Anything can happen in a live program lasting more than three hours. And more if it is issued in the morning. On the set of Hablando claro (La 1) in early December, while Lourdes Maldonado is talking to her collaborators about one of the day’s political issues, her partner Marc Calderó is waiting with a laptop connected. But he receives instructions over the headphones, takes notes and goes to the screen in seconds to narrate a last-minute event.
The midday show is one of the most complex formats on Spanish television, which also currently occupies one of the most complicated places in the grid. Up to four newscasts coincide at this time of day for at least an hour. Although they are very different, they often deal with the same topics. They tell the latest about what is happening in the Constitutional Court or explain in the simplest way what constitutes the electricity bill. The program on the first TVE channel (it can be seen from 11:30 a.m. to 2:50 p.m.) began broadcasting in September and its directors, Azucena Rubiato and Susana Moreno, are aware of the difficulty of getting Al rojo vivo to put on La Sexta, it’s already noon in Telecinco and on everyone’s lips in Cuatro. “We belong to giants, very loyal programs. We started with no pilot program, with an impromptu special on the death of Elizabeth II. We’re still shooting and experimenting,” they recall.
Both agree that lunchtime is one of the most difficult hours to compete for audiences. “The challenge is not only to differentiate yourself from the competition, but also within the programming of La 1,” they say after completing one of their programs. Hablando claro is broadcast shortly after La hora de La 1, a format also devoted to the news of the day. This circumstance defines the genre of the lunchtime magazine. “It’s the most frenetic strip. Everything takes shape during this period: the plenary sessions in Congress, the Council of Ministers, the demonstrations in the streets… the overview often changes,” says Moreno. “The first thing to wake up in the morning are the politicians, so the morning people pick up the issues of the previous day or push those of the day forward. In the afternoon the politicians have already ceased their activities and the evening programs collect the statements and facts of the morning,” he continues.
Marc Calderó during the live broadcast of ‘Hablando claro’ (La 1). INMA FLORES (THE COUNTRY)
The set by Hablando claro is a declaration of intent. It is directed by an open table, so Lourdes Maldonado stands and moves. “Every time there’s a trend towards naturalness, even on the news, it happens that they stand up and show virtual reality content,” says Rubiato. “The title of the program sounds like openness and freedom of expression. The facilitator needs mobility to be part of the discussion and reflection rather than a central speaker glued to a chair.
As announced by Marc Calderó’s earphones, this television format, so popular on the major channels, is not only evolving on set. It is a circus in the best sense of the word with at least three arenas, not counting outside connections. The newsrooms of these programs produce the content and serve as another live connection point with the set. But his heart is in control of the realization. They are spaces where a thundering tangle of parallel conversations with dozens of people giving and taking technical commands marks the ordered chaos that dominates each broadcast. The place is dominated by a swarm of different sized monitors that spit out all sorts of images. It is the signals that arrive live from their mobile devices, the reports that have already been prepared and other visual sources of information, such as the broadcast of the competition programs, which report on the topic that is on their mind in other channels at the moment or when they go public
“We needed presenters who would do more than read self-advice [la pantalla sobre la cámara que les muestra textos ya escritos]. Not everyone gets along so well without it. But Lourdes leads the written press into the mask room. And Marc is stuck on all the schedules from 7am to 8am. When they go live, they are already well documented and they can tell things in a natural and spontaneous way because they know them,” commented their directors, coming from España Directo and Madrid Directo, two evening programs.
Solvency and freshness in cuatro
The character of the moderator is also very important in En boca de todos, with Diego Losada at the helm, on Cuatro from 1:15 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. approximately. Javier Silvestre, its director, appreciates “his freshness and youth, able to tell a really dry subject with a smile while maintaining absolute objectivity, which gives the format a lot of solvency,” he comments. To stand out from the rest, its space relies heavily on graphics, spending up to 15 minutes dealing with the same topic without breaking the rhythm of the program. It combines on-set analysis with recorded reports and live interviews and connections. The continuous change of staff at the debate table takes place with the help of the council member. It happens in seconds. In one of his broadcasts in early December, sports journalist Manu Carreño cedes his place to crime expert Nacho Abad, who uses the few minutes that a broadcast video lasts to have phone calls with his sources and update live information about a In Madrid has itself a crime occurs.
“I’ve been in the written press and on the radio, but television is the hardest part. The viewer is seldom aware of the number of connections through which each of the things that happen in a program happens. It’s a small miracle that everything is progressing,” defends Silvestre. Like the rest of the competition’s executives, he confirms a new trend that has become entrenched in the lunchtime slot: opinion pollsters, often very politically significant, who give so much televised play in other slots, are beginning to give way to specialist journalists, who offer information in a less heated tone.
Sentence from ‘Al rojo vivo’, in La Sexta.James Rajotte
It is also one of the factors that have shaped the development of Al Rojo Vivo, which can be seen on the screen from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., says César González Antón, director of La Sexta Noticias. That of Antonio García Ferreras is the oldest in the strip. And in a way a pioneer, he defends his manager. “When we started doing pure and hard politics at noon, it was like an abomination. We were expected to do events, meteorology, cooking… It was an underrated band. And it affected the morning shows. Now Ana Rosa and Susanna Griso carry more politics than before we arrived,” he comments. “Al rojo vivo contributes to the chain a quantitative and also qualitative audience. Ferreras is an author program that focuses solely on politics, which sets us apart from the rest. It was the first program to understand that it can only be heard, thanks to the strong radio culture of Antonio García Ferreras that he brought from Cadena SER; which can also be seen without volume because we can read its multiple labels; or that can be seen and heard at the same time,” he emphasizes.
On the other hand, Ya es mediodía, the Telecinco program (from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.), is more varied and combines breaking news with social chronicle content. The room arrived in the summer of 2018 and has since provided the channel with good, above-average viewership data for that time slot. But it experienced a revolution months ago when Atresmedia surprisingly signed its visible face, Sonsoles Ónega, and that of its second presenter, Marc Calderó, who went to the strict competition, Hablando claro on La 1. Since then they have taken over the discharge Irene Azcutia in the director’s chair and Joaquín Prat in that of the presenter.
Irene Azcutia directs “It’s noon” on Telecinco.INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)
“We have identified with a public that sees us very close to them. We try to approach the testimonial by transferring the issues to the street and, for example, looking for the reaction of customers at a petrol station to the government’s new package of measures against inflation,” explains the director. “Spain is a country that eats and dines with the TV in the background, which is unthinkable in a country like my mother’s, Denmark,” says Prat during a commercial break for the show. Azcutia agrees that engaging the viewer is a complex moment: “We tell the news to the people, who are mostly coming home at that moment. We act as a quick recap of what happened throughout the day. With Joaquín we won several things. It’s a recognizable face of the chain that people like. He is very experienced live and adapts very well to the variety of our songs. Many of the anonymous people we contact to get them to join the program do so because it’s “Joaquín’s program,” he comments.
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