Eight thirty in the afternoon of 1983. Casimiro, a monster full of hair, appears on TVE and says “What do my eyes see? Boys, little ones, tiny people and still up?“. Just like the Telerín family before and Trancas y Barrancas after it, television had a time when it metaphorically closed children’s access to prime time television. From here on, it is not for the youngsters. Go to sleep , you don’t paint anything here anymore. However, for a while now, Spanish linear television has forgotten about good intentions, children and sleepy people, unscrupulously extending prime time to impossible hours. More than usual.
Linking to the next day
On April 23, 2000, Telecinco unknowingly began a stage that would last two decades with the premiere of ‘Big Brother’. What we cannot even conceive today is that The program will start at 9:30 p.m. and end two hours later, at 11:30 p.m., where they programmed ‘Hombres de honor’. It can be argued that they were other programs and another television, but the public had the same need for sleep as now.
No matter how many things there are to tell at a gala, or the actual duration of an episode: if you watch a prime time program, wherever it is, You have to be aware that you won’t see the bed until two in the morning. And a silly Friday is still viable, but who has the guts to swallow four hours of ‘Nightmare in Paradise’? The next day, working asleep to see six celebrities on a farm, no one will believe they have made the best decision.
It is not the fault, in any case, of the viewer, who has declared on a thousand occasions his absolute aversion to these desperate attempts of prolonging a supposed success until ungodly hours. In the past, after the important program, the most hooligan programs began at midnight: ‘Tonight we cross the Mississippi’, ‘Crónicas marcianas’, ‘Buenafuente’… Now they don’t make any sense because the important program has also eaten up its hours in an unprecedented television cannibalism.
television torture
In a time when linear television struggle not to disappear from the collective imagination in the face of streaming, Twitch, social networks and video games, it is surprising that his castling is in the greater proliferation of extremely long commercial breaks and in extending anything beyond what is humanly enjoyable. In the 90s, very long shows made up for it with tremendous spectacularity. ‘What do we bet?’ or ‘The great game of the goose’ committed the mischief of lasting beyond midnight (and as children, it was quite an event), but they compensated with chaos, emotion and impossible tests. Now? Not that much.
‘The island of temptations’, a pre-recorded program that Telecinco knows exactly when it could fit in, insists on leaving its designated schedule for try to fight with a competition that also extends its prime time until the time that once belonged to the Teleshopping. It is the law of minimum effort and maximum use. If in your current reality show all you have to offer for today are some nominations, a test and an expulsion, give life: what in the United States lasts forty minutes (with much more to tell), here it is extended up to six times more.
Years ago, prime time started right after the news, helping it end earlier. Since the days of ‘El informal’, all the channels want to have their program prior to prime time… although, of course, no one has tried to repeat the anarchic barbarity that was that. Television has lost so much power and creativity that what it is left with is reruns of other programs, light political satire and variety shows that instead of introducing it, replace prime time. Then come the crying, the crying and wondering why people would rather watch three episodes of a good series and go to sleep than a very long program in which, frankly, not much has happened.
I brush my teeth, I put on my pajamas
Classic television has a lot to learn, and it is better to take note, not of the future that hangs over them in the form of digital competition, but of its own past, when they were still always trying to be original instead of priming the only interesting moment of the night. Yes, okay, endure these two hours of turra, that later there will be a turn (which you already know because we have not stopped showing you the images) that will be impressive.
When was the last time there was a social phenomenon based on a prime time program? I would say that it was just before the pandemic, with the famous “Estefaníiiaaa!” that was repeated through the streets of Spain. Since then, no matter what has been tried: nothing ends up sticking to the wall, and dwindling viewers watch shows as part of a routine from which many, deep down, are wishing to get out. Maybe if you didn’t have to mortgage four crucial hours on a Thursday…
Television has to understand that our leisure time, now, is a gift and receiving it is a privilege. If what you decide to do with that time that we have decided to put in your hands is to fill it with hours and hours of advertisements, keep creativity to a minimum and extend the programs until two in the morning of a weekday, The result will be, surprisingly, a continuous drop in audiences. Normally, conventional television has it very difficult to become relevant again, but in Spain they are not even trying. And that’s what’s saddest of all.