When the world is spectacularly complex, television news can be nothing more than a spectacle. Live madness, a stress of stories, an accumulation of situations in search of a plausible explanation. A damn difficult task, with many hours of work for a short broadcast time. A time that aims to explain – nothing more, nothing less – what the world is like on this precise day. In this tour of the news, the person who moderates the news is the anchor – anchor or anchorwoman – to whom everything that happens around him is connected.
Perhaps that is why the influential TVE correspondent Anna Bosch wrote on Many”. On the other side of the message, Piqueras stated that he was “very happy” because he was the one he wanted to replace.
It's not easy for a presenter to be good. According to Carles Marín, professor of audiovisual journalism at Rey Juan Carlos University, this is achieved through the accumulation of experience, the maintenance of the network and the constant support of a wide range of professionals.
It is a weighty matter. The person who anchors a news program is the credential that gives the show credibility and, in turn, becomes the channel's representative, says Esther Cervera, a doctor of information sciences at San Pablo CEU University. In this sense, Telecinco's signing of Franganillo, who has appeared on public television since 2008, communicates the beginning of a new era, a change that brings freshness to the channel, according to Cervera. The successor to the Asturian journalist will be Marta Carazo, a very similar profile with 25 years of experience at TVE and previously correspondent in Brussels.
The audience is queen
In its early days, Telecinco did not rely on news broadcasts and, not long ago, Paolo Vasile, the former director of Mediaset España (Telecinco and Cuatro), even considered abolishing them. He thought he didn't need her. For many years, Telecinco was the queen of the audience, of pure entertainment – sometimes ridiculous, sometimes cruel – and invented a huge television spider web, a hallmark of the house, in which the programs fed off each other so as not to let go of the viewers. : Piqueras even revealed in his message that Isabel Pantoja's niece is lying naked in the snow. “There's television that people watch and television that people don't watch. There is no such thing as good or bad television,” Vasile said in a 2011 interview.
Carlos Franganillo, last October in Torrespana, Madrid. Olmo Calvo
But times change, and what was so popular stopped there. And it doesn't help to be robbed by Antena 3 – its rival channel -, presenters like María Teresa Campos or Karlos Arguiñano and programs like El Hormiguero, La Voz or Pasapalabra.
The decline in Telecinco's viewership and the loss of Antena 3 – “the sad chain,” said Belén Esteban, Telecinco's star talk show host – led to the departure of Vasile, who had been at the helm of Mediaset España since 1999 (an anthropologist by training ). Roman broadcast his vision of life on television as an Atellan fable, a microcosm of characters shattered by psychodrama and improvisation.
Now on Telecinco, the extreme reality shows with characters hungry for food, revenge, sex or companionship and the accumulation of screams and tears are a thing of the past. Its new CEO, Alessandro Salem, started work on January 1, 2023 and has been sending signals to the public and advertisers since then: he introduced a code of ethics, announced Sálvame – champion of the ratings and at the foot of the gorge for almost 15 years – and clearly relies on information services: in October, Francisco Moreno arrived as director to lead the restructuring, in addition to the super signing of Franganillo, there is the renovation of the set (which had been the same since 2006, when Piqueras arrived, with a photo of the Singapore skyline in the background ) and the daily relaunch of Noticias Cuatro – which has only been broadcast on weekends for three years – is planned for January. The most popular names for their presentation are Diego Losada and Alba Lago.
More information
This interest in information “is good news for Telecinco and also good news for the rest of the television networks,” says Cervera, author of books such as “Las caras de la noticia” (Publisher Léeme, 2014, written by). from a Canal+ documentary series of the same name).
In this new strategy, Borja Prado has fallen by the wayside, being appointed president of Mediaset España in April 2022 and having power in the editorial department of the news, something that Salem did not like since his arrival in Madrid. When asked by this newspaper in May who was in charge, Salem already warned: “It is very clear: I am the CEO of Mediaset España and there is a CEO.” [Massimo Musolino] Who leads the management and operations area?
These movements take place as part of the battle for the audience, a war without shots that fights for the viewer's attention. In the broadcasters' offices, the data is analyzed obsessively and it is said that last November, for example, the share of viewers of the evening news programs of Telecinco (presented by Piqueras) and those of Televisión Española (handed by Franganillo) increased to practically equal levels 10.5%. And the one that has been ahead for more than three years is the news of Antena 3, presented by Vicente Vallés.
When you present, you lead
Andrew Boyd, the legendary BBC presenter, said that a good newsreader must have authority, credibility, clarity, warmth, personality, professionalism, a good voice and good looks. Other qualities have also been added for some time now. “Nowadays they are 360 professionals: they direct, edit, do live shows or sometimes act as special envoys,” explains Marín.
This is also the case with Sandra Golpe, presenter and head of Antena 3's midday news program and audience guide for seven years. “I'll start with an advantage: I have the entire list in my head, I prepared it beforehand and I take responsibility for it. From the position of director/presenter, you logically know what you are talking about. You play together in front of and behind the camera,” explains Golpe.
Sandra Golpe, Antena 3 news presenter.
The direction provides security and sovereignty when leading a news program, says Golpe, and the viewers notice that. Franganillo, like Piqueras before him, was also the director of his own Telediario. In addition, it has a long history in news specials and ventures with different formats: “It goes to the scene, gives the news a voice and gives reporters on the ground a lot of leeway,” says Marín. Franganillo sometimes presented the news from the set, but often he was also outside: at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona in times of COVID, at the Maidán (Independence Square) in Kiev or at the Madrid Congress, where he dared a spectacular sequence recording.
In the obsessive monitoring between networks, the transfer of moderators has now become common currency. And it is common for TVE to be the first source. For example, Piqueras spent a long time on public television and then at Antena 3 before ending up at Telecinco; Vicente Vallés built his career at TVE before moving to Antena 3 and David Cantero was also a leading presenter in Spanish television news programs before moving to Telecinco. For Marta Reyero, who started at TVE Asturias, was a reference in the news of Canal+ and currently hosts the weekend news programs of Cuatro together with Roberto Arce, credibility rests primarily on “her professional career”, the communications group in which he works and personal ethics.”
But do presenters take their audience with them when they switch to another channel? It is not clear, and when it occurs it is due to a combination of causes. “It has to do with many simultaneous effects: the previous programs, the trajectory, the stock itself.” “It is related to the face, the team and the network,” says Marín, author of The Television News (Gedisa, 2017) .
Pilar Cousido, doctor of information sciences and professor of information law at the Complutense University of Madrid, is skeptical about the broadcast effect: “TV viewers have a fairly well-developed routine and I don't think that the figure of the presenter is so relevant . “. Cousido underlines the traditional distrust of Spaniards towards politicians and therefore also towards informants, but assumes that following one or the other is due to a kind of “historical or genetic loyalty”. And when he talks about the news, he points out an undeniable truth: “Television is like a piece of furniture that young people just walk past.”
Live the future
Although things are currently in good shape – almost 29 million people watch conventional television every day, and news programs on general television, all broadcast live, add up to five million viewers – the future is open. Audiences are aging and data shows viewers are being lost year after year. Now, some platforms have recently also tentatively started doing important live shows, such as Operación Triunfo. But the news “is something different: the infrastructure required is very expensive, the competition is very strong and profitability is not forthcoming in the short term,” emphasizes Marín.
With the advent of artificial intelligence and its enormous capacity for manipulation, the work of checking and verifying information when we talk about screens can be found in television news, experts point out. “Television should be an increasing value,” Cervera said. Sandra Golpe is also convinced of this: “In the long term, credibility on the screen comes from those who have been working in the profession for many years, who provide proven information and images, who are honest, entertaining, didactic and close to you.” She explains.
Given the unverifiable chaos of networks and their sea of content, newscasts begin to shine like strange jewels. The audience decides who they believe, and they choose that face and that voice because of “his way of telling what is happening, because of his more or less personal style or simply because he is already like family,” Reyero reflects.
The company continuing to provide television, particularly to those over 65, is no small feat. It is this almost familiar treatment that Reyero points to. No matter what happens, the presenters never fail and with them the world and its problems are unquestionably present in the dining room. As in the film Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975), when the mother of the protagonist Sonny (played by Al Pacino, who kidnaps several customers during a bank robbery while the news broadcasts it live) alerts him: “There's everything here.” Brooklyn has to offer. Three TV channels came.”
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