It’s time to say goodbye. After 14 uninterrupted years, Sálvame says goodbye today, still maintaining a more than decent audience (over a million viewers and with a share of the screen above the chain’s average) but no longer the absolute leadership it exercised during years. But it is not this drop in audience – logical due to the wear and tear of time and the increase in the television offer – that has precipitated the end but rather Mediaset’s objective to make a change of image at Telecinco and recover the audience leadership lost, now in the hands of Antena 3.
After the departure of Paolo Vasile as CEO of Mediaset and his replacement by Alessandro Salem, the new board, with president Borja Prado at the helm, is now looking to move away from the so-called “teleporqueria”. And Sálvame has become its first victim, even if contradictory measures are also taken along the way, such as bringing back Gran hermano VIP in September, absent from the grid since 2019 due to the controversy over the sexual abuse of Carlota Prado and the subsequent flight of advertisers.
A facelift that began with the recovery of a daily tabletop series from last week (Mía es la venganza), which will continue next Monday with the magazine Así es la vida by Sandra Barneda and which will culminate in the September with Ana Rosa Quintana taking command with TardeAR. Some sources see this relief in a political key: Vázquez has always shown sympathy for the left while Quintana for the right.
Sálvame premiered on April 27, 2009 as a pink talk show and ended up becoming a reality show in which its collaborators (and their lives) would be as much protagonists (or more) than those they were about laundry room Controversies, morbidities and discussions (including leaving the set) were its breeding ground and what led it to be the space with the most complaints for breaching the Code of Self-Regulation of Television and Children’s Content.
Precisely to try to comply with the restrictions due to the protected schedule for children, the program was divided into Limón (4-5 p.m.) and Orange (5-8 p.m.) editions. It also had the Banana, Sandía and Tomate versions (8-9 p.m.) when they were the bet to replace Pasapalabra. The Deluxe version in prime time, which combined its broadcast between Friday and Saturday, also had the support of the audience.
After 14 years on air, the afternoon magazine has reached a 20% share. The one with the highest audience was the one that collected Anabel Pantoja’s reaction to the documentary Cantora: The Poisoned Inheritance, which on November 23, 2019 had 2.9 million viewers and a share of 19.5% , according to a GECA study with data from Kantar Media. The conflicts of the Pantoja family have been among those that the audience has followed the most, alongside the fights between Antonio David Flores and Rocío Carrasco.
Precisely the broadcast of Rocío Carrasco’s documentary, of which Antonio David found out live (with an iconic moment of the program, in which the shot of his face was held for three minutes without anyone speaking on set), is considered by many people the beginning of the end of Sálvame.
As for Deluxe, the most watched edition was in 2011, with Belén Esteban’s polygraph as the star theme (almost 3.5 million viewers and 25.2% share). In fact, ten of the fifteen most followed programs in the Deluxe have been based on Belén Esteban and his controversies: from his cosmetic surgery to his addictions and therapies, through his relationship with his ex-husband Fran Álvarez or his representative Toño Sanchís.
The program, which for better or for worse has made history on Spanish television, will say goodbye today with a special delivery hosted by Adela González, Terelu Campos and María Patiño lasting more than four hours, starting at 4.45 p.m. The common thread will be the night of Sant Joan and will end with a bonfire in which significant objects of the format and scenography will be burned.
With the music of an orchestra, 18 collaborators and other faces who have been part of its history will participate. The Sálvame anthem composed by Alejandro Abad, entitled Borrón y cuenta nueva, will also be premiered. There will, of course, be a notable absence except for surprise: that of Jorge Javier Vázquez, on leave “due to medical prescription”, as confirmed by Mediaset days after a media announced that the liquidation of his contract was being prepared.
As for the future, the production company La Fábrica de la Tele is already preparing new formats for Mediaset, while Vázquez announced on Twitter that he is leaving television and some talk shows, such as Belén Esteban, Kiko Hernández, Lydia Lozano, Kiko Matamoros, Terelu Campos, Víctor Sandoval, María Patiño and Chelo García-Cortés will star on Netflix in a Callejeros viajeros-style format.
