Not so long ago Telecinco was the absolute queen of television. The strategy was simple: base eighty percent of the programming on the same reality show (‘Big Brother’, ‘Survivors’, ‘The Island of Temptations’ or whatever it touches) or on the famous three-quarters from other . ‘Save me’ was a master of feedback and they knew how to create events out of thin air more enormous, with a list of main and secondary characters that make you laugh at Marvel.
Soap operas were no longer necessary, because they happened day by day before us, 24 hours live. But it seems that in Mediaset they believed that the television cycles were going to last a lifetimeand when ‘Sálvame’ has been reduced to a few memes on Twitter and his latest reality shows have failed to capture anyone’s attention, further widening the gap with Antena 3, the reaction has been… pretend nothing is happening and pray that the trend of your audience magically changes again.
Without an audience, without direct, with emotion
A few months ago, Telecinco announced that the new lifeboat to hug was going to be called ‘Nightmare in paradise’, a version of ‘The Farm of the FamoS.OS’ and ‘Acorralados’, a format they haven’t used for a decade. But this time it would have something new that gave hope to fans of reality shows broadcast outside our country: the program this time would be pre-recorded and the public would have nothing to do in nominations or expulsions. Let me explain.
In Spain we have become accustomed to contestants -normally famous Mediaset- have as their only strategy that of shouting a lot and getting into fights when they know that they are targeted to “give videos” and, in this way, be saved by the public. However, removing the public and the direct from the equation can only bring positive things: if the contestants vote and eliminate each other, the strategies will be born, the stabs by the sword, the alliances. An idiotic program can discover a mastermind behind it at the same moment that only they themselves depend on their destiny and find that neither tears nor fights will help.
Think of the most successful ‘Big Brother’-style reality shows in the United States: ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’. Nobody comes to these contests saying that they do not have a strategy or that they want to live the experiencebecause he’s the first to walk out the door: A ‘Survivor’ is going to invent the best way to get ahead by betraying whoever it takes along the way, and that’s why it’s so fun and exciting. You never know what is going to happen. Compare it to a Spanish reality show: people in their underpants fighting each other over some macaroni and then excusing themselves that “feelings are magnified.” That’s why Telecinco’s idea of renewing its reality shows, even keeping the famous ones, was such a good idea. But of course. The canguele entered them.
Telecinco, nervous
Telecinco does not have much of a loyal audience left. It does, of course, but audiences are in direct decline and perhaps not even the new edition of ‘The Island of Temptations’ is going to solve the ballot for them, just as ‘Survivors’ did not. The linear television audience now prefers another type of entertainment, more centered on the game show and less on B-series gossip, but the chain does not finish realizing. Given the failure in the ratings of ‘Rocío: tell the truth to stay alive’, all the alarms have sounded in the house.
If the classic formats don’t work for us, the sequels of the docuseries don’t either, and it seems that what we do is no longer so popular, what is the next step to take with the only reality show that promised to take a small step towards a new ecosystem? Exact: turn it into exactly the same as the others, those that do not raise the public. At the last minute and without waiting to see the audience data, Mediaset decided that ‘Nightmare in paradise’ had live galasthus forgetting what made him special.
In addition to the catastrophe at the format level, will also increase the duration of the program: if on Tuesday it was scheduled to end at 0.45, today it has been announced that there will be no final until 1.45, to help increase the share in exchange for the sleep of a few unwary. One disaster after another in a succession of ideas poorly thought out and worse executed that they are not going to give the result that Telecinco expects: there is no desire to see ‘Nightmare in paradise’ and it seems that they are going to double their efforts to shove it down the throat of the few who are still unconditional.
cycle change
In the reality show presentation, from Mediaset they said they had noticed the trends and that, indeed, the live reality show had its days numbered. Netflix programs and other linear ones such as ‘The Conqueror of the End of the World’ or Temptations themselves have changed the way we see reality shows in Spain: immediacy is highly overrated and seems more like an anchor from the past (those unbearable four-hour galas) than a reality.
Nevertheless, the chain that was once the leader has decided to give the machine one more turn, to see if this time it does work and they are back in the limelight, in an incomprehensible strategy. Surely, on Vasile’s office there are now proposals to make ‘Peking Express’, ‘Survivor’ (not ‘Survivors’), ‘The amazing race’ and even a version of ‘Big Brother’ without direct or public voting, but like an old man shouting at the cloud, From the direction of Telecinco they have insisted on betting everything on tradition.
Years ago, Telecinco seemed like the genie in the lamp: every thing he did became a success, without exception. But once their three wishes are spent, it is clear that they need a change of scenery, new faces and a young team that brings novelties to a grill saturated with programs of celebrities doing things in a house. for now, and Before the diatribe of renewing or dying, Telecinco has been ordering a good coffin.