The closing of 2024 on TVG was a symbol of how the year had passed. The fall to the middle of those who chose her to follow the bells – hastily saying goodbye amid cries of “Altri, non!” from the public gathered in Praza do Obradoiro—was only endorsing the historic failure that Galician public television had experienced in those twelve months. The year that has just ended has been, in terms of audience, the worst for the channel since its creation: it remained at a screen share of 8.6% after experiencing the biggest drop among the regional channels. Since December 31, 2023, TVG has lost one in five viewers. That does not prevent its leadership from considering 2024 a “very satisfactory” year.
After closing 2023 achieving the traditional objective of remaining in double figures, with 11%, the Galician television audience began a downward path, accentuated after the regional elections in February, which left two consecutive historical lows in April (7.9% ) and May (7.6). Despite a slight recovery, especially after the summer – December closed with 8.8% monthly – the fall was too abrupt to be able to recover.
According to Barlovento Comunicación’s annual report, using data from Kantar Media’s audiometers, TVG’s audience fell by 2.4 points in 2024 (almost 22%). It was the biggest collapse of all regional television stations, which on average lost 0.4, to remain at 8.1 in combined share. After the Galician channel, TPA registers a decrease of 1.1, Canal Sur drops one point and Canal Extremadura drops 0.9. In this generalized context, in the leading group Aragón TV barely rises one tenth —enough to reach its historical maximum, 11.6 and remain second in the FORTA ranking, above TVG and behind TV3’s 13.7 — while IB3 increases by 0.2, allowing it to achieve its best figure in a decade.
Saved by the campaign
Despite the low profile with which TVG intended to treat the regional elections—reducing the blocks of information or delaying the announcement of the call by more than 70 minutes—the regional channel would have fared even worse if 2024 had not been an election year. Three of the ten most viewed spaces of the year were related to that event, including the one that brought together the most Galicians before the regional channel: the election night, with 182,677 viewers and a 21.8 audience share. He was not the greatest sharethat one goes to – 22.7 but with 50,000 fewer spectators – the Fogos do Apóstolo, the pyrotechnic display that every July 24 at midnight welcomes the National Day of Galicia. Along with them, football and the parade of the Three Wise Men occupy the highest positions.
Even in this scenario of decline, news programs continue to be one of TVG’s figureheads, with an average of 11.7% and 70,000 viewers per broadcast. The Barlovento report is limited to drawing up an average between the after-dinner and evening editions, although they are not comparable: the locomotive of these services continues to be the Telexornal Noonbut, above all, the Galicia Newsthe “proximity news” that is broadcast just before, starting at two in the afternoon. Even so, it remains far from the times when this strip attracted one in three viewers in Galicia.
“Very satisfactory” year for the CRTVG
With these numbers in hand, the CRTVG makes a “very satisfactory” assessment of the 2024 audiences, a year in which TVG managed to “remain the most watched regional channel in Spain” according to data from the General Media Study and maintained as “third according to Kantar Media data”, “excellent” positions to which are added the “impact” of the launch of its platforms AGalega.gal, AGalegaAudio.gal and Xabarin.gal. “In his first year of life, AGalega.gal managed to place itself in the Top 10 of the most viewed platforms in Spain, according to data from the consultant Barlovento, it was downloaded in more than 200 countries and has already exceeded one and a half million users,” a spokesperson for the corporation responded via email. electronic.
Data that, he argues, “become even more important” in a year that was “the one with the lowest television consumption in the history of Spain,” but also in which the “definitive” change of frequencies from SD to HD was carried out. . Furthermore, in 2024, two television events of “special significance” were broadcast “free to air”: the European Football Championship and the Olympic Games. This meant that “RTVE’s sports budget alone exceeded the annual budget of the entire CRTVG.”
All of this, he concludes, “highlights that TVG, without going into debt and meeting its budget, maintained its leadership among the regional channels and expanded its digital presence.” The response ends by insisting on the “very satisfactory” nature of the hearings “while internally achieving 100% stabilization of the staff.”
Last year before the law that will increase political control
The year that has just ended is not just any year: if the planned deadlines are met, it will be the last year that Alfonso Sánchez Izquierdo will have at the helm of the CRTVG during his twelve months. In December, the Xunta Council approved the law on public audiovisual communication services, which now reaches Parliament where it will go forward thanks to the absolute majority of the PP. That same absolute majority that, for the first time, will be enough to elect the new general director, since the new text reduces the need for a qualified majority provided for in the 2011 standard.
It is not the only measure that increases the political control of a corporation that will also change its name, but it will be the one that allows Alfonso Rueda to hand-appoint a person of his choice and put an end to a period of three decades, extended “ provisional” through the back door since 2016 and to which Izquierdo himself – 75 years old and accused of alleged workplace harassment against a worker – was the first to want to shelve.
Conflict in the CRTVG also skyrocketed in 2024. Complaints of information manipulation are not new — the Defende a Galega movement maintains its black veins for almost seven years: it has now been 346—, but they were exacerbated in the pre-electoral period and during the campaign itself. Added to this is the deteriorated work environment: the replacement of the historic magazine To Magazine for a co-produced space, O Thermometertriggered a strike against outsourcing that, in addition to the affected program itself, caused the specific drop from the lineup of classics such as LuarTVG’s flagship for decades, or In Xogothe sporting reference for the weekend in Galicia.
The radio, even worse
The drop in audience in the Galician public media corporation is not the property of television, since the cost of the Galician Radio is even greater. The last wave of the EGM in 2024 recorded the loss of half of the listeners compared to a year before: 113,000 compared to 225,000. Curiously—except in specific cases such as changes in the Cultural Diary or the suppression of local news programs—radio, with a lower social impact than television, had also remained more removed from the controversy. However, things have changed in the current season.
The signing of a new news manager, who frames “the keys of the day” every morning in coordinates that, on more than one occasion, have replicated the PP’s arguments, or the new cast of talk shows in the morning Galicia by Diante —where the traditional balance of two pro-Xunta opinionators against two more or less critics is broken several days a week to become three against one— have also placed the radio in the focus of criticism.
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