TVE 1 was unable to lead the month of June until the last day. And that despite having broadcast the entire first phase and the first four matches of the round of 16 of the European Championship in Germany. With the wild card of football, winning on the last day and by a few tenths of a point against Antena 3 means de facto a defeat against Antena 3, which highlights the problems of the public channel, which started the television season with enthusiasm and overtaking on Telecinco and has closed it mired in a serious crisis and burdened by countless failures.
As we were saying these days, TVE has needed to spend around 40 million euros (just on rights) to get close to the post and get through a month full of Euro 2024 football matches and reach the leadership that had been resisting it for more than 12 years (February 2012). And it has been on the verge of not achieving it because, despite the million-dollar audiences of this tournament, La 1 has been second in June until the last day.
RTVE has had an extra 111 million euros in 2024 to broadcast major events such as the European Championship, which topped the list of most watched events in June, or the Olympics, which start in a few days in Paris. But even major events are not enough to stop the double crisis that the public sector is suffering: that of the share and also the institutional one: due to a polarized Board of Directors with several directors who should have been relieved due to having expired mandates, a president in office with no majorities to hold on to, and the position of Director of General Contents vacant.
Not even the oldest members of the family remember that TVE has gone several months without a director, which has been dragging on since 3 months ago Elena Sánchez dug her own grave in the presidency by managing to relieve her number 2, José Pablo López, very well connected to La Moncloa. López managed to improve La 1’s audiences in his first year at the head of RTVE Contents thanks to projects that were already in place when he arrived, such as The promise, soap opera that had been commissioned by the previous team, or to recover old formats such as the celebrated return of Grand Prix. But in its second stage the share has gone from more to less with great failures.
The Conqueror of the Caribbean disappointed with 8.8% despite having involved an outlay of 5.6 million euros, he Dance as you can of Anne Igartiburu sank to the point of being scheduled in non-competitive schedules, Square It was withdrawn after 8 deliveries with 6.7%, DCorazonwhich costs three times as much as its predecessor, has been cut after hovering around 6%, The best in history closed its journey with a very sad 5% Invictus by Patricia Conde (at 20,000 euros a night just for her) is sinking on Monday nights.
“We are disoriented, without a captain or top-level commanders”
The very serious situation of RTVE is analyzed by the general secretary of USO in the public Corporation. Jose Carlos Lopez Vazquez He explains in conversation with Informalia that the state radio and television are “disoriented, we have no captain or top-level commands after the dismissal of José Pablo López and the resignation of Alfonso Morales, “Secretary General of RTVE”.
At RTVE there is a belief that López’s position is occupied by the one who was his number 2, the veteran Ana Maria Bordas, who has taken over the reins of La 1 despite not having the authority to do so officially (since she has not been appointed as the director of general content of the company officially, but unofficially). There is not even a statement. “She is like a ghost boss,” say sources from the network.
“After the arrival to the presidency of Jose Manuel Perez Turner We had a pyramidal organic structure and he decided to make it transversal, creating departments that were in charge of information or content on television, radio and interactive,” says López Vázquez. The fall of Jose Pablo Lopezwho was the person in charge of RNE Content, has caused another power vacuum that has been filled by appointing Ignacio Elguero as the person in charge of the radio stations in the house after the workers of the same complained about the lack of governance in the middle of the autumn schedule design period.
“Elguero, like Bordas, had been dealing with radio for some time without having specific skills to do so. This fact is unprecedented and has caused us to be dragging along a very serious situation of paralysis for some time,” says the head of USO at RTVE. López Vázquez believes that La 1 has been living off of one-off events for some time (the Benidorm Fest, Eurovision or Europa), which is why the audience of the first channel lives off “peak audiences” instead of having consolidated a regular share. This is the case of this Eurocup or the Olympic Games. But at what cost?
An annual expenditure of around 1.2 billion euros
It is true that, as RTVE lacks advertising, he points out, audiences should not be such a priority. But the annual expenditure of around 1.2 billion euros should mean that La 1 would obtain a more competitive share. Neither the ability of the new head of Telediarios Josep Vilar to avoid bending them to the interests of the Government, the competitive audiences of La 1’s mornings or the consolidation of the evenings Here the land o The hunter minimally dispel the collection of clouds that darken RTVE, unable even to appoint a replacement Jaime Cantizano despite a month and a half having passed since that April 16th Informalia will announce the scoop that she was leaving TVE to move to the afternoons on Onda Cero in place of Julia Otero.
In addition to the scandalous expenses of RTVE, the cronyism when hiring production companies related to La Moncloa or the fall in audiences of La 1, there is the serious crisis that the local fiction of the house is suffering in its prime time after the retirement of Tell me how it happened and the immediate end of Four stars, which is evident in that the third season of Hit is set to premiere in the middle of summer after being kept in a drawer for two years. This fact does not prevent the president of RTVE from boasting last week after three months in office. “This time has helped me to better understand the Corporation. “I have tried to work to convey confidence, tranquility and to work to maintain RTVE’s reputation, above all by giving autonomy and confidence to RTVE professionals, one of our greatest assets,” he said in his appearance before the Joint Committee for monitoring the Corporation that exists in Congress and the Senate.
Cascajosa, considered in TVE basically, the transmission belt of the orders from Moncloa to the directors and programme managers, has at least managed to pacify RNE after the Appointment of Ignacio Elguero, Director of Education, Cultural and International Diversity at RTVE, as coordinator and the new person in charge of coordinating a working group to develop proposals for the future strategy of RNE, which will be presented to the Board of Directors in the autumn. “The management of Radio Exterior de España and Radio Clásica already depended on Ignacio Elguero, so now the non-news content of RNE will be under a senior management, which will work in coordination with the RNE News Department, which reports to the Senior Management of News Content, and the RNE Media and Operations Department, which reports to the Senior Management of Production and Media,” says RTVE.
A few weeks ago hundreds of RNE workers, sunk in the EGM this Tuesday, They signed a letter of protest in which they expressed their “tiredness and disheartened” at the damage “that has been caused by the time we have been without a director.” “Public radio does not have a long-term project, nor a management figure that defends its brand and its possibilities both within RTVE itself and in an increasingly competitive audiovisual panorama. We ask for a long-term project, respect for the careers of the professionals who have consolidated the good reputation of the house, careful and sustained programming, which can grow with the support of a management that makes our work visible not only in the RTVE Corporation, but in the media panorama,” they said. That is why they shared “publicly these needs and concerns because we want the Casa de la Radio to continue being the radio house of all citizens, we want a future, not just history.”
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