Objective: Revert the bad audience data on public radio. Bet: signings for key stripes in the new season. Among them, the return of Juan Ramón Lucas in the morning, the arrival of Rosa María Molló to the National Night Informative Section after a stage as a defender of the audience on Spanish television and the incorporation of Isabel Gemio at dawn. Several weeks of the restart in September, National Radio of Spain (RNE) greases the changes while part of the template is suspicious of the changes in the programming and express “lack of internal promotion”.
The president of RTVE, José Pablo López, already warned in his parliamentary appearance at the end of April, days after the first wave of the General Media Study (EGM) with the audience data of the Spanish radio panorama, which López said then that the causes of the bad audience of the public radio were due to “the continuous changes of programs and the communicators – as in 2012, He fulminated Juan Ramón Lucas Ya Toni Garrido, who were very followed -, the lack of investment in new technologies, the loss of human resources that were referred to other areas of the corporation, the low visibility of the station and suppression for four years of the figure of a director who marked the course ”.
From the arrival of López to the presidency of RTVE at the end of last year the public radio has a director, Ramón Santamaría, in charge of presenting this Wednesday at the Torrespaña headquarters the new direction that will take national radio from September. Santamaría denies the lack of internal promotion despite external signings. “There are programs, such as history and television series, which are given to the template. And external hiring have become a lifetime on national radio.” During the presentation in Torrespaña, Isabel Gemio has assured before the squad of new voices of National Radio, many of them veteran, that “this house does not practice ageism.” Santamaría believes that “they are settled voices,” and defends the arrival of Silvia Barba from TVE as a new deputy director of Sports: “It gives us visibility and has brought us to someone experienced for sports board: Miguel Ángel Méndez.”
As of September, Juan Ramón Lucas (Madrid, 66 years old) will pilot the morning section between 6 and 12.20, replacing Josep Cuní. David Cantero (Madrid, 64 years old), who was on television in Spanish before passing through Telecinco during the last 15 years, will lead together after the informative section ’14 hours’ to which Sandra Urdín and Carlos Núñez (which replaced Cuní last season in the night section). The informative program ’24 hours’ will advance the broadcast at 7.30 pm until 23.30, with Rosa María Molló (Lleida, 62 years) in front, also from Spanish Television where she has held so far as defender of the audience. Isabel Gemio (Alburquerque, Badajoz, 64 years old) will present ‘The last train’ at dawn and Pepa Fernández (Cervera, Lleida, 60 years) continues with the morning magazine ‘is not an ordinary day’.
The next EGM waves will rule the audience regarding these changes. In the last of July, Spanish with 4,651,000 listeners, followed by the COPE with 3,813,000, wave zero with 2,231,000 and RAC 1 with 1,024,000. In fifth position RNE appeared with 975,000 listeners. At the head of ‘The mornings’ of RNE, Josep Cuní (Tiana, Barcelona, 71 years) has been during the last year. After two seasons on the nights of the public radio, Cuní joined the daily morning strip of maximum radio audience, where he managed to raise the quota of followers in the last four -month period of 2024, he went down in the first wave of this year’s EGM and has finished in the second wave of July with a climb to 734,000 listeners. Cuní assures this newspaper that the intention of not continuing in September has been his and admits to represent “in a way of telling the things that are less and less.”
Two days before Wednesday’s presentation on Torrespaña, a tense assembly was held at the House of Radio, RNE headquarters in Prado del Rey, on the outskirts of Madrid. Convened by the Informative Council, a group of workers knew the various changes in programming. And they showed their unease due to the “lack of internal promotion” and because some spaces that complement the Radio 1 grid have planned their jump to Radio 5, which means for many a risk of loss of brand value and an impoverishment of their cultural and informative offer. In an act on the Assembly to which the country has had access, the complaint is collected that the change of location of programs such as ‘The Critical Eye’, a cultural reference with more than four decades in Antena, “does not guarantee the same coverage, and exposes them to frequent interruptions that distort their content.”
The director of Radio Nacional, Roberto Santamaría, who has chosen to put in the same section of 15 to 16 hours the broadcast of ‘popular classics’ does not share that vision and considers it “an insult towards the radio 5 workers, which together with Classical Radio and Radio 3 are the true public service chains while Radio 1 is a general chain”. Apart from its new daily edition on Radio 5, ‘The critical eye’ will broadcast on weekends on Radio 1, presented by Ángeles Caso.
The public radio workers present in Monday’s assembly admitted to the Informative Council the need for deep transformations, but in turn they expressed their contradiction because the bad audience data is used as a condition for these changes, when last year they were used as a reason to restructure the grill that now is now completely moved. Frustration, disappointment, demobilization and internal uncertainty also manifested during the assembly for other issues such as the lack of internal communication and participation of the teams in the definition of the new project, as well as the indefinition of the functions that the editors will have in the new formats of ‘Magazine’. First of all, the complaint prevails for the resource to professionals from other means “to the detriment of the promotion of internal talent.” It is what a national radio worker synthesizes this newspaper as a “retaining wall against a unable to generate attractiveness to the professionals of the house”. Another worker ratifies the feeling of “uncertainty and prolonged improvisation over time.” And a third adds: “The message that comes to us is that the best radio seems that they only know how to do the external ones or those that come from TV.”
