The Grand Prix returns. Is the illusion back? Next Monday 24th at 10:35 p.m., the public will have the opportunity to meet again on La 1 with a classic: the game that pits two towns in rural Spain in physical tests full of waterfalls, water and more Waterfalls compete. Televisión Española faces its own challenge: will it be able to attract the young audiences that mainstream television has given up on? Can it translate millennial nostalgia into strong viewership? Will the public be ready to relive the innocence of this television that, as the Grand Prix song promised, was “made for the grandfather and the kid”?
“It’s the Summer Grand Prix and we’re having a good time here,” promises Ramón García in program number 4, which EL PAÍS was present at on Tuesday. After testing The Nursery, in which contestants dressed as giant babies climb ramps to catch bottles while their opponents throw giant candies at them, García interviews what he calls “one of our chubby babies.” “Estela, what’s your mother’s name?” he asks. “Mari,” replies the candidate. “Well, Mari will be watching us, so look into the camera and say ‘My mom spoils me,'” the host suggests. Estela obeys. It’s like a time machine for a TV that assumes that entertainment for all ages means the infantilization (literally and metaphorically) of adults.
“The show started from a very simple logic: everyone is amused when they see someone tripping,” explains Francesco Boserman, creator of the original format, which aired on the public channel until 2005. To counter the arrival of private formats, RTVE resorted to the same weapons as Telecinco: the sense of the Italian show. Boserman triumphed with Hello Raffaella and What do we bet, white formats that combined the spontaneity of the anonymous with the wit of the famous. The executive producer of this new stage is his brother Carlo Boserman, who evokes the spirit of Chaplin or Buster Keaton. “The Grand Prix doesn’t bother anyone and has the simplest humor in the world: the banana peel,” he says. But there was an additional local factor: the village festival.
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Grand Prix grew out of a tradition that began on Italian radio with Campanile Sera and made its way to television in 1965 as Games Without Borders, a European initiative that pitted people from across the continent against each other to promote values such as camaraderie, sportsmanship and self-improvement. It has been said that this adaptation was made by President Charles de Gaulle to strengthen friendship between French and German youth. In 1990 Jaca (Huesca) won. When Televisión Española called Boserman for a summer competition in 1995, the producer brought in Campanile Sera’s ideologue, Popi Perani, and added evidence evoking the spirit of city festivals (the hot potato), amusement parks (the crazy suitcases), etc. the most recognizable element Spanish festivals: the heifer. He clothed the bowlers to secure the falls and lathered the ramps to secure the slides. The equation was irresistible: the Grand Prix averaged 36% viewership in the summer of the 1990s.
In 2005, the game ended with an audience rating of 20%, a rating that today is only matched by events such as the Eurovision Song Contest, the sports final, the final of Tu cara me suena or Ana Rosa Quintana’s interview with President Sánchez . However, this was considered insufficient at the time for a program that required an unprecedented production effort. By then, reality TV and gossip magazines, which were much cheaper to produce, had made audiences even more cynical. In the 2000s the kids had grown up, they had internet and cell phones and they wanted to see other things: the Grand Prix had become obsolete, it had become a relic of another time.
But today that other time, much more naïve and simpler (at least on the surface), is a fetish for the kids who are now in their thirties. The millennial generation is characterized by an almost obsessive love for everything they consumed as a child. When Ibai Llanos explored the possibility of reviving the Grand Prix for his Twitch channel last year, he sparked a passion that convinced Televisión Española to maybe do just that. Children who grew up with Ramón García will, now that they themselves have young children, want to watch TV again as a family.
“People have been calling for the return of the Grand Prix on the networks for years,” says Carlo Boserman. “I tried every year without success until Ibai shifted the subject and showed that there is an audience. “In my entire career I’ve never seen so much media coverage for a return, which gives me hope that people want to come back to Grand Prix, they want to laugh and not think,” he continues. This return is a litmus test because it is the first time that a social media movement has managed to revive a television format in Spain. Will this nostalgia stay in an anecdotal bubble?
The new heifer of the 2023 Grand Prix, behind the scenes. DAVID EXPOSITO
Spanish TV has decided that the only way to save TV of the future is to turn to TV of the past. Allá tú’s return is working, Amazon Prime Video has adapted Yellow Humor, and it’s been announced that Password and Operación Triunfo are returning following the return of Wer wird Millionär. These are formats that do not require any explanation. “We’re trying to develop a program for all viewers, from zero to 99 years old,” says Gabriela Ventura, who started out as an assistant director in 1995 and is now in charge of this new stage. This old, now almost anti-establishment, mentality poses challenges for audiovisual consumption: today, parents watch on platforms while their children watch on tablet or mobile, but perhaps they want to sit back together to watch TV as a family and restore its warmth of their own Parents house. Because what kid wouldn’t like a good punch?
Ibai Llanos was close to becoming part of the new team but his schedule didn’t allow for it. Ramón García repeats himself, of course, and is accompanied by Cristinini (a streamer from the Llanos team who, through comments on the tests, recovers the radio spirit of Campanile Sera), actress Michelle Calvó and comic acrobat Wilbur. “The challenge was to update the image and language while keeping the essence,” says Ventura. What has changed the most is what you don’t see (or yes): the production budget. Carlo Boserman recalls that the pre-production of the classic Grand Prix lasted more than three months. “Before almost everything was direct because the post-production was very complicated. We carried the Betacam tapes. Today, however, post-production is done digitally, making it easier, faster, and less expensive. That’s why today almost all programs are recorded or broadcast live. We had to prepare the pre-production with a lot of effort. “It’s a lot of work,” he admits.
Everything changes so that everything stays the same. According to its director, the biggest change is the participants themselves: today, the culture of sport is making the Spanish youth of the nineties fit. “The big difference is that they used to be there and that’s it, but now they train, now they have their sports centers,” he says. And now they are less ruthless. Back when security was much less stringent than it is today, an intrepid man with the air of a bullfighter ended up in the hospital after being run over by a heifer.
In the new Grand Prix there is no heifer due to the Animal Welfare Act. Instead, a surprisingly muscular stuffed animal made waves on social media, where many people found it disturbingly sexy. For now, the new Grand Prix, which will include unprecedented testing, has managed to spark transmedia and intergenerational conversations, terms that ring very well in market studies. Whether all of this post-ironic babble draws viewers or remains a millennial anecdote and cosmetic nostalgia is another story. We’ll have to wait until next Monday to find out who wins the big final challenge of this Grand Prix.
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