On a personal level, maximum respect for the years shared. In the professional, maximum competence to lead television afternoons. Ana Rosa Quintana and Sonsoles Ónega were colleagues, as well as friends, for years at Telecinco. But now they have to be rivals. Ónega announced in the summer of 2022 that she had decided to start a new professional stage at Antena 3, which later crystallized in the evening magazine Y Ahora, Sonsoles. And a season later, Quintana, within the restructuring of the grid carried out by the new Mediaset board, was invited to lead the afternoons, replacing Sálvame with TardeAR.
Quintana’s arrival in the afternoons was presumed overwhelming because his morning program had an average of 17% audience share in its last season. However, after six months of direct competition, audience data places Ónega as the winner of this particular duel. And now, Sonsoles (which is broadcast from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.) has obtained an average of 12% share since September and exceeds one million viewers on average, while TardeAR (from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.) has obtained an average of 10.4% and 878,000 spectators. In the two hours that coincide on the air, the difference increases: Ónega scores an average of 11.7% share compared to 10.4% for Quintana.
Another worrying factor for TardeAR is the long shadow of Sálvame. If the objective was to improve the audience figures for Jorge Javier Vázquez’s program, the data does not favor the comparison here either. In that same period of time in the previous season, Sálvame had an average share of 13.5%, more than two points above TardeAR.
What does stand in favor of TardeAR is its upward trend and that it has been closing the gap with Antena 3. This February it has reached its monthly maximum with an 11.1% share and an average of 930,000 viewers in its almost three hours of broadcast. Mediaset defines the program as one of the pillars of the network because more than three million viewers connect every day.
The logical competition of fighting for the audience in the same time slot has also translated into a rivalry that has experienced several episodes, including a back-and-forth of professionals in both directions. The last one a few days ago when it was learned that Joseba Gastesi, who was part of the management team of TardeAR and in his day of The Ana Rosa Program, had decided to sign for Atresmedia as deputy director of And now Sonsoles. Xelo Montesinos, the CEO of the production company Unicorn Content and Quintana’s right hand, continues to be the visible face at the head of TardeAR’s management.
It was not the first transfer from Mediaset to Atresmedia. Already in 2022, when Ónega left, Patricia Lennon-Hunt, the director of Telecinco’s It’s Midday, also decided to make the same journey and became director of And Now, Sonsoles. She worked there until two months ago, when she closed this stage to launch a new entertainment project. Her replacement in directing the program was Javier Silvestre, another regular face of Mediaset who at that time was the director of Code 10 on Cuatro.
Beyond the management positions, there have also been collaborators who were once present at Telecinco and who are now part of the Ónega team, such as Carlos Quílez, Tamara Gorro, Beatriz Cortazar, Cruz Morcillo or Paloma García-Pelayo.
In the opposite direction, Quintana surprised with the signing of Manu Marlasca, specialized in investigative cases and events, a regular face of La Sexta for eleven years. And more recently, Alejandra Prat left Antena 3 where she participated in the program Ónega to sign for Telecinco and Let’s see that she hosts her brother Joaquín de ella.
Sharing a time slot also leads both programs to look at each other and advance on those current issues on which they coincide. The objective is that if a viewer changes the channel they will not find a topic that they have already seen on the other program. Close sources assure that it is not about “stepping on one another” but about “getting ahead” of the competition in order to achieve that leadership.
In this context, Ónega and Quintana have always publicly professed affection and respect for each other, although this has not been the case with any collaborators. The most striking is that of Quintana’s nephew, Kike, who has his own section and who has already spoken disparagingly, on several occasions, towards his Antena 3 opponent, whom he has called a “planetary dwarf.” . For the moment, Ónega seems to have decided not to enter that field.
