Telecinco He has been in a delicate situation for some time now. Not so long ago she was the undisputed queen of Spanish television, but those years are behind her and now she seems to be in a constant state of desperation to recover all her lost audience. This has affected the chain at all levels, but today we are going to focus on a very specific case, that of ‘La que se avecina’.
The series created by Alberto Caballero, Laura Caballero and Daniel Deorador It was for many years one of the great emblems of Telecinco. Mediaset even allowed itself on several occasions the luxury of using the series as a throwing weapon against star content from other channels, which caused more than one anger among its followers.
The deal that changed everything
All of that changed forever when an agreement was announced in May 2020 for season 12 of ‘La que se avecina’ to premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime Video first. It was an extension of the agreement with Mediaset started some time ago and in its own way it seemed like a bet without too much risk. After all, it had been announced some time ago that it would be the final season and that there was a spin-off in development.
The truth is that the future of the series was not too clear, so two different endings were shot for season 12 to use one or the other depending on what your future would be. Without leaving anything clear what the decision had been, the last episodes of the season premiered on Amazon Prime Video in early January 2021.
Then we had to wait until the summer of that year to hear news again, and at first it was not good at all: Telecinco began promoting the premiere of “the end of the one that is coming“, causing hysteria in some followers of the series.
One of the keys to why everything initially pointed to the disappearance of ‘La que se avecina’ is that it was not possible to reach an agreement to renew the contract with the set where the series was recorded. That led to the sets being destroyed and made things quite complicated. However, barely a few days passed from the alarming announcement by Telecinco until Alberto Caballero announced his renewal for a season 13 with a change of building.
By then, Telecinco had already noticed a negative effect of the agreement with Amazon, since the first batch of 8 episodes of season 12 had been the least watched of the series until then with an average audience of 1.58 million viewers on average and an average share of 13.7%. Mediaset was also somewhat to blame for delaying its premiere until using it to try to damage the audience for ‘Mask Singer’ on Antena 3. It didn’t go well.
With the series already renewed, Telecinco was postponing the premiere of the remaining 8 episodes of season 12 to the point that its renewal for two more installments was announced -its future is assured until 15- before they could be seen in open air the remaining episodes. Finally, its launch on Mediaset started on March 7, 2022 and its audiences were even worse: 1.54 million viewers on average and a drop in the average share to 11.4%.
There it could be argued that the audiences of open-air series have been in free fall for some time, but In the case of Mediaset we have an example for which it is convenient to at least relativize this data: the premiere of ‘Entrevías’ was one of the few joys of Telecinco last year and its first two seasons marked data significantly higher than those of ‘La que se avecina’: 1.73 million viewers on average and an average share of 15.9%.
Then it is true that ‘Entrevías’ also triumphed on Netflix (where the second season has not yet arrived, yes), but on Telecinco they were so clear that they have a winning card there that they ended up unexpectedly renewing it for a season 3 and shortly after They also announced the launch of a fourth installment. Open series are still important; the problem is finding one that is successful enough.
The impact on ‘La que se avecina’
Going back to ‘La que se avecina’, one of the big changes that came with season 13 is that its seasons have fewer chapters. Until now, no season of the series had dropped below 12 episodes and now it’s down to 8 episodes. And it has not been something specific, since seasons 14 and 15 are also expected to have that number of chapters.
At the time it was announced that the agreement between Amazon and Telcinco gave ‘La que se avecina’ a minimum five-month exclusivity on Prime Video, but ahead of season 13 they surprised us with a move that seemed designed to revive audiences for the series on Telecinco: Amazon premiered the first three episodes of season 13 on November 18 and Telecinco held a special preview of the first chapter on November 21.
This surprise did not have the expected result, since the episode played audiences with 1.34 million viewers and a share of 12.9%. Weak data in itself, but even worse if we take into account that the series had been achieving its best open season data for years with the first episode. For example, season 11 started with 3.18 million viewers and a share of 22.6%, season 12 with 1.87 million and a share of 15.9% and the second best data for that season came with the ninth (and also first of the second batch of chapters): 1.7 million and 15.5& share.
I imagine that the agreement they reached with Amazon must have brought a good economic profit to Mediaset, but it has become clear that It has been at the cost of wearing down the audiences of the open series to the point that ‘La que se avecina’ no longer stands out too much during its premiere on Telecinco. It is true that later it has a successful second life on FDF and other channels, but there remains the question of whether the same thing would not continue to happen without having to release new chapters -a separate issue is that surely Amazon is delighted with the agreement-. That ‘There is no one who lives here’ is not doing badly either and almost 17 years have passed since the premiere of its finale.
In Espinof: