Esther Mucientes Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, February 15, 2024-13:55

  • Television The high price of second place on TV: tens of millions for an amalgam of premieres

The battle for second place on television that

La 1

and

Telecinc

have been maintaining for months is being so bloody that a few thousandths of an audience is worth gold. So much so that in a surprising fact,

RTVE

has made the decision that starting at 10:00 p.m. - the final results are expected around 11:00 p.m. - the Galician election special will move from

La 1

to

Canal 24 hours

in an attempt for reaching more audiences with a film than with the results and analysis of an election in which everyone has a lot at stake, especially the opposition leader

Alberto Núñez Feijóo

.

As this newspaper has learned and

RTVE

has confirmed , this Sunday starting at 10:00 p.m. the film

Wonder Woman

will be broadcast , so that the

Zorro

series also disappears from the grid of the main public television network , after the poor audience results achieved last week by the series, which RTVE shares with Prime Video, and despite its cost, which amounts to

350,000 euros for each episode

.

Television

Television.

The high price of second place on TV: tens of millions for an amalgamation of premieres

  • Editorial: ESTHER MUCIENTES Madrid

The high price of second place on TV: tens of millions for an amalgamation of premieres

The idea is to gain audience points in a month in which

Telecinco

and

La 1

will have to know if they have won second place in the photo

finish

. La 1 is very tight: with this Wednesday's audience, the main

RTVE channel has an average screen share of 9.9%, while Telecinco has 10.2%

. That is to say,

La 1

needs to get an audience from wherever and considers, according to sources close to the Public Corporation, that "the interest in the Galician elections is not going to provide the audience that is needed."

Thus, Sunday's schedule is as follows: from 7:50 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. special for the Galician elections; from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., News 2 and then, until 12:30 a.m.,

Wonder Woman

. Once the film ends, La 1 will broadcast two episodes of

El Zorro

.

According to RTVE, this programming is subject to changes that depend on current events: "If at 10:00 p.m. the count gives a definitive result, the grid will remain as planned and, therefore, the special would move to 24 hours. However,

If the result is not clear, it would be considered to continue with the information on the Galician elections on La 1.

" That is, only in the event that the count at 10:00 p.m. does not give a clear result but rather an adjusted one, as would be a possible Government of the BNG and PSOE, the programming will be maintained with the film in

prime time

.

In the Galician elections, which were held on

July 12, 2020

and coincided with the Basque elections,

RTVE programmed the special of both elections

- with the title

12J. You decide

- from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., the time at which the results were already known with a large count. If we go to the Galician elections of

September 25, 2016

, RTVE's programming was similar to that of 2020: from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. the special and then the cinema.

However, on this occasion the long-awaited second place in the television ranking has outweighed the electoral news of regional elections, although RTVE insists that "if it is necessary to maintain the special on La 1 due to the need for information, it will be maintained.

It is a open night to current affairs

."

And the battle for second place is not only fought in measuring programming to the millimeter, prioritizing audience data, but it is also fought in cost. Both

Telecinco

and

La 1

are aware of everything that is at stake and, literally, according to television market sources,

"they are going all out

. "

La 1 has closed 2023 with its best annual figure since 2018 (9.7%), six tenths more than in 2022. Telecinco, for its part, has managed to retain second place at the end of 2023, but having the worst year of its story with an average 10.4% screen share. A respite, in a way, after a more than complicated year for Mediaset's main network.

"It's like the game of chairs, every month one pushes the other to be able to sit down

," say sources from the television industry.

La 1 was spent only in the second half of 2023 - from July to December - and more than 34 million euros

on new entertainment formats alone

. The public network premiered 12 new programs from July to December, of which only two can be classified as successful, considering successes

those whose audience was above the network's average

(at the end of 2023, 9.7%). With them and with other classics, such as

MasterChef Junior

, which returned to public television in December for a cost of 3.8 million or the second season of

Incredible Duos

, which cost the coffers of the Public Corporation 6 million for a total of 10 installments,

La 1

has gradually gained enough audience to fight the battle with Telecinco. A battle he doesn't want to lose.

And although next week they have the Copa del Rey matches, which will give them a good audience figure,

the 0.3% that La 1 needs to reach the same percentage of screen share as its main rival

have led to surprising programming changes such as relegating the special regional elections such as the Galician elections to 24 hours.