Ximo Rovira is one of the most famous television presenters in the Autonomous Community of Valencia. It gained its greatest popularity thanks to the controversial gossip show Tómbola, which it initially only presented between 1997 and 2004 on the public channel Canal 9 in Valencia. The space was a huge hit with audiences and its formula was later copied by private television channels, but has also been criticized on several occasions and has become the paradigm of what is known as trash TV in Spain.
The governing council of the Valencian Corporació de Mitjans de Comunicació, which includes À Punt Television, which was born in 2016 after Channel 9 closed in 2013, last week rejected by a five-four vote that Ximo Rovira, 61, will present the new season of the competition Atrapa’m si pots (Catch me if you can). The Acting President of the Governing Council, Mar Iglesias, explains the reasons and points to some interpretations: “There has never been a veto, nor has the great professionalism of Ximo Rovira been questioned, but that’s what we want to spare the Valencian audiovisual memory connected to trash TV and Channel 9’s past. We asked for new faces, faces that don’t remind us of the old Channel 9, that have a different air, that point to the future. And it was understood that his image damaged this new image of the chain,” he told this newspaper on Thursday. Yesterday, Wednesday, the Government Council authorized comedian Óscar Tramoyeres to moderate the space produced by Mediapro, which is also broadcast by other regional channels.
“It’s not the image that’s intended, there’s a reputation behind it and we have a strategic direction for the brand,” points out the journalist and professor at the University of Alicante. And Rovira, pointing out what his partner was at Ràdio 9, is a presenter with a lot more connotations than, for example, Màxim Huerta, who remains on the net and also previously worked at Channel 9.
The black of this necklace was decreed by Alberto Fabra, successor to Francisco Camps, José Luis Olivas and Eduardo Zaplana as President of the Generalitat, all of the PP. He made the decision, as the Supreme Court ruled null and void the proposed ERE, to slash a workforce of nearly 1,200 workers at a chain embroiled in multiple scandals of information manipulation and corruption, with €1,200 million in debt spiraling out of control.
image and audience
The choice of Ximo Rovira for Atrapa’m si pots came from the competition’s producer replacing Carolina Ferre and had the approval of À Punt’s management, headed by Alfred Costa, and the content and programming departments. “In this case, the image of the network outweighs the increase in reach. And the governing council has the authority to decide these things as our law states, we do that every week,” says Iglesias. He adds that the panel is made up of “professionals from the world of communication, not politicians” elected by the Valencian courts following the law establishing the new media society, passed in 2015 with the arrival of the left in the government of approved the Generalitat formed by PSPV-PSOE and Compromís, later joined by Unides Podem.
Rovira describes the Council’s decision as “arbitrary”, which he considers “worrying”, as well as the fact that the interpretation of Valencian society has assumed what “audiovisual memory” is. “The raffle ended 18 years ago and I’ve been working and paying all my bills for 38 years,” says the journalist, who feels “great sadness” that he hasn’t returned home as a moderator. “What is the professional criterion that has been met when an experienced production company like Mediapro, the management of A Punt and their departments support my choice and when the council itself also says that I am a great professional?” asks the journalist who now he hosts a show on Levante TV. “These are prejudices, not a professional decision,” he says.
The journalist assures that he does not have any debts to pay for his work as a presenter on Tombola, which was also broadcast on other Spanish channels. “It was a show that worked very well and brought in a lot of money for the station, which shouldn’t have happened on public television but on private television. But those were different times, with a different idea of television. We competed with the programs of [Xavier] Sardá, by Lina Morgan, and we won”. “But that was all 18 years ago. In short, what I feel is a great sadness,” he says.
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