Top gossip show gets the axe after fall in audience share

31 January 2008

MADRID – One of Spanish television’s most famous gossip programmes has gone out with a splat rather than fading away. Aquí hay tomate (Here There’s Tomato), which has always been voracious in its appetite for details from the private lives of B- and C-list celebrities, is coming off the air after losing audience figures for Telecinco, the channel it called home.

Having enjoyed a 25.2.percent market share for its last season, the programme saw that level fall to 21.5 percent this year, prompting Telecinco’s commissioners to pull the plug. In keeping with its jokey tone, the hosts announced the demise of the program by saying that the life of singer Isabel Pantoja, one of their regular targets, "would change radically within three days," referring to their last broadcast.

Not everyone has always enjoyed this particular brand of humour though. In its quest for the dirty secrets of the Spanish celebrity, the programme has seen itself obliged to pay presenter Gonzalo Miró EUR 300,000 after speculating over the identity of his father; they had to fork out EUR 270,000 to the journalist Pepe Navarro for what was described as a "systematic discrediting campaign;" and EUR 50,000 to the bullfighter Francisco Rivera for having divulged details of his sex life.

Subject: Spanish news