Antena 3 has been the leader for more than two years. In November 2021, Telecinco lost a leadership that it maintained for more than a decade thanks to the success of its reality shows and the feedback with which it filled its schedule. Everything was in favor. But unexpected situations such as losing Pasapalabra in favor of Antena 3 after a court resolution or the withdrawal of the versions of Big Brother after the case of sexual harassment of Carlota Prado changed the panorama.
Two years later, Telecinco has not only not regained leadership but has also lost second place, which RTVE's La 1 has held since July. The new board of directors of Mediaset España (Paolo Vasile was replaced by Alessandro Salem as CEO at the end of 2022) hoped that the start of the new season in September would manage to climb positions and the third position would remain a summer anecdote.
To do this, it recovered Big Brother VIP, the jewel in the crown for years, and moved its star presenter, Ana Rosa Quintana, to the network's afternoons with TardeAR while Joaquín Prat stayed in the mornings with Vamos a ver. He also gave Jorge Javier Vázquez an opportunity with Chinese Tales to recover the orphans of Sálvame.
But the season is not working. Chinese stories lasted three weeks. TardeAR is not only not making a splash in the afternoons, but it has not achieved the leadership it could boast in the mornings. Telecinco has lost leadership in the mornings and the results in the afternoons have worsened compared to programs that were in that slot in previous years. And GH VIP, for the first time in its history, has an average audience of less than one million viewers. Furthermore, this drop in viewership has had a knock-on effect that has affected other spaces such as the series La que se cerca or Entrevías, which are far from the figures obtained in previous seasons this year.
In that currently unsuccessful Telecinco battle to regain second place, Mediaset announced more gunpowder last week: it recovers the legendary Martian Chronicles by Xavier Sardà with a compilation of the best moments of the successful format broadcast between 1997 and 2005, and also GH Dúo , with contestants participating as a couple. Among the new features, Celebrity School, a German format in which celebrities return to class and face children from Primary, Secondary and High School.
But without a doubt, the big coup has been the signing, announced this week, of Carlos Franganillo, the until now presenter of the Telediario de la noche on TVE, who will replace Pedro Piqueras in Informativos Telecinco starting in January after his retirement due to own decision.
The signing of Franganillo initially harms TVE much more, which loses a prestigious face, than it can benefit Telecinco since, beyond that aforementioned prestige, Franganillo is not a value that provides an audience. In his five years at the helm of La 1's news program, the results have not improved but rather have decreased slightly: Telediario 2 had a share of 11.5% in September 2018 and now it is 10.3%. It is true that he has achieved second place (Antena 3 Noticias leads), but it is because of the fall of Telecinco, not because he has risen.
The signing of Franganillo leaves RTVE confused, which in recent months had been playing its tricks so that La 1 could snatch that second place from Telecinco with bets that have worked very well, such as the daily series The Promise or the contest The Hunter, accompanied by values insurance such as MasterChef and extraordinary events such as football, Benidorm Fest or Eurovision.
The reality is that Antena 3 is currently playing in an unattainable league while La 1 and Telecinco are fighting for that second position, separated by just a few tenths. One week before the end of November, Antena 3 has a 13% audience share, La 1 10.1% and Telecinco 9.6%. Figures similar to those of recent months since La 1 snatched that second place from Telecinco.
