Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011. It covers the Spanish TV ratings war of that moment. Ownership has since changed, with Telecinco part of Mediaset España and La Sexta merged with Antena 3 into Atresmedia, and the show “Sé lo que hicisteis” has ended.
It’s no secret that Antena 3 and Telecinco are locked in a battle to be number one in the ratings, to the point that in their “statistics” both channels claim the figures “pone” (say) that they are the ratings leader, which just shows that any channel can say whatever it likes.
Ever since Telecinco opened a debate by arguing that Antena 3 had manipulated the statistics for its website by counting visits generated by the habbo.es portal as its own, the two channels have been locked in a tug-of-war.
Telecinco launched its attack with a simple advert about its ratings, in this video:
That slogan, “Whether some people like it or not, in the end it says what it says, and what it says is that you choose us” (in Spanish, “pone lo que pone”), didn’t go down well at Antena 3, which responded with this other video:
Watch: Antena 3’s reply
And Antena 3 pushed harder with a much more elaborate advert, even parodying Telecinco with a word we’ll all have to get used to from now on, “PONE” (which can mean both “it says” and “it’s showing”):
Watch: Antena 3’s “PONE” advert
These adverts were followed by others you’ll have seen by now with Antena 3’s famous slogan, which went something like: “Because we don’t always show the same thing…”, “Because we don’t need to shout…”, and so on.
War has been declared, and La Sexta has now joined in. It has received several complaints from Telecinco for parodying its programmes and for running a smear campaign against it. Telecinco has become the target of many channels, and there’s no denying that whenever you tune in, you’ll always find gossip, people shouting and people suing each other.
One thing is clear: Telecinco is the leader in trash TV, because if it were ever confirmed that it leads the ratings, that would show that something isn’t quite right in the minds of TV viewers.
Rumours have started that Telecinco isn’t going through its best moment financially, and that’s why it’s trying to raise cash through lawsuits against other channels. It has now banned any other TV channel from showing its content.
To give just one example, Telecinco banned other channels from broadcasting the most-watched kiss in history, between Casillas and Sara Carbonero, under threat of multimillion-euro penalties. La Sexta takes this with a sense of humour, and its programme Sé lo que hicisteis, hosted by Patricia Conde, never misses a chance to attack and parody Telecinco. In fact, they’ve even called Telecinco live on air to mock the channel in the most brazen way, as you can see in this other video.
Watch: La Sexta’s live call to Telecinco
So, what turns you on? (A last play on the word: in Spanish, “¿qué te pone?”)
Featured image: espensorvik, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
