The last parliamentary appearance of the interim president of RTVE, Elena Sánchez, continued with the usual trend of the last sessions, between reproaches for the informative treatment of sensitive news for the Government and the defense at all costs of the professionalism of the workers of the chain public. However, the head of the corporation took advantage of the occasion to breastfeed the latest TVE audiences, boosted by the leadership of ‘La promesa’ and the improvement of data for programs such as ‘El cazador’ or ‘Aquí la tierra’.
«The 1 is improving in all its bands. We would like to have a greater follow-up and recover the lost ground that existed, but on television nothing is quick and easy, “said Elena Sánchez, who advanced that the main TVE channel will close March with a 9% ‘share’, half a point more than the same month last year.
In her appearance before the Mixed Commission (Congress-Senate) on Parliamentary control of RTVE, held in the Upper House, the president also highlighted the first position of ‘Masterchef’ -audience leader against ‘La isla de las tentaciones’ (Telecinco) with a 13.8% share and more than 1.5 million viewers- and the rise in the morning slot with two bets of the season, ‘Speaking clearly’ and ‘Ahora o nunca’, in addition to the consolidation of the ‘Telediarios ‘ as the second option, only behind ‘Antena 3 Noticias’.
For the next few weeks, it brought forward two new premieres: the fictions ‘Cuatro estrellas’ and ‘Doctor García’s patients’, based on the homonymous novel by the writer Almudena Grandes.
For the opposition, the balance of the first months of Sánchez’s administration is not satisfactory. Citizens deputy Guillermo Díaz charged against the “disproportionate coverage” of the Executive and the PSOE in the news, an extreme that the president categorically denied. «The coverage we do adjusts to criteria of proportionality and representativeness. Time is marked by current affairs, the news that is produced and its protagonists, and it is the information professionals who value it”, he justified.
From the PP, on the other hand, the deputy Sergio Ramos accused public television of “hiding” the news related to Tito Berni -the socialist Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo- and asked Elena Sánchez who had given that order from Moncloa, a fact which the board also rejected, arguing that TVE devoted an average of six hours to the ‘Meditor case’, only on Canal 24 Horas, since the scandal broke out.
The popular ones also criticized the corporation for reporting “only sporadically” on the reductions in sentences for sexually convicted persons due to the entry into force of the “only yes is yes” law. “The information services do not receive instructions from the Government,” he insisted.
surreptitious advertising
On the part of Vox, the deputy Guillermo Mariscal was interested in the “possible scandals” in the TVE Sports area, which affect both the director of the section and presenter of ‘Telediario 2’, Arsenio Cañada, and the head of Teledeporte , Javier Grima, both reported to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor for alleged covert advertising in the retransmissions of the World Cup in Qatar. Sánchez replied that the corporation has already presented allegations to the file opened by the National Market and Competition Commission (CNMC) for this matter.
However, and questioned if he was going to purify responsibilities for this issue that affects the Sports leadership, Sánchez pointed out that public institutions have “a greater demand for transparency and honesty, in addition to the unavoidable legal requirement of all our professional behavior “. . “Sometimes, professionals should step aside to facilitate clarifying investigations of everything that happened and preserve the dignity and credibility of the corporation,” she insinuated, while stressing the prevalence of the presumption of innocence.
All in all, Elena Sánchez advanced the next steps of the Spanish representative Blanca Paloma for the Eurovision Song Contest, which will be held in Liverpool (United Kingdom). She pointed out that RTVE will invest a total of 656,672 euros in coverage of this event. La 1 will turn to a special program, in which it will re-broadcast the two semifinals of the musical contest, in addition to the final on May 13. The singer from Elche will perform at the Sant Jordi Awards, which will be broadcast by TVE, and at the Platino Awards.
The interim president stressed that “more than 10,000 people” have already pre-registered in the different RTVE opposition processes and that the forecast is to reach 30,000 applications for the 1,082 places that are offered. Thus, from the corporation they explain that the simplest tests, with fewer candidacies, would be carried out in the second quarter of this year and the rest, in the third quarter.