A hit TV show rises from the ashes of Spain's crisis
Reuters
Every Sunday
evening up to 4.3 million people in Spain tune into a quirky but hard-hitting
news show that has become an unlikely television success as crisis-plagued
Spaniards try to figure out how their country got into the mess it is in.
On
"Salvados", which means "Saved" in English, journalist
Jordi Evole, 38, asks experts and ordinary people disarmingly simple questions
to explain the costly bailout of Spain's banks or the looming hole in the
pension system.
The program
- with a style similar to the documentaries of U.S. activist filmmaker Michael
Moore - has grabbed an audience share as high as 20 percent. It is the
most-viewed Spanish television show on Sundays and as high as any other news
show on any channel during the week.
Evole's
informal approach - he wears a sweater with elbow patches - and willingness to
take on tough topics have resonated in a country where a quarter of the
workforce is jobless, bankruptcies are at a record high, banks have been bailed out, and the
economy has been shrinking or
stagnant for five years.
The crash -
and drastic state budget cuts - followed a long economic boom in which
Spaniards got used to get-rich-quick property investments and massive state
spending on airports, highways, culture and arts, sports and stadiums.
"You
know when a cartoon character runs into a wall, a big bump appears on his head
and stars spin around him. Well, we're at that point in Spain, saying 'what the
heck happened to us?'" Evole told Reuters about the inspiration for
Salvados.
The
Barcelona-based show has been on the air for five years, but its ratings took
off last year as word-of-mouth spread.
Beyond the
millions that watch the show on Sunday night, many more follow Salvados on the
web and on social media. Evole has 911,000 Twitter followers who make sure the
show is Spain's top "trending" topic on Twitter every Sunday night.
Luis
Fernandez, 48, who worked in public housing for 24 years and lost his job a
month and a half ago, is a typical fan. He feels Salvados both reflects his predicament
and opens his eyes on important issues.
"The
situation I'm in now was unthinkable to me just five years ago. It's a
tragedy," Fernandez said. "No one gives you information about what's
really going on in Greece and Portugal, the truth is people are
scared," he said.
Many
Spaniards fear Spain, which is wrestling with a high public deficit but has so
far avoided a full international bailout, could follow Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus
into deeper problems.
"In
these times of tension, people need to know how things really work," said
Javier Ganuza, 57, who has a business that repairs and sells electronics. He began
watching the show to keep up with his children and friends who were always
discussing it.
Spain is a
relatively young democracy and the crisis has made people start to question all
of the institutions that have brought it stability since the end of fascist
rule in the 1970s: approval ratings have plunged for political parties, local
and national government and even the once beloved royal family.
"Spain
is going through a time when citizens are really questioning things. We are
part of those people. We do the program to know what is going on and understand
it. We ask really basic questions because we don't understand a lot of what's
going on," Evole said.
NOT A HIT
WITH THE GOVERNMENT
Evole said
one of his main goals is for Spain to hang on to its treasured social services,
which are being scaled back with budget cuts.
The leftward
slant of Salvados - which has criticized the government's electric power,
education and other policies - does not make it popular with the centre-right
government, which has faced a wave of demonstrations against unpopular
cost-cutting measures.
"He
asks false questions, he's always got the advantage," Education and
Culture Minister Jose Ignacio Wert told Reuters of Evole. The host has
acknowledged that he edits interviews to make his point.
Wert, an
accomplished parliamentary debater, said he was sorely tempted to test wits
with Evole on the show, which he says can be original and funny.
"Some
foolish people around me in the education department were really for me going
on the show but my son, who is more sensible, told me not even to think about
it" said Wert.
Overall advertising spending in
Spain continues to fall - it now stands at half of what it was in 2008 when the
crisis began - but Salvados's popularity has brought rising revenues.
That gives
the show a budget for a 30-person team and for travel to Germany, Iceland
and elsewhere to show how other countries have dealt with banking and pension
crises.
The show is
a major hit for La Sexta, a channel that belongs to Atresmedia, which in turn
is controlled by privately held Grupo Planeta. La Sexta has an average 6
percent audience share, which triples when Salvados is on.
"He
puts on this naive look and tells very dramatic, very complex things, very
simply," said Ricardo Vaca, president of Barlovento Comunicaciones a media
consulting firm that produces audience share numbers for Spanish television.
"He's
become a household name. These are issues people want to know about," Vaca
said.