The Prisa production company breaks a record of contracts on RTVE with Julia Otero, Arturo Valls and Jiménez Losantos

The Prisa Group is experiencing low times in economic terms after suffering losses of 33 million euros in 2023, which is 151% more than in the previous year. The editor of Cadena SER and El País has improved its operations in recent years, but the green shoots are not in sight due to the suffocating debt (which caused interest payments of 86.6 million).

The multimedia chaired by Joseph Oughourlian owes 832 million, which is a drama for a company that ‘barely’ brings in 947 ‘kilos’, but at least has seen its turnover improve by 11% thanks, among other things, to the integration of LaCoproductora . This company founded in 2018 by Jose Miguel Contrerascreator of GECA, former director of Globomedia, former CEO of La Sexta and current number 3 of Prisa Media (after having become Director of Content), passed into the hands of Prisa in 2022.

The acquisition marked the return to television of the company that sold Cuatro to Mediaset or Digital+ to Telefónica. The intention, they said, was to integrate it “into the Prisa Media Video structure (directed by Fran Llorente) to develop tasks of format creation, marketing and production of audiovisual products”.

LaCoproducera has practically become a factory with a client on which more than 80% of its billing depends: RTVE, controlled by a Government that has Prisa as its main media support.

23 million euros and those that await him

LaCoproductora invoiced RTVE 11 million euros between 2018 and 2022 thanks to programs such as Things are clear of Jesús Cintora (which had a cost of 54,000 euros for each episode), the failed morning magazine Couldn’t be better which drove Ion Aramendi, or the historical outreach space The flux capacitor.

Since La Coproducera was integrated into Prisa two years ago, the factory has invoiced another 11 million to the public Corporation. Half of them come from TV dayswhich had a cost in 2023 of 420,000 euros for each episode (of which 25,000 went directly to the pocket of its presenter, Julia Otero) in exchange for an 8% share in prime time on La 1.

Another space that the factory sells to RTVE is The flux capacitorcommanded by Raquel Martos on Thursday nights on La 2. This program costs around one million euros per season and in the last campaign it achieved a 2.6% share (which placed it 2 tenths below the average for chain).

More than 10 million in 2024?

The average investment by RTVE in LaCoproductora spaces under the control of Prisa has been 5.5 million euros in the last 2 years, but public sources explain to Informalia that this course has signs of duplicating itself. It should be remembered that La 2 broadcasts the fourth season of The flux capacitorwhich guarantees 1 million euros of income for Prisa, and the production company has the second season of TV dayswhich in the first had a total cost for RTVE of 5,582,161.91 euros plus VAT.

This year LaCoproductora also has two extra projects for RTVE: the musical That’s My Jam, bounced from Movistar Plus+. Sources close to the platform acknowledge that they expected “greater impact” from this adaptation of a famous show by the American showman Jimmy Fallon. The musical testing space led by Arturo Valls is co-produced by the giant Universal and by the Valencian showman himself through Pólvora Films (a regular partner of LaCoproductora, with which he participated in failed cinematographic adventures such as Brown Camera: the movieor television like the sitcom Two years and one daywhich Atresplayer broadcast).

Another assignment for LaCoproducera is Scoopa docuseries about relevant Spanish journalists. Federico Jimenez Losantosa historical enemy of Prisa, has presented himself to be one of those honored by the program he will host Lara Siscarwho of course does not pay his guests.

Names linked to Prisa will also be interviewed (Pepa Bueno, Miguel Ángel Aguilar, Alfredo Relaño, Rosa Montero o Manuel Jabois), the historical Raúl del Pozointimates of José Miguel Contreras such as Jesus Maraña (editorial director of producer-owned digital, InfoLibre) and a heterogeneous group of journalists (the TVE correspondent, Rosa Maria Calafthe former director of The Basque Journal José Gabriel Mujikapersecuted for many years by ETA, or the photojournalist Gervasio Sanchez).

Favoritism

Workers’ Commissions already denounced three years ago that the PSOE had turned LaCoproductora “into one of the companies that benefited the most from the outsourcing of content, many millions of euros in contracts.” Everything seems insufficient to cover the sinkhole of Prisa, which says it has exceeded in 2023 “the objectives, both in the media business and in education, with figures that have registered growth in income, ebitda (profit before interest and taxes plus amortizations), margins and cash generation”. Of the debt, not even me.