Midnight Blackout | Mail

“That’s all, everyone,” they might say before the blackout. They say nothing, and by 11:59 pm, Nine DTT TV will go black. Xplora, Nitro and LaSexta 3 (Atresmedia), La Siete y Nueve (Mediaset) and two Net TV channels, as well as two others from Veo TV, stopped broadcasting this morning as a result of a Supreme Court ruling. With the suspension, many viewers are left behind, since they had increased their audience by 6.7% in April, almost the same as La Sexta (TVE, to give us an idea, is about 10%).

At the stroke of midnight, the affected channels will display a “farewell message” – they do not reveal the content – which in most cases means a complete farewell, and in others a simple goodbye. Because Xplora disappears from the remote control, but reappears on the Internet and has its own space on the atresplayer.com website. Xplora is changing the medium, hoping to take away 1.7% of the screen share. He takes with him his star programs: “La casa de empeños” and “Pawns to the Beast”.

The “Nitro” channel of its group partner Atresmedia will be closed permanently. It recorded another 1.7% growth in April, with the “Bones” series being the star product. The only one to remain from Nitro is “El chiringuito de Jugones”, which moves to La Sexta. Its record is 228,000 viewers (3.4% of the time slot), with whom Josep Pedrerol wants to meet every night after Andreu Buenafuente’s show “En el aire”. The cinema channel La Sexta 3 disappears and its purchased films will be shown on other channels of the group.

Mediaset closed La Siete and Nueve, which each had around 1% of audience share, but kept the daily digest of Survivientes, which will go to Divinity.

Most affected

Atresmedia will be the group most affected by the blackout. Not only because it has lost more channels than the others, but also because it has to give up a significant screen share. In the group’s calculations, it surpassed Mediaset in April with 29.4% against Mediaset’s 29.2%. If we subtract the screen share of the shut-down channels, Telecinco and its brothers win by more than two points.

Although the nine channels face blackouts, UTECA, which brings together Spanish commercial television, does not rule out appealing the decision to the European Court of Justice. They also asked for precautionary measures to avoid shutdowns at one minute before midnight. “The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the matter, but if it does after May 6, it will be of no use,” warned general manager Andres Armas yesterday.

A possible new Supreme Court ruling, which could affect eight other DTT channels, further heightens the uncertainty of the impending closure. Although in this case, UTECA will be more combative: “Some legal options are already being studied to avoid a new negative decision. In the eighteen months we were waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling, we did nothing. “We don’t want something like this to happen again. “

In addition, the signature campaign against the blackout continues. More than 135,000 people have signed on the Change.org website, asking the government to avoid fading to black tonight.