"After 17 years of great success, the shareholders of La Fábrica de la Tele (Mediaset España, on the one hand, and Adrián Madrid and Óscar Cornejo, on the other) have agreed to end their corporate relationship, having already started the process with such purpose". The statement arrived early in the afternoon, this Tuesday, and puts an end to many weeks of speculation.
According to sources close to the agreement, it is a friendly separation. The audiovisual group and the production company will stop creating projects together. "The time for the credits has arrived," La Fábrica de la Tele begins its statement, which ends with "the future is yet to be produced."
The statement that confirms an open secret comes after learning of Borja Prado's departure from the presidency of Mediaset Spain, only a year and a half after taking office. It was the replacement at the top of Mediaset Spain that led to a crisis that now results in a breakup and a certainty: as of January 1, 2024, La Fábrica de la Tele will not have any programs on the Mediaset grid.
After the cancellation of Sálvame, el Deluxe and Cuentos chinos, the relationship between La Fábrica de la Tele and the audiovisual group, which owns 33% of the production company, had become strained, spreading rumors pointing to a total break between the production company and cluster. The breakup has been confirmed, and La Fábrica de la Tele and Mediaset have ended up breaking a relationship that made the production company in the time of Paolo Vasile the one that brought together the most hours of television on the Telecinco and Cuatro grids. In fact, during this time Adrián Madrid and Óscar Cornejo were described within the group as "Vasile's spoiled children."
It is Monday morning, Óscar Cornejo and Adrián Madrid, owners of the production company, informed their workers during a meeting that the three programs currently broadcast on Mediaset - Todo es Lie, Socialité and Viajando con Chester - and that they belong to La Fábrica de la Tele will be subrogated to other production companies. That is, the programs will continue to be broadcast on Cuatro and Telecinco, but they will no longer depend on La Fábrica de la Tele.
According to Bluper and this newspaper has been able to confirm, Cornejo and Madrid communicated during said meeting that the three productions of La Fábrica de la Tele remain in Mediaset and that the workers will be subrogated by the production companies that the audiovisual group decides to take charge of said workers. formats. That is, the jobs of the people who work in these programs are maintained. The contracts of the three productions with La Fábrica de la Tele expire on December 31, hence until January 1 they cannot be subrogated by other production companies.
At the moment, it is unknown who will be the production companies that will substitute these programs. In the case of Socialité, the weekend program presented by María Patiño, it seems that the production company Fénix Media, owned by Christian Gálvez, will take over its production, according to Algo Pasa, although several sources consulted by this newspaper assure that they have not yet It has been decided who will take the reins of the program and whether María Patiño will continue in it.
As for Traveling with Chester and Everything is a Lie, the two programs presented by Risto Mejide, the production company that will take charge of them is also unknown. A few weeks ago 20 minutes published that Mediaset had made the offer to Mejide himself to take over the production of both programs, although his decision and whether he will be the one finally chosen is still up in the air.
It is also not clear what Mediaset's participation in La Fábrica de la Tele, of which it owns 33%, will look like. The truth is that it is not the first time that Mediaset España snatches the production of one of its programs from a production company. In 2015, the group decided to change the production of Survivors from Magnolia TV to their trusted production company, Bulldog TV. In 2024 it will change hands again, going from Bulldog TV to Cuarzo Producciones.
Mediaset's relationship with La Fábrica de la Tele began to worsen as a result of the docuseries Rocio, tell the truth to stay alive. The leadership at that time, in which Paolo Vasile was still present, did not like the impact that Rocío Carrasco's documentary generated on public opinion nor the war that broke out between network programs and production companies, especially between La Fábrica and Unicorn Content, Ana Rosa Quintana's production company. This tightened the rope every day until the departure of Paolo Vasile.
With the arrival of the new advisor, Alessandro Salem, La Fábrica de la Tele was completely unprotected. Salem came with a very clear idea, the new Telecinco could not count on a program like Sálvame. In fact, it was shortly after his arrival that he himself conveyed to Ana Rosa Quintana in November his intention for her to take over the afternoons. Then, the TardeAR presenter said no. She had just returned from recovering from breast cancer and was feeling very comfortable in the morning.
However, new rules began to be established that directly targeted La Fábrica de la Tele and Sálvame, such as the creation of a new Code of Ethics for Mediaset in which several paragraphs were added explicitly directed at Sálvame, such as the prohibition of talking about politics. in entertainment programs or the sudden dismissal of all those presenters who left the set during a live show without just cause. In addition, several faces that until then had fed the contents not only of Sálvame but of a good part of the Mediaset grid were banned, such as Rocío Carrasco, José Ortega Cano, Bárbara Rey, etc.
On May 5, Mediaset announced the definitive cancellation of Sálvame. The Tele Factory and the program learned about it live through this newspaper. At the end of June Sálvame closed its doors and a few weeks later the Deluxe did so.
Even so, and despite the fact that the relationship between the production company and the group's leadership was increasingly tense, Salem entrusted La Fábrica de la Tele with a new program for access time, Cuentos Chinos. Although Mediaset assured that they would allow time for it to settle when competing in such a complicated segment and in the face of a beast like El Hormiguero, only 10 programs after its premiere, Telecinco also canceled Chinese Tales due to the low audience ratings, which had led Mediaset to make the decision days before withdrawing the program on Thursdays so that it would not drag down the already low audiences of one of its big bets this season, GH VIP.
From then on, as this newspaper has learned, the relationship between the production company and the audiovisual group has been practically non-existent. La Fábrica de la Tele, for example, presented its docureality for Netflix, Every Man Who Can, without the presence of any member of Mediaset, despite Mediaset owning 33% of the production company. In fact, in that presentation it was Belén Esteban herself who, very angry, and surprising Cornejo and Madrid, shouted from the rooftops that La Fábrica de la Tele was already "independent" and had nothing to do with Mediaset. A cry that has not been made official until now.
