“Right now, going back is the last thing on my mind, although it may be what I feel like the most tomorrow. I don’t know.” A Twitter thread by Jorge Javier Vázquez resolved this Saturday, albeit halfway, the question that all viewers have been asking since, two weeks ago and without prior notice, Carlos Sobera was the one who presented the Survivors gala instead of him. All the alarms went off: Jorge Javier was “unwell”.
The “disappearance” of the popular Telecinco presenter sparked all kinds of speculation and was quickly linked to the avalanche of information that had been published about a possible termination of his contract with Mediaset, extended after the summer until 2025, news that the corporation denied in successive communiqués: “Jorge Javier Vázquez temporarily leaves due to medical prescription”. This Saturday that “temporary” seemed to acquire more definitive overtones. How did the leader of Sálvame get here?
In fact, sources close to the presenter explained to this medium that all the information published about him and about his future after the announcement of the end of Sálvame “had surpassed” him. The “indisposition” that Carlos Sobera reported from the Survivors gala was indeed that, an “indisposition” suffered by Jorge Javier Vázquez and that made him unable to be at that gala. A week later Mediaset announced the temporary withdrawal. It must be remembered that the presenter suffered a stroke more than three years ago and that, as he revealed to the newspaper in an interview, since then his physical and mental health have been his priority.
To delve into the ultimate causes of a television burnout of this caliber, you have to go back almost eight months. The replacement of Paolo Vasile as CEO of Mediaset and the entry, a month later, of the Italian Alessandro Salem as CEO, although with a new distribution of executive functions in which the president of the group, Borja, gained more weight on a day-to-day basis Prado, started a revolution in the culture of the chain in which Jorge Javier Vázquez’s goodbye seems like the last chapter.
The new year started strong: in mid-February, Mediaset banned 13 of the main characters from its programs from its content. The blacklist included Rocío Carrasco, Fidel Albiac, Antonio David, Rocío Flores, Kiko Rivera, Olga Moreno, Marta Riesco, Gloria Camila, José Fernando, José Ortega Cano, Rosa Benito, Rosario Mohedano and also Bárbara Rey, who had just been provide Risto Mejide with his best audience data in Viajando con Chester.
Images, present or past, of none of these characters could no longer be broadcast, nor could they be named in any group program. Quite a challenge for a chain, Telecinco, which had had them in recent years as absolute protagonists. Mediaset claimed to be looking for “new editorial content” and put an end to the feedback between formats, which the audience had been criticizing for a long time, but also to certain internal wars between producers such as the voracious battle that unleashed the broadcast of the documentary Rocío, tell the truth for stay alive
A few days after the vetoes, the second blow to the bases of entertainment at Telecinco arrived: Mediaset published a new mandatory code of ethics for “employees, collaborators, clients and suppliers” but which implied a name of its own: Save me. As ordered by the document, the more than usual speeches by Jorge Javier Vázquez on politics or ideologies would not happen again, among many other frequent things in Sálvame, such as running away from a direct or attacking other programs on the chain.
“Entertainment programs,” read the code of ethics, “are just that, entertainment, and therefore their presenters and collaborators must refrain from issuing opinions, preferences, or political comments.” It would only be allowed in formats with a specific section on political news -for example, El Programa de Ana Rosa-.
The regulation would be extended at the end of May with specific regulations for reality shows, clearly aimed at avoiding a repetition of a situation like the one that ended with the conviction of José María López, a contestant on GH Revolution in 2017, for a consummated crime of sexual abuse. against Carlota Prado, committed during the participation of both in the reality show, and for which the producer of the program, Zeppelin, would have to indemnify the victim as subsidiary civil liability.
The exclusive of EL MUNDO blew up a quiet Friday afternoon at the beginning of May: Mediaset put an end to Sálvame after 14 years on the air. After several ups and downs in the calendar “due to programming adjustments”, it seems that on June 23 the last program of Telecinco’s flagship will be broadcast since its premiere, in April 2009. Two weeks later, on July 7, its derivative Friday Deluxe will also come to an end.
The thing did not stop there: the format presented by Jorge Javier Vázquez, undisputed king of the evening grill, would give way to a new program presented by the, up to now, morning leader, Ana Rosa Quintana. The dance of names was not accidental. In the center was the remodeling of Mediaset that we have related in the previous chapters, but underneath there was a war of production companies, both owned 33% by the parent company of Telecinco, which leaves numerous corpses along the way.
On one side, Unicorn Content, the company of which Ana Rosa Quintana is president and the one that produces her programs. On the other, La Fábrica de la Tele, responsible for Sálvame but also for Socialité or Everything is a lie. The two production companies have confronted with more or less subtlety two very different styles of making television and the two have several of the most iconic faces of the chain behind them. Unicorn Content was clearly the winner and became the main provider of entertainment programs for Telecinco.
We arrived at the beginning of this week: The Tele Factory will open an Employment Regulation File (ERE). The workers who will form part of the ERE are those linked to Sálvame, Focus and Viernes Deluxe. Precisely, the three programs that in less than a month will disappear from the Mediaset grid.
The Tele Factory communicated the collective dismissal to the works council last Monday, in a letter in which it “sincerely regretted having to make the decision” and thanked its workers for “the high degree of commitment to their work.” “It is true that we expected it and we are ready to assume whatever comes,” sources from the production company assured EL MUNDO, “another thing is how many people it will affect. That will depend on how everything is going to be developed and future projects that they can relocate a good part of the staff”.
And we come to the final chapter, at least so far, of this chronicle of the end of a television era. The clock said 3:07 p.m. on Saturday when Jorge Javier Vázquez pressed the button to publish on his social networks: “Sometimes you have to stop,” he assured, “the body and mind send you signals, and throughout my life I have I haven’t paid much attention to them. Until today. I need to stop to take care of myself. To ask myself what I want. If I have it clear. If I don’t know, I better wait.”
“At the moment, going back is the last thing on my mind, although it may be what I most want tomorrow. I don’t know,” he continued, and without closing the door completely, he did make it clear that his goodbye to television will be prolonged more than expected: “For now I can only say: ‘So long.’ ‘As long as I can.’ ‘Until it comes up.’ And, above all, thank you. Thanks to you, it was worth it.”
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