“Telecinco cancels Cuentos Chinos from today after not having obtained the expected results”, this is the brief phrase with which the main Mediaset network has reported the end of Cuentos Chinos. The program by Jorge Javier Vázquez and La Fábrica de la Tele has only lasted three weeks.
Although Mediaset was going to be “patient”, with Cuentos Chinos patience has run out. If last week he announced the withdrawal of the program on Thursdays so as not to damage the start of GH VIP 8 with its low audiences, the bomb arrived this afternoon. Chinese Tales is over and it ended suddenly.
The reason is none other than the poor ratings garnered by the program presented by Jorge Javier Vázquez and which marked not only the return of the presenter after several months of absence but also the return of La Fábrica de la Tele with a new format after the cancellation of Save me.
After the announcement of the cancellation, Jorge Javier Vázquez spoke through From here my most sincere congratulations to Pablo Motos, Carlos Sobera and Wyoming.”
“Thank you and sorry for not having been able to find the key to your complicity. That is the shame that remains for me,” the presenter wrote.
The Tele Factory also wanted to say goodbye to the program, through a video with the best moments of it: “The colorful and story-telling republic of Cuentos Chinos closes its doors.”
The program will be replaced by GH VIP. Breaking news that will be presented by Lara Álvarez, who thus joins the cast of GH VIP 8 presenters, and will offer a selection of the most notable events of the coexistence of the protagonists of the reality show from Monday to Wednesday. Apparently GH Express will remain on Thursdays. Given the reality data, which has had several programs without exceeding one million viewers, it seems that Telecinco’s objective is no longer to win but rather not to lose more audience.
Cuentos Chinos arrived to try to take the reign of access time from El Hormiguero and Pablo Motos. A practically impossible task given the data and the strength of the ants. However, Cuentos Chinos not only failed to get close to El Hormiguero, but its data further sank the network’s already damaged audience share.
The average broadcast share in the 10 installments of Cuentos Chinos has been 7% with 912,000 viewers, below the network’s usual average, which is a little more than 9%.
Since the day of its premiere, when Cuentos Chinos achieved a 9.4% audience share, the highest in these three weeks, the program’s audiences have been plummeting. In its first week, it reached a screen share of 7.6%, improving Telecinco’s average in access by one point, but from then on the drop was already unsustainable. In its second week it dropped to 7% and its last program broadcast, this Wednesday, with Manuela Carmena as a guest, achieved a very poor 6.2% and 800,000 followers.
Some data that the producer and Jorge Javier Vázquez himself were aware of. In fact, the presenter on his blog in Lecturas magazine this Tuesday already expressed how much this “back to school” was costing him. “When I listen to Shakira I think what a pleasure it is that a woman as apparently successful as her is able to verbalize such a prosaic reality. That’s how I am now. Trying not to be swept away by the tide. Surviving. Protecting myself so that reality doesn’t crush me. Playing to imagine that better times will come than the current ones, where there is too much uncertainty and even boredom. Going back to school is proving to be complicated, to say the least.”
The reasons why Cuentos Chinos was the first failure of the new Telecinco are many. First, a format that couldn’t quite find its place. It started out as a program of sections and predictably interviews, but it was too chaotic. La Fábrica de la Tele tried to find its essence and came closer to a kind of Sálvame with characters like Isa Pi, Isabel Pantoja’s daughter, or more themes from the social chronicle, but it didn’t work either.
In addition, we must add other errors that escaped the program itself. “To earn a spot in the access slot it is very important to work on the start time of the program,” television experts told this newspaper a few days ago. In the case of Cuentos Chinos, it was programmed to start later than El Hormiguero and with more advertising blocks, even matching the only long El Hormiguero advertisement with an advertisement for Cuentos Chinos, making it very difficult to attract any viewer from the Pablo Motos program.
On television it is key when the ads appear in a program and for how long. For example, the first week of Cuentos Chinos only had one day to expose itself to the audience free of advertising, that is, without any stretch of advertisements. As this newspaper was able to verify, since its second Tuesday of broadcast it had the largest advertising break of the 10 p.m.
In his very common ‘trick’ when it comes to programming, premieres, or when you want to beat your opponent. TardeAR, released on September 18, for example, was ad-free that entire week for its first 75 minutes. They are common strategies that Tierra Amarga or And Now Sonsoles already followed in their day, but that were not carried out with Cuentos Chinos.
Last week, when he withdrew from the grid so as not to further hinder the GH VIP gala on Thursdays, the network aired GH VIP Express, but the results did not improve either. On September 14, the day of the premiere of GH VIP 8, Cuentos Chinos made an average of 7.4%; A week later and with Cuentos Chinos already off the Thursday schedule, GH VIP Express made the same screen quota.
It is true that Cuentos Chinos’ data was getting worse and worse and was below the average for the chain. However, it is a reality that of all the Telecinco premieres in this new season, few are working as expected. GH VIP 8 is below one million viewers; TardeAR this Wednesday marked a historic low since its premiere on September 18, falling below double digits (9.8%) and El musical de tu vida, although it improves the network’s average by a few tenths, also fails to stand out.
It seems, therefore, that the decision to abruptly cancel Cuentos Chinos has been rushed in an attempt to save and scratch a tenth more in Telecinco’s screen share.