The new edition of Supervivientes has started off strong on Telecinco. The Mediaset reality show par excellence kicked off last Thursday, March 7. A beginning that was marked by the return of Jorge Javier Vázquez to what was his home for almost two decades and by the participation of two former contestants from previous editions, Laura Matamoros and Kiko Jiménez.
With only two weeks of the contest, we can already say that the frenetic pace of the contest and the arid beaches of Honduras have taken their toll on several participants. One of the first victims was Zayra Gutiérrez. Guti’s daughter left the contest last Sunday due to her back problems, which were preventing the development of her contest.
Another of the participants who is on the tightrope and who has threatened to quit on several occasions has been Carmen Borrego. The little daughter of María Teresa Campos is being one of the main protagonists of the edition due to the tug-of-war that she is involved in with the organization of the program by refusing to participate in different tests.
In the midst of all these controversies, Baldomero Toscano, former production director of Mediaset, revealed in a recent interview on Radio Isla Cristina the stratospheric figure that the contest cost to produce. ”In ‘Survivors’ there are many hours of production and programming and it will be around 1,300,000 euros per week. The deployment there and the satellite open for so long costs money,” he said.
Taking into account that the program usually lasts about three months, the total amount of the program would be around 15 million euros. Regarding the celebrity cache, the former manager assured that not all participants earn the same and that on average they usually receive 20,000 euros per week. ”Arantxa del Sol is not the same as Zayra Gutiérrez. There is an escalation depending on how long they last on the island and that decreases as the weeks go by,’ he explained.
In addition, Baldomero Toscano assured that the program workers were going to face three hard months of work due to the number of hours of recording. ”There is a great medical team and each contestant has an editor who follows him and gives him instructions,” he revealed. Regarding the return of Jorge Javier Vázquez, the manager confessed that his break had been a breath of fresh air for his career. ”He has returned with renewed energy and with the brilliance that he has,” he acknowledged.
