Alicia Garcia de Francisco |
Madrid (EFE) a kind of “Roman circus” that presented a reality that was not real, according to experts consulted by EFE.
And a “very sad way of using the life of others as a way of entertainment and spectacle,” says Amable Cima, professor of Psychology at the CEU San Pablo University.
Keys to your success
Because one of the keys to its success is that it is an “example of ‘bullying'” in which the victims themselves sought bullying to become protagonists and get their 15 minutes of fame.
“People who see and understand what is happening in the program assume that this is the normal way of functioning, to seek success no matter what,” Cima points out.
When it began, in 2008, “Save me” was a program focused on the lives of celebrities, a kind of extension of the weekly gossip magazines, whose potential audience was older women who were at home and who did not have a certain activity.
A program of pure entertainment in the context of the struggle between private channels for audiences with the motto “anything goes”, highlights the professor of Journalism and Global Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) José Ignacio Nevado.
The objective then and throughout all these years has been to make the program profitable, which ended up unfolding into an endless number of derivatives: Sálvame Naranja, Sálvame Limón, Sálvame Banana or Sálvame Deluxe, which will be the last to close its doors, on July 14.
Last “Save Me”
At the moment, this Friday, June 23, is the last “Save me”, which ends with a special program of more than four hours with the night of San Juan as the common thread, which will end with a bonfire in which significant objects of the format and of the scenery of space.
It will be the end of a show that is as criticized as it is successful, an example of a perfectly designed strategy that has worked very well for Telecinco, based on feedback from some programs to others. You just have to remember that “Save me” was originally conceived as a satellite gathering of “Survivors”, as Nevado points out.
This feedback has generated a series of famous characters from the network’s “reality” shows, who have become participants or presenters of “Sálvame”, in an exercise in which Telecinco emerged victorious over Antena 3, its highest rival.
For Cima, it went from lifelong celebrities to the concept that “anyone could be famous”, at which point the program took on a more sensationalist drift.
But that idea was exhausted by its own concept. “People think, how good it is to be famous, but not when anyone can be. If everyone is famous, it doesn’t matter anymore,” explains Cima, for whom this twist in the program was the beginning of the end.
“There is a bit of exhaustion and saturation of these programs and of that style of programming, in addition to a much greater offer with the platforms,” highlights the UCM professor, who believes that Telecinco is having a hard time renewing its audience.
“They have been with the same headliners for 20 years without renewing, with Belén (Esteban), Lydia (Lozano), Kiko (Hernández) or Jorge Javier (Vázquez). It’s hard for twenty-somethings to get hooked on these characters because they also don’t watch ‘reality shows,’” reflects Nevado.
In this regard, Cima considers that the disappearance of “Sálvame” is a consequence of its own dynamics. “It was as if we were watching ‘Bread and Circuses.’ It became not a show, but a harm to others.”
Although it must also be taken into account that despite it seeming spontaneous, “it is absolutely controlled and scripted”, they build “a reality that is not real but that they want you to assume”.
But people have grown tired of that model. “Society has to move towards a more ethical, more moral model, not more restrictive but respectful of the right to the presumption of innocence and the right not to be offended in public.”