Who calmed the revolution in music programs? television? ‘Sputnik’, ‘Golden Age’ or ‘Crystal Ball’ are references that have remained dormant in the past and will remain, as we say in these first lines. However Today’s traditional television now saves space for music, except when it wears the competitive uniform of ‘talent shows’. Apart from this, the platforms host a large number of documentaries and now Amazon Prime Video is also copying the recipe of the music competition with the acquisition of ‘Operación Triunfo’. And the limitlessness of the Internet gives everyone the option to choose and consume the audiovisual content they like.
But before we bite the bullet, we need to clarify a mantra that has become the norm in the relationship between music and television: Do audiences enjoy the musical content? “The audiometers tell us that you can place whoever you want by pretending that people are leaving. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is,” responds Cristian Trepat, TV3’s director of Continguts and Programming Area. RTVE Society and Culture head Urbana Gil also responds: “Audiences are very fragmented and it is very difficult for a music program outside the ‘talent’ area to achieve high numbers.” When it comes to ‘talent’, notable examples on La 1 following the removal of ‘OT’ from the channel include ‘Cover night’, ‘Dúos incredibles’ and Benidorm Festival.
“It seems only unique events like the Latin Grammys can make the miracle happen.”, Gil adds. With the broadcast of the Latin music awards, La 1 reached a phenomenal audience of 21.5%. Music and competition in ‘prime time’ once again with a warm response from the public. “Basically, every kid who wants to make music realizes that music is competitive,” rapper Erik Urano said in an interview with this newspaper weeks ago about television’s impact on the music industry.
On the other side of all this, we can see the return to TVE of ‘A country to rest’ featuring Ariel Rot; Viewerships in previous seasons were not very high, but the show’s tremendous quality was its musical offering, Gil said. In the state public television ecosystem, Radio 3 Concerts have been running on an antenna (and the rest) for 25 years. “However, in a world where we are over-informed and saturated with online consumption, magazines are no longer as relevant as they once were.”
An extinct format
Informational programs, video clips, concert programs boomed in the 80s and 90s – a word that always implies that something can fall apart – and now they have almost disappeared. A lot of things came together at that moment, everything was going well. One of those who pedaled in Catalonia was Francesc Fàbregas, the creator and first director of the unforgettable program ‘Sputnik’, which was broadcast on TV3 and was also a talent school. “Events began to happen here, many groups appeared from the regions where there should be public television and should be loudspeakers for what is happening. It was a young self-directed television. We also managed to bring together many people from different genres of music,” summarizes the journalist.
Considering today and tomorrow, he states that “the main basis that believes in the project and makes it work is the management” and that “we have lost many legacies”.For example, because the efficiency and capacity of recording concerts has decreased. Trepat, head of the current program area of Catalan public television, estimates that 57 live broadcasts have been recorded in the last two years.
A more closed industry
‘Sputnik’ was broadcast in different formats and left a legacy in TV3’s cultural programs that continues to this day. Trepat talks about the “symbiosis” that existed between the Catalan music industry and the Catalan audiovisual industry at the timeA network that went “parallel” to the rest of the world with MTV, the great emblem of that time, and started producing “reality shows” years ago in search of not losing viewers.
It is worth noting that TV3 even has a music content department. So what happened next? Trepat lists: “There have been changes in consumer habits, audiovisual trends, availability of our resources, budget cuts…”. “A lot of things have happened that have forced you to prioritize better,” he adds. And the new ‘super family’, which is actually a musical group, champions the power of music as an instrument to convey emotions, used in programs and content such as BETA.
In Betevé, cultural critic Aïda Camprubí hosts the surviving musical space ‘Territori groupie’ (a metamorphosis of ‘Feel’) within the cultural program ‘Plaça Tísner’. The journalist adds another important factor to all this: “The decline in musical exposure is also related to the music industry becoming more structured: more insurance, more contracts…”. “In our time, there were a lot of opportunities in terms of industry,” Fàbregas recalls, pointing out that artists today have extensive control over their own images. Also for subsequent marketing. “The industry and record companies are no longer as close allies to television as they were in the past,” says Urbana Gil. The context is completely different.
new windows
In this apparent stalemate, the Internet opened cracks that revealed huge pathways, making it clear that TV was no longer the only major audiovisual channel. From Tiny Desk’s highly publicized performances to the multitude of informative channels available on YouTube, TikTok and Twitch. One of the most successful projects in this environment was Gallery Sessions, which was born in Barcelona. In short: An artist performs a song in a window that has become the brand of the initiative – yes, just like every store window. Manuel Turizo, Tokischa and Rigoberta Bandini passed by. “TV has clearly stopped betting on these types of formats, and we emerged in that gap,” says Genís Pena, project manager for Gallery Sessions, a project focused on a generation that doesn’t consume TV.
Pena highlights one aspect of his content that he sees as key to its success: it is designed to ‘live’ across multiple platforms. “This allows it to be seen in different places, we have been able to attract audiences through many channels. I think this is due to the differences in television products making it difficult to cut and distribute them because they are not designed for that purpose.” emphasizes. Performances were the first step in the Gallery’s expansion into branches, and they now shoot documentaries, for example, as a musical entertainment platform. “Musicians need to have a space where they can express their music in a guaranteed way. Things changed before this was on television,” says Pena, a member of the band Alavedra.