Tele5 Forgets About Child Airtime

Tele5 “Forgets” About Child Airtime

Maribel Martínez Éder, from the Plaza del Castillo Association, submitted an open letter to Silvio Berlusconi. For your interest, I will share it with you below:




“From civil society and due to the indifference and lack of action of our political and judicial authorities, relative to the fulfillment of the current legislation regarding the protection of minors and T.V., we perceive with pleasure the anxiety that Mediaset Italy is showing in relation to the direction taken by its principal network in Spain, Tele5.

The degree of indignity to which protected airtime has reached, each and every single day of the year, is truly unbearable, and, it is creating huge animosity that is being increasingly perceived in broader sectors of the Spanish society, almost without any exception. And, this regards not only spectators. Since it is public and notorious, many advertisers are resenting themselves within their own interests and favoring certain contents rather than others. Not to mention the numerous lawsuits to which they are constantly subjected.

The most miserable and wretched realities of the human condition, recreated, virtual and fake, can easily enter our homes not at 2 a.m., but when our children, specially those most vunerable socially, return home from school and sit in front of the T.V.

It would be imposible to number the quantity of reports, studies, references both on the digital and physical press, coming from particular organizations and citizens who support a clearly abusive situation that has lasted for over a decade. The fact is further aggrevated considering that, unlike Italy, in Spain a national audiovisual authority does not exist with the competence of monitoring the implementation of current regulation.

Only two references: the Navarra Daily, October 25th, 2011: accustomed to the most complete impunity, Tele5 insists on scheduling a program on Sunday that is extremely inappropriate for the respective airtime. November 3rd, 2011: the current reality show on Tele5, ‘Acorralados’, has been decisively launched selling “sex” as a product. The point of arrival has become unpredictable.

We are thus thankful for the sanity wake-up calls that come from Mediaset Italy, seeing that the network has chosen the wrong path by not recognizing their own mistakes, recording with hidden cameras, and insulting those who fight for the imlpementation of current norms and regulations, as well as for putting itself on defensive terms in front of millions of Spanish citizens”.

The only thing that matters for Tele5 is its audience. They do not care to air programs that degrade human beings, as long as they gain audience. The ends should never justify the means. (Translated by Gianna A. Sanchez Moretti)

Author and journalist Clemente Ferrer has led a distinguished career in Spain in the fields of publicity and press relations. He is currently President of the European Institute of Marketing.
clementeferrer3@gmail.com