext" in the words of the presenter herself.

The programs of this season -started in January- have not given much less the joys or audiences that were signed. Also in Congress, a deputy of the PP was the one who reproached Elena Sánchez for the expenditure that had been made in programs that were not giving the expected results or in accordance with the cost of them. At that time, the Afternoon Plan was already indicated, which had then lost 400,000 spectators; Días de la tele, Julia Otero's program, 540,000; All against 1, cancelled a week earlier, 440,000.

Elena Sánchez then recognized those "failures", described them as "failed bets" and included among them programs that have cost the public corporation a lot of money. Probably the most famous is that of Let's get along well, the program presented by Ana Morgade for which RTVE paid more than 3.5 million for 10 deliveries of the show, produced by The Pool, the producer of Andrés Varela Entrecanales, advisor of the publishing group of El País, in charge, together with Secuoya, of the docuseries about Pedro Sánchez and the Moncloa. It only had one broadcast. The show was canceled within hours of its debut due to its catastrophic ratings.

"I wish we had a crystal ball that would allow us to know how content will work and always get it right with what audiences want," said Elena Sánchez at the time.

According to the 'popular' deputy, "RTVE has a budget of 1,193.9 million euros", of which, "in just one year it has spent 200 in the purchase of external programs that have obtained a ridiculous share of 7.8%".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more