Ana Obregón causes “repulsion” on TVE: why the Corporation is going to think about whether to recover Qué Apostamos

Nostalgia and memories of times past have been good for Spanish Television, not only by packaged memories from the archive or the Little pieces but because his commitment to Grand Prix of Ramon Garcia It worked very well for him this summer. However, they tell us that the RTVE Public Corporation has decided to cool the return of the What do we bet? that began to be presented 30 years ago by the people from Bilbao and Ana Obregon. The high price, the overbooking of large formats in their prime time and the ‘repulsion’ that, in the words of an internal source of the Corporation, RTVE seems to exhibit towards the ‘surrogate grandmother’ Obregón since she spits out everything she can against Pedro Sanchez They have to do with the delay.

If a year ago TVE used Ana Obregon to structure its Christmas image, both in the Telepassion as on New Year’s Eve (another thing is that Covid left her out of combat on grape day), in this dying 2023, the political significance of the biologist and her controversy after being a mother-grandmother renting another woman’s womb , have divided those who make decisions in the Public Corporation. Anne Igartiburu has not yet recovered from his anger after it was revealed that RTVE was negotiating with Isabel Pantoja, an extreme that was denied by TVE. Many on TVE believe that Ramón García and his cape may be competing on December 31 with the skimpy dress of Cristina Pedroche but about Obregón there is a division of opinion.

Bells aside, the return of the Grand Prix has been one of the biggest television successes of 2023 after closing the season with almost 1.7 million viewers and an extraordinary 19.2% share, which practically doubles the average of La 1 de TVE.

The success of the summer contest presented by Ramón García, now politically updated and without heifer company, invited a nostalgic fever to spread and the request through the press and social networks for the return of another old public contest that shared a production company with Grand Prix, What do we bet?

Hearings

The Content Director of RTVE, José Pablo López, has renewed Grand Prix for next summer, but plans to reject at least in the first instance the offer of the Ganga Group (Cuéntame) to produce another great format this season that could also have been presented by Ramón García, What do we bet?

At the Corporation they remember that the Grand Prix had extraordinary audiences, but these went from more to less after the contest premiered with a superb 26.1% share and fell to 16.3% in the final. This drop suggests that the format could continue to deteriorate in the second edition despite having dropped so sharply in only 7 installments, since on this occasion RTVE did not commission 13 programs as in previous years.

Cost

Another aspect that invites prevention in RTVE is the high cost of What do we bet?, that was going to be higher than that of Grand Prix. Each delivery of the latter had a price of 542.800 euros, which made a volume of almost 4 million euros, and that What do we bet? exceeded the 360,000 euros for each issue in its last national deliveries, a quarter of a century ago.

German format rights Bet that..? on which the Spanish version of the contest created by Francesco Boserman for Europroductions They are today in the hands of the Ganga Group, which in 2024 wants to maintain sales levels to RTVE after the end of its most emblematic format, the series Tell me as a step.

Miguel Ángel Bernardeau and his wife, actress Ana Duato Last year they sold the production company to the listed Squirrel Media, which will try to maintain the income of this company: in 2022 it had a turnover of 22,603,000 euros and obtained a net profit of 124,000 euros.

Jose Pablo Lopez has already delivered good billings to the Ganga Group with Incredible duos, which in its second season has had a cost of around 6 million euros after having paid more than 10 million for the first season. The musical contest where duos made up of singers from different generations compete was presented by Juan y Medio in its premiere season and in the second, which began on October 3, the hosts are Xavi Martínez and Julia Varela.

Overbooking

At RTVE they do not rule out the return of What do we bet? but, according to the sources consulted, they believe that there is a certain overbooking in terms of large formats. On La 1 the successful MasterChef Celebrity by Shine Iberia (Banijay) and also the failed The Conqueror of the Caribbean (Mediapro). For the rest of the season they have pending the twelfth installment of MasterChef, a new batch of MasterChef Junior and another reality show gastronomic with famous people, Bake Off Spain, which already had previous versions on Cuatro and Prime Video.

TVE wants to stay in second position

TVE’s 1 accumulates four consecutive months above Telecinco; three of them, exceeding 10% share, and indicates a year-on-year growth of almost 2 points in the heat of successes such as The promise, become the king of the afternoons despite the tough competition from the magazines.

The success of MasterChef Celebrity; the rise of The time of 1 and the Newscasts; the improvement of La Moderna, Mornings and Now or never in its strip; the acceptable route that is showing Four stars at the beginning of prime time; and the stability of other spaces such as The negotiator o Here the land They have given TVE some peace of mind in terms of audience.

It is true that other issues are also worrying, such as the unexpected failure of the ambitious The Conqueror of the Caribbean; or the erosion of Incredible Duos (which in its last installment fell to a dramatic 6.8% share, which practically makes its renewal impossible). And above all the new composition of the Parliament, the Board of Directors and therefore the direction that RTVE may take after the probable investiture of Pedro Sanchez and the new correlation of forces that will sustain the new Executive.