Why this year there will be more skills contests than ever on television | TV

If the 12 skills competitions that were on general television in 2019 already marked a record and the proof that this genre was an upward trend, in 2020 there will be more. While two programs of that format (Masters of the Reformation Y Bake Off Spain) will not be reissued, in the coming months three new ones will arrive to complete 13, the new top of the so-called talents.

Masters of the Reformation, on Antenna 3, and Bake Off Spain, in Cuatro (very successful in its British version), they were the lowest point of the genre. According to Kantar Media data published by the audiovisual consultancy Barlovento Comunicación, last year they will reach a small screen share of 9.60% and 5.60%, respectively (everything that is below 10% is not usually considered successful) .

But the space that these contests leave will occupy this year Idol Kids, in Telecinco, and The Masked Singer, in Atresmedia. There also opens Friday Your face is familiar to me; on Sunday another old acquaintance will arrive: Triumph operation, which was absent in 2019. The musical contest returns to the programming of La 1 on Sunday night with the mission of forgetting the results of its last season of 2018. With 1,957,000 spectators on average (16.4%) , the edition of that year was the least seen of the ten that has had the contest. Its final, issued in December, was also the least followed in its history.

The Masked Singer, for its part, will arrive at Atresmedia after becoming a phenomenon in the United States. It was created in South Korea in 2015, and its appeal is that its contestants are famous who sing familiar songs with a device that distorts their voice while wearing strange costumes. Even the judges do not know who is under the clothes. That is, perhaps, its greatest attraction. Atresmedia, owner of the emission rights in Spain, develops its version of the contest, the eleventh that exists, together with the Fremantle Spain producer, responsible, among other competitions, for X Factor, Got Talent Y Farmer is looking for a wife.

Idol Kids, which will arrive in Telecinco (the most watched television network and also issuer of Got Talent), It is the children's and Spanish version of a program also known: American Idol, in which the jurors - among which Isabel Pantoja is confirmed - is dedicated to assessing the skills of the contestants.

Ana González Neira, a professor at the Faculty of Communication of the University of A Coruña, specializing in audiences, believes that the wide range of skills competitions is because, for general television, it is very "risky" to bet on fiction that already They offer payment platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. “Given the failure of the series and the difficulty of making a fiction that drags a mass audience, they opt for reality and talent contests. ”

Such contests are not usually in the offer of payment platforms, unlike traditional television, which also offers a connection with the present that does not have the Netflix or HBO series. It also creates an identification with the contestants, with whom viewers can feel some closeness. That, says González, “is the salvation table with the boom that has been created with the other platforms ”.

Concepción Cascajosa, Professor of Audiovisual Communication at the Carlos III University of Madrid, believes that there is another element in favor of the generalists in these cases: the incorporation of celebrities and children, as in the case of Tu cara son sonna or La Voz Kids. Because besides being attractive for being musical, they provide diversity to television products, something that she considers difficult in that industry.

Cascajosa does not believe that there is an oversupply because the figures are still favorable for these programs that, in many cases, triple the average numbers of the chains. In addition, it does not consider that the lack of quality of the programs has caused the decrease in television consumption that occurred in 2019. Instead, it finds an explanation in another aspect: “Television consumption is related to economic circumstances. In the worst years of the crisis, consumption increased, because television is free. ” And given that payment platforms do not usually offer programs that interact directly with the viewer, Cascajosa concludes: "I think it is intelligent, on the part of the chains, to bet on talent contests."