There is more than an hour left until dawn, but they have already been there for a long time. There is light at the end of a long, dark hallway, so empty that footsteps echo. Light and bustle, more than what sleep allows to make intelligible. About thirty people mill around a long, narrow editorial office. Now they joke, coffee in hand, now they disappear into the concentration of the computer and headphones. Telephones ring at the rate of noon but it is only seven in the morning when the bosses appear.
“I’m going up to dress up, I’m practically in my pajamas,” Marc Sala smiles, and points to a printed short-sleeved shirt. The iron comes and goes waving over the blonde hair of an energetic Silvia Intxaurrondo who warns: «Ask anything except the formula for success. “We keep that one for ourselves.” He and she, she and he, two journalists with extensive radio and television experience whom destiny turned into a dance partner, are the visible faces of a collective success that has returned to RTVE a crown that it had not worn since, in 1996, María Teresa Campos will sign for Telecinco and will wear it.
The fact is important, public television has no meaning if people do not watch it
La 1 rose to the morning leadership in August with its highest figure since January 2012, 13%. In September, the public redoubled its commitment to the Intxaurrondo and Sala show and began its simultaneous broadcast on the first channel and the 24 Hours Channel, and the sum, 14.9%, was only surpassed by the humoring show on laSexta Aruser@ s, the only one capable of dethroning Ana Rosa Quintana herself with an average that exceeds 17%. One month after the last premiere in the first hour of the schedule, the situation repeats itself: La 1’s hour averages 14.80% in simulcast, almost two points more than Espejo Público (12.71%), although his average with Jaime Cantizano’s Mañaneros, which rarely reaches double digits, weighs down a reign in the strip that Alfonso Arús continues to hold.
But let’s return to the darkness of the mythical Studio 1 in Prado del Rey, which is stretching to start the informative day. RTVE has grown a lot, also architecturally, since the theater had a place in the silly box, so the inevitable journey from the makeup room to the editorial room, from the editorial office to the set, from the set to production control is a labyrinth of stairs , corridors and patios between buildings, more and less modern, more and less historical. “The first few days I also got lost,” Intxaurrondo apologizes for the clumsy guidance of this editor, “but you quickly catch it, even if it’s through repetition.” The editor will ask for help to get out of there five hours later.
The Barakaldo journalist applies the same practicality behind and in front of the camera, so she presents in sports shoes. “After so much time live, your body notices it, but time flies by,” she says, “I hope you have half as much fun as we do.” Intxaurrondo and Sala arrive at the building at five in the morning, “with the newspapers already read” and review the list outlined by the last person to leave the newsroom the day before, at ten at night. “Dancing in unison with everyone and bringing the coordination of an entire team to the screen is very complicated,” she explains, and points out: “It’s also wonderful.”
Behind the production table, different screens come on, one after another, all framed in a gigantic monitor hanging on the wall. Little by little, reporters appear on the ground, inside and outside of Spain, a network unmatched in any private television: “Being able to be where things happen is a luxury and we must take advantage of it,” says Marc Sala, “that is our greatest strength , and our great challenge is to set the agenda, so that on that day we talk about what has happened in the program. Although for all that you have to get up at three in the morning…
The formula for success? Be where things happen, set your agenda… And get up at three in the morning
They walk around the set, a large hexagon decorated with a mosaic of geometric shapes in blue and red tones, and it seems like they are talking to themselves. The entire team communicates through earpieces and that generates a frankly comical coming and going of cross-talk. «Sánchez arrives at eight, eight and a quarter? Okay, well let’s open with that,” decides a serious Sala; “You just came back and you’re having fun again,” Intxaurrondo bursts out laughing. When they finally stand behind the table, the clock reads 7:55.
Councilor Nieves Homedes orders the chaos: “Two and a half minutes, be warned.” An RTVE photographer portrays the presenters, who quickly adopt a couple of different poses, in an everyday gesture that they execute without abandoning concentration. “20 seconds, they’re going to give way to us.” She quickly takes a pen out of her bag and hides it under the table. “10 seconds”. He fans himself. “Let’s start.” Nuria Sero confirms in front of a large map projected on the side that the weather will not let up in the coming days: “Sun and heat.”
For Silvia Intxaurrondo and Marc Sala, directors as well as presenters, the information from the previous day comes to them in the middle of the broadcast: “Sometimes a few minutes of euphoria or anger condition you,” they acknowledge. A disciple of Iñaki Gabilondo in radio and television, the Basque journalist is pure demand: she looks at the good information, but she always thinks that more can be achieved. After more than a decade at RTVE, the Catalan has seen them in all colors: “Here we tend to be very depressed or very upbeat, and now we are going through a sweet moment that I don’t remember having experienced,” he acknowledges, and adds: ” The data is very important. Public television has no meaning if people do not watch it, and the great difficulty lies in fulfilling its public service function while remaining competitive.
That formula for success that they refuse to reveal has had a viral accelerant this summer, when in the middle of the electoral campaign Intxaurrondo put the popular candidate Alberto Núñez-Feijóo in a difficult situation. In response to an allegation from him regarding the revaluation of pensions, he blurted out: “It’s not true.” The interview was already over when the journalist became aware of what had just happened. Her, and an audience that began to tune in to La 1 in the morning. “It was a brutal moment and for the program it has surely been the best thing that has happened to us in recent times,” Sala acknowledges. “It has made people turn their heads to discover that we always do interviews like this, putting the politician in front of his contradictions,” adds her partner.
Anyone who thinks that clashes in interviews always go in the same direction has not seen enough programs
Silvia Intxaurrondo arrived on national television in 2021 from Telemadrid a few months after another very loud clash that ended with a protest from Isabel Díaz Ayuso: “These are questions that a regional president does not ask.” Recently, her name made headlines again after correcting the PP’s Deputy Secretary General of Organization, Miguel Tellado. The coincidence in the acronyms could lead to the inference that her hooks always go in the same direction. “Anyone who thinks that has not seen enough shows,” she says. “When I get to public television, I never think about who is in the Government, especially because it can change,” she says, “my big fight is to bring the truth to the screen, no matter who is in charge and it bothers whoever it bothers. As simple as that”. «The parties often want to turn us into their toy. “Let them do what they want, we’ll do our thing,” her partner comes out in support.
The production control, on the first floor, has two rows of tables full of colored buttons in front of an endless number of screens: from the plane of the presenters to the text that runs through the prompter, passing through the programming of other channels. Here it is decided what the viewer will see, when and how. “I don’t have signs, eh?” someone warns, “now we move with time, Silvia and Marc pick up and the table comes in. “Open me with Nuria.” Communication is not lost even in the middle of the show: Intxaurrondo shows his palms and raises one to indicate that they cover it; Sala asks the newly arrived panelists to slow down the pace of their interventions; Intxaurrondo gives way to some and others, he indicates a little with his fingers so that they do not lengthen. The clock is almost nine in the morning.
The directors of La Hora de la 1 did not know each other before landing on the mornings of RTVE. First they each managed their own space, and over time they have been unified to share the three and a half hours that the format now lasts. «The very evolution of the program has allowed us to get to know each other», explains Intxaurrondo, «having two different personalities on screen provides different points of view and encourages debate. “It’s not easy, but it has turned out very well for us.”
“We are arriving at 11:20 in the morning and the news is piling up on us,” Intxaurrondo smiles at the camera, and hands over to Jaime Cantizano: “Now it’s our turn.” “Okay, we’re out,” says the councilor. The set empties as quickly as it was filled and the presenters are left testing lights: “This is too blue, this is harmful…”. “Everyone loves to say that they are leaders,” the journalist acknowledges, “but our main competition is against ourselves: we want more people to see us every season.” For now, they are on the right track. “If a year ago they told us that we were going to compile these data, we would never have believed it.”