When Chicho Ibáñez Serrador revived his legendary Un, dos, tres… in 2004, Ramón García was there. He saw firsthand how that comeback became news, generated incredible expectations, triumphed at its premiere… and ended up failing miserably.
A few days after TVE canceled the program due to its very low audience data, Chicho and Ramontxu met at the hairdresser’s. The first, somewhat depressed, was looking for a reason, and in the answer that the Bilbao native gave him one of the television keys of this summer is hidden, almost two decades later: «You have made the One, two, three… yours from all life and people, beyond memories, no longer contributes anything ».
18 years ago the Summer Grand Prix disappeared from our screens. It did not succumb to the guillotine of the audience, it worked very well; nor did he lead any controversy. He just died. “Someone said: we have come this far,” Ramón García recalls on the phone.
The creator of the format, Carlo Boserman, and Ramontxu himself let the idea rest for a couple of years and got to work: «We have been renewing the format in dry dock until this year, but they kept telling us that it was the past, that It was an old program… And it has become the great audiovisual event of 2023”, he sums up, and accuses without hesitation: “Sometimes in the offices they should listen more to the people who have been there for many years. We’ll know something.”
Sometimes in the offices they should listen more to the people who have been there for many years. something we will know
He has not called anyone to rub him a good “I told you so”, but Ramón García is sure that many will have made an “act of constriction”: “Television is full of drawers of great projects that one day a good programmer rescues and Turns out they were a treasure. It already happened with Cuéntame, without going any further ».
With the perspective given by the route of a contest that reaches its grand finale on Monday after six installments, the return of the format has been a real bombshell: an average screen share of 19.9% ??and an average audience that has not dropped from million and a half viewers, after a premiere that scored 26.1% and with which almost six million people connected at some point, data that sounds like television from before the platforms.
For the expert in audience analysis José Manuel Eleta, deputy director of the specialized consultancy Barlovento Comunicación, the “formidable” results of the Grand Prix respond to a first essential factor: “It has retained an audience under 45 years of age, something tremendously complicated in the current landscape. Achieving double digits among young people in prime time is an almost impossible mission for a traditional open-air channel whose most frequent profile is the elderly”.
«We have returned to TVE the audience that it had lost», García agrees, «the key was to hook the children: to leave the mobile on the table to see those guys dressed in blue and yellow hitting each other, because when the children see the TV parents also sit down.
It has retained an audience under 45 years of age, an almost impossible mission for a traditional chain
Recovering “almost extinct” family consumption, in the words of Eleta, has to do with the memory of those summer nights at the end of the 90s, but not only: “The nostalgia factor is not always a guarantee of success on television”, warns the expert, “it is an extra, but it necessarily goes through a very exhaustive and conscientious analysis of the problems, both in terms of changing habits and in technological possibilities, and the measurement of audiences itself.”
«Nostalgia is not enough, when you come back you have to do it very well because if not, you’ll get the hostage», says Ramón García, and refers to that frustrated return of One, two, three…, «not everything from before is worth for now. The Grand Prix has kept some games from before, but we have removed the marching band, the girls in miniskirts and the heifer, and we have integrated different bumpers based on video games, a streamer that narrated the competition and a terribly fast and choppy pace.
Nostalgia is not enough, when you come back you have to do it very well because if not, you’ll hit the hostion
For rhythm, that of the program’s own production. «We have gone to slaughter, it has been so intense that I have enjoyed it like a dwarf. It has been like going back to the beginning”, acknowledges Ramontxu. He does not usually watch the programs he does, but this summer he has sat down for a couple of moments to observe the result and assures that he saw himself from the outside: «Look at this bastard: 61 years old, gray-haired and he is having a great time ».
The very content of the proposal and the undeniable attractiveness of its presenter have also benefited, according to the director of Barlovento, from the “audimetric trade winds” that blow in La 1, and that have returned the public channel to second position in his best July in the last five years. The Grand Prix has benefited from “the theory of the audience’s communicating vessels” and has capitalized part of the many share figures represented by the public that has abandoned Telecinco.
It’s not going to be the last straw for Mediaset, we have to wait until September to draw conclusions
However, Eleta does not consider the battle over: «It is far from being the final straw for Mediaset, we will have to wait until the end of September to see how the audience is rearranged with the restructuring of the grids and the new offers. Telecinco has been the leading offer for adults from 25 to 44 years of age and in the commercial target, and it could rebuild its audience with that qualitative base, not insignificant”.
For now, this Monday the Grand Prix will display its charms for the last time in a grand final of which Ramón García refuses to give spoilers: «Two teams compete that have done very well: some make cookies [Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia] and others, loaves [Alfacar, Granada], so we are going to have a great final with the best games of the year and a very fun start, a kind of ballet ».
And since we’re talking about comebacks, can we expect the return of another Ramontxu classic like ¿Qué apuestamos? Not seem. “It’s a very expensive program, pre-production takes almost a year and on today’s television nobody pays for that anymore,” he says, “the Grand Prix is ??cheaper and it works. That’s why now everyone wants it.”
