The Alcántaras were a constant on Spanish television. It was a fictional universe that the audience could cling to but that, after the departure of Carlitos (Ricardo Gómez) and Karina (Elena Rivera) and with the risky Covid plot, it lost what it had always had: the public’s favor. It was striking that, having announced the season ended this Wednesday as the last, the episodes did not become a ratings phenomenon. But, like Carlitos, the spectators returned with the Alcántaras to say goodbye to Cuéntame how it happened.
The episode titled Carlos. The heir gathered 2,031,000 viewers and obtained a 19.5% audience share. It is a figure that pales in comparison to the seven million that it managed to register with the fourth season in 2003 but notable in the current television panorama. It cannot be ignored that, after delaying primetime and with the emergence of streaming, they now compete in a saturated market where DTT channels take a significant part of the pie and platforms such as Netflix have encouraged the public to consume content on demand. .
To understand the extent to which Alcántara led compared to the star content of rival channels, it almost doubled the 1,170,000 viewers (11%) of Cristo y Rey on Antena 3, which was the second option of the night. In the previous slot, yes, the special Cuéntame como fue did not obtain the leadership with 1,539,000 viewers and an 11.1% share when measured against the incombustible El hormiguero by Pablo Motos, which with Arturo Pérez-Reverte as a guest did 2,172,000 spectators and 15.6%.
The key figure to assess this outcome on a numerical level, however, is in its comparison with the recent past of Cuéntame. The premiere of the final season obtained 1,473,000 viewers in its linear broadcast, it had set minimums with the episode focused on Antonio that settled for 1,045,000 viewers and, in the week prior to the outcome, it obtained 1,314,000 viewers. To reach a similar figure, we must go back to January 2021 when it brought together 2,105,000 viewers in front of the television with the second episode of season 21.
Therefore, while it could be argued that the scriptwriters of the Ganga series and the Rtve promotion team did not manage to turn the final section of Cuéntame into the television phenomenon that deserved such a historic title, it can be argued that the audience He reconciled with the Alcántara to say goodbye to them, just as the brothers of the family did after Herminia’s funeral.
Now we only need to know its delayed audience to fully understand the scope of this series that began its broadcasts on September 13, 2001, two days after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, and that said goodbye by covering these events and delving into in a meta-television field for its last scene: with the premiere of a series called Cuéntame that the residents of San Genaro were able to see.
