For the third time in its 65-year history, RTVE will have a president elected with broad parliamentary support. Congress plans to vote today on the candidacy of the journalist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, José Manuel Pérez Tornero. It needs two-thirds of the votes, a guaranteed majority after the agreement between PSOE and PP reached a month ago. Pérez Tornero will take over from Rosa María Mateo, the sole provisional administrator since the summer of 2018 after the failure of the parties to renew the board of directors.
Before it, RTVE has enormous challenges: from how to refloat the audience and stop the abuse in the outsourcing of content to promoting the urgent digital transformation. A major challenge is how to maximize revenue to modernize the corporation. The shuffled formulas go through the limited return of advertising, the expansion of sponsorships or that platforms such as Netflix or Amazon contribute to financially sustain public television. And it is urgent to update the Framework Mandate and sign a contract-program – expired four years ago – that details the scope of the public service and its financing.
Template. After the 2007 labor hack, RTVE’s workforce has been reduced to just over 6,400 workers. But there has been no generational change. That record of employment regulation led to a strange paradox: many employees who took advantage of the ERE were replaced by older ones. As a result of that fiasco, and of the bolt to the call for new positions, the average age of workers is around 55 years, the interim pool does not stop growing and there is a lack of professionals with digital profiles.
Audience. TVE is in free fall. In February it signed the worst data in its history and failed to place any title among the 25 most viewed broadcasts. The joint audience of its five channels added that month a squalid 13.9%, compared to the 14.3% that Antena 3 alone and 15.2% of Telecinco. La 1 barely captured 8.6% and other sister channels yielded irrelevant figures: Teledeporte contributed 0.3% to the quota and Canal 24 Horas added 0.9%. The flight of spectators has turned TVE into a European rarity, where large public entities are the most watched in their respective countries.
Informative. The hallmark of public television has been its informative power. They were different times. Even when accusations of manipulation raged, the network kept its leadership intact. TVE has managed to get rid of the slab of partisan sectarianism and the news programs are more plural and rigorous. But they have less audience. Viewers, like society itself, have become polarized and the formulas with a greater ideological load win. The unequaled deployment of correspondents abroad is of little use to TVE. Its power does not translate into audience. The newscasts are behind the newscasts of Antena 3 and Telecinco, which benefit from the carry-over effect of Pass word Y Save me. The modernization of the staging of the newscasts, with the use of augmented reality and a more sophisticated aesthetic, represents a new attempt to attract the lost viewer.
Contents. In the past three years, none of the entertainment shows have stood out. Your main cover letter is MasterChef and talent shows (Masters of sewing Y Prodigies), a family that is about to grow up with The dancer. Fiction has not been successfully renewed either. The best performance signs it Tell me how it happened, a series born 20 years ago. Today’s large containers are barely surviving. The hour of the 1 Y Things clear they face infotainment programs that are well established in private companies. Making your way into this highly competitive ecosystem is an increasingly difficult task.
Financing. Since the disappearance of advertising on TVE more than a decade ago, the accounts have fallen apart. Revenues depend on subsidies and income from private televisions and television stations. telecos, weighed down by the impact of the pandemic and the collapse of advertising. For this year, RTVE has a budget of 1,127 million. 95% of the revenues are subsidies: the compensation for public service (473 million), the radioelectric rate charged by the State to the operators (410) and contributions from the telecos and private televisions (180). In the expenses chapter, the most important item is absorbed by staff salaries (448 million), contents (399, including the 50 that will go to the Tokyo Games), the invoice derived from the emission (120), the operation of the facilities, the Institute and the Orchestra and Choir (63) and the payment of non-deductible VAT (40).
Digitization. Television is no longer a merely linear service. Viewers want to see content where and when they want. RTVE has designed a new platform to make the content offer more accessible and adapt it to the demands of a demanding public. This project seeks to catch the young viewer, especially elusive, and has its sights set on the universalization of mobile consumption and the creation of content for the Internet. Its closest models are Atresplayer (Atresmedia) and Mitele Plus (Mediaset).
Radio. The less high-profile sister struggles not to get off the hook. It ended the year with 1,026,000 daily listeners, according to the General Media Study, behind the three private radio broadcasters with national coverage. RNE has outlined a grid with ambitious cultural and social stakes, ranging from sound fictions The holy innocents The Trafalgar, to the documentary series on the feat of Magallanes-Elcano, through formats dedicated to poetry or podcast on the history of Spain. Other specials feature Luis García Berlanga, Carmen Laforet, Emilia Pardo Bazán and Alfonso X el Sabio. And it has put on the air innovative programs on science and the covid, an informative look and debate around the pandemic that plagues humanity.
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