José Pablo López, Director of General Content at RTVE, closes the year with cheers thanks to the timid increase in audience (6 tenths) that La 1 has garnered, the third free-to-air option with a 9.7% share. The issue is how much money has been spent and on what. Because, let's not forget that José Pablo shoots with the king's gunpowder; That is to say, he does not exactly work on a private television station with private capital. Of the hundreds of millions of public money that TVE has, a part goes to pure and simple gossip and on many occasions to pay celebrities and celebrities, options that private television stations give us. But TVE also feeds the pockets of production companies close to power.
The main public channel has made the most of some discoveries, the serial The Promise (which was commissioned by López's predecessor team) or the return of the Grand Prix. But the great success that has driven La 1 has been the terrible crisis suffered by Telecinco, which has sunk almost 2 points to 10.4%. Both signals are still far from Antena 3, the comfortable leader with 13.3%.
'Infinite' budget
Atresmedia has to throw coal at Antena 3, La Sexta, Onda Cero or Atresplayer with 'barely' 800 million euros of annual spending while RTVE has exceeded 1,000 million in 2023 and could be around 1,200 in 2024.
The public Corporation, with a personnel expense of 500 million euros and a debt above 600, saw that the Government raised its public allocation by more than 10% for 2023 and has now promised it more than 100 million extra for cover the European Championship in Germany and the Paris Olympics next year.
The Treasury says that “it completely shares the great importance of the broadcast of the Olympic Games, configuring itself as a public communication service, relevant and fundamental, to meet the general interest that results from this sporting event of high magnitude.”
“I highlight our commitment to its financing through the item included in the 2024 budget included in the approved General State Budget Law for 2023,” they point out from the department commanded by the brand new super minister. María Jesús Montero. The Treasury will disburse an extra 105 million to “be able to offer maximum coverage” of an event that “is considered of general interest to society.”
The darkest chapter for López is his purchasing policy, since the production companies linked to Prisa have seen their orders multiply under his management. It is the case of LaCoproductora, owner of the publisher of El País and Cadena SER, and head of the nostalgic TV days, which cost 423,000 euros per delivery and has been renovated. The salary of Julia Otero, the driver of the invention, who pocketed 25,000 euros for each delivery.
It will also continue in 2024 The promise, produced by the Spanish company Bambú. The (very expensive) success of La 1 is owned by Prisa's second shareholder, Vivendi. With contracts exceeding 8 million euros, each episode of the serial is close to 70,000 euros plus VAT.
Another shareholder of Prisa is Andrés Varela Entrecanales, owner of a small production company (The Pool), which is responsible for the documentary series about Pedro Sánchez, that cannot find a purchasing platform, and in charge of the format Let's get along, which was withdrawn in spring after a delivery that did not reach 5% and returned in summer, perhaps to justify the more than 4 million euros disbursed.
The USO union cried out to the sky with the format: “We want to know who is responsible for not having known how to properly value the contents of the program, and for not realizing that both its format and its content did not adjust to the demands of the audience for prime time. By the way, we want to know if the person or people who gave the approval issued any prior report after viewing two pilot programs.”
“It is time for reports, figures and data, we want to know the penalty clauses for breach of the contract with the production company The Pool. We want to know if the contract has been paid in full, and if there are penalty clauses and for what amount,” they added.
USO regretted that “since José Pablo López became the Content Directorate, more than 250,000,000 euros have been allocated to failed external productions that do not meet the objectives established in the contracts, but that continue to be paid without sanctions.”
Most of these programs are programs from private production companies.
Workers' Commissions, for their part, denounced that “never, as is happening now, has TVE failed so repeatedly in its commitment to the highest-cost programs on the grid.” And he protested because “dozens of millions of euros are allocated to failed programs, to programs without an audience and without content of social relevance. Most of these programs are programs from private production companies.production companies that impose the themes, production companies that impose the guests”.
José Pablo López was the legal manager of La Sexta when the channel was launched with capital controlled by Jaume Roures and content directed by José Miguel Contreras. And the mark of these last two has been seen in recent times on TVE. Another intimate of Contreras is Daniel Écija, former partners from the Globomedia era, producer of Four stars, whose chapter amounts to more than 110,000 euros plus VAT. Good Mod produces this daily serial that airs at the beginning of prime time on La 1.
Decent data is being achieved Four stars but very discreetly harvested El Conquistador from The Mediapro Studios, until a few weeks ago directed by Roures. This giant invoiced more than 5.6 million for El Conquistadorfailed state adaptation of a regional contest that in Euskadi achieved triple the audience for a third of the cost.
Generous are also the contracts that Shine pockets, which by 2024 will invoice for each delivery of MasterChef Celebrity neither more nor less than 691,666 euros plus VAT compared to the 592,800 euros that each broadcast of this last edition cost.
Musical competitions also put a dent in citizens' pockets: the unsuccessful Cover Night had a cost of 7.8 million euros plus VAT and the second installment of Incredible Duos more than 6 'kilos'. Behind this second format is the Ganga Group, which has billed 760,000 euros for each of the latest installments of Cuéntame how it happened.
Looking ahead to 2024, José Pablo López maintains a television model based on content that private companies already give us but without costing us money. Heart, gossip, reality shows, magazines or soap operas. Anne Igartiburu will present dancing with the stars after running out of Chimes again. The Basque will have to share from the third week of January the presentation of the gossip program Corazón TVE with Jordi González, whose failure with La Plaza has not prevented it from now being replaced with hammer blows in the reset of the historic social chronicle space, just as Informalia advanced. And let's not forget Terelu or Rocío Carrasco making buns on Bake Off: can we really spend public money paying these characters?