The four horsemen of Alessandro Salem to avoid the Apocalypse: Ana Rosa, Jorge Javier, Prat and GH

The collapse of Telecinco alters the roadmap of Alessandro Salem, that he rectifies his intention to launder the chain and will do whatever it takes to save himself from the Apocalypse. The Sicilian is already begging for the early return of Ana Rose, demands ‘more wood’ from GH VIP (piloted by Xelo Montesinos, the CEO of Unicorn Content), reverses the defenestration of Jorge Javier Vázquez, cross your fingers that Joaquín Prat hold you in the mornings, and paralyzes the renewal of News.

The Mediaset audience disaster puts the continuity of the top executive of the audiovisual giant on the ropes. The Mediaset channel has lost two points in the last month compared to August of last year and has marked the worst month in its history. It does not reach 10% in the afternoon or in prime time, where the proposals of the Salem team have crashed resoundingly: It slips me, That’s life, Life without filters or The last night They are premieres that are counted as flops.

The hope for the leadership of Mediaset is that these minimums, which occurred in August (the least important of the year in terms of advertising billing and with less television consumption) are left behind in autumn and the audience recovers. Now, in September, the real war begins. That’s why, Alessandro Salem he plays with Ana Rose in the evenings, javier javier (the prodigal son), big brother vip (with Marta Flich), and Joaquín Prat to defend the morning reign after the abdication of her boss.

The successor of Paul Vasily announced that he was going to wash the image of the friendly screen but the facts show that his grid is basically the same, although changing the pawns: magazines, heart and reality shows (with characters like Laura Bozzo) once again backbone the main channel of the listed company. But, so far, with much less audience.

Cut costs to maintain profits for Italy. This was the star recipe of Paolo Vasile, unable to stop in the throes of his long tenure at the head of Mediaset Spain in his last year of reign (2022) that Telecinco fell 2.6 points to 12.3% share, a figure that the current managers would dream of today, who in August did not reach double digits and have suffered the overtaking from La 1, which is consolidated in second place, leaving Telecinco as the red lantern of the three big channels.

Alessandro Salem, from bad to worse

But that long 12% that retired Paolo seemed little to him Pier Silvio Berlusconi. The son of the late magnate and former prime minister, seeing the audience numbers, precipitated the retirement of Roman Vasile, who had earned him more than three billion euros in just over two decades, and entrusted the reins of Mediaset España to one of his trusted men, Alessandro Salem, who had previous experience at Telecinco. But the Sicilian has sunk even more audience of the friendly chain, which is shipwrecked and touches historical lows and has closed the summer below double digits after the full of failures that they have starred in.

Salem clings to the group commercial target and DTT

Salem wanted to hold on to the annual leadership in the commercial target at the group level and the rise in channels of Energy, Divinity or FDF to compensate for the dismal moment of Telecinco and Cuatro, which do not seem in a position to beat Antena 3 and La Sexta respectively even though put to Daniel Sancho or Rubiales competing in GH VIP or acting as a member of Risto Mejide.

The accounts sing: the operating result of Mediaset España in the first half of 2023 has plummeted more than 15%: from 95.8 million to 81.7. The fall is motivated by the collapse of income, from 415.2 million to 397, mainly due to the fall in advertising.

And it is that Salem is being unable to reformulate Vasile’s ‘analogue’ strategy, which trusted everything to the open and was not able to obtain income from the distribution of content through its own and third-party platforms, or from international sales.

The group does not seem to recognize its drop in audience and assured about the accounts that “the market has not fully stabilized and could be affected by the result of the political elections that have just been held.”

The bill for the collapse of Telecinco

Industry sources point out that Telecinco’s fall from first to third place affects the GRPS (number of hits an ad receives), which hits revenue and sails against the stock market trajectory of Mediaset España, now listed in the Netherlands as MFE, that so far this year more than a 4% valuation has been left.

The red alarm has not yet been turned on for Salem, who is valued internally by some for “his character”, very different from the sullenness of his predecessor. But the remnants of the ‘vasilista’ old guard look at him with suspicion.

“In eight months he has focused on giving a rudder against Paolo Vasile, by betting on Banijay, who has been launching by-products on Telecinco for three months, and on fighting against Borja Prado, who wanted to appropriate the news,” say sources from the group.

Banijay’s full of failures has forced Salem to reverse the defenestration of Jorge Javier Vázquez, to whom he entrusted it access prime time, and to ask for “more wood” from Big Brother VIP, who has signed the world paradigm of trash TV, Laura Bozzo, that is aimed at passing the Code of Ethics of Mediaset Spain for save the part.

Trusted producers, on guard

Salem has changed the policy set by his predecessor in the production of content and Mediaset has gone from drawing on several trusted producers to betting almost everything on Aba Rosa Quintana and Banijay. has removed from Bulldog Survivors for fear that this French giant would take the reality show to Atresmedia and that another autumn without GH would consolidate second place on TVE’s La 1. Curiously, the director of Big Brother Vip is Xelo Montesinos, general director of Unicorn Content, which confirms what we already assumed: the producer of Ana Rosa Quintana mornings, afternoons and weekends with the characters of the reality television format produced by produced by Zeppelin TV (from the Endemol Shine Iberia group, Banijay).

Salem, voices of the group point out, is “making all the major trusted producers uncomfortable: The TV Factory has a low opinion of him because they found out about the cancellation of Save me by the press; Afredo Ereño and Angelo Rocca, from Bulldog TV, clings to Chain Reaction not to disappear; and in Mandarina Productions, of Santi Botello y Pedro Revalderia, They were waiting for more orders.

“Unicorn Content”, they add, “also did not take well to Salem saying in the country that Ana Rosa Quintana I couldn’t do politics in the afternoon.” On the other hand, Supersport has been reinforced with renewed sports blocks on Telecinco and new ones on Cuatro.

These latest bets reinforce the news at Mediaset España, which, however, does not renew Informativos Telecinco or recover Noticias Cuatro, as Salem had contemplated to improve the group’s image.

But this plan has blown up because the start of the renewal of ‘Informativos Telecinco’ on the last election night resulted in audience failure and ridiculous survey results, and because Mediaset España’s priorities after the summer hecatomb are to improve entertainment at cost of trusting ‘vasilista’ communicators, formats and tones.