El Intermedio under scrutiny: an audience 'now over 70'

Cuarta Milonga and the decline of an El Intermedio without an audience

El Intermedio has stopped scaring the competition. The promotion of its segment Cuarta Milonga, released from the show's own account, arrives wrapped in grandiloquence: it is announced as "the last stronghold in this country that speaks out against the dictatorship" and as the program that "asks the uncomfortable questions nobody dares to ask." Read with some distance, the poster sounds like an unintentional joke. What once caused discomfort is now received, above all, with indifference.

Why is it claimed that El Intermedio has lost audience?

Because the rundown of its trajectory paints a collapse: the format would have gone from beating El Hormiguero to falling below Horizonte. It should be taken for what it is, a shared impression and not a certified figure, but the diagnosis keeps repeating itself with an argument that does not depend on the ratings meters. The humor, it is argued, has become predictable, tied to a script that sounds like it is being read aloud, and the irony always points in the same direction. That wears people out. Part of the audience sums it up bluntly: the host "is clearly reading the teleprompter and sometimes badly."

A target audience that, according to the thread, is already turning 70

The demographic note is the most uncomfortable of all. The core of viewers that sustains this kind of program is above 70 years old, according to the portrait drawn of the target, while —it is claimed— nobody under 55 turns on linear TV anymore. The consequence is mechanical: every season that passes, the base shrinks on its own, with no need for competition. It is not a script problem, it is a demographics problem. Translated into running a TV channel, it is an asset depreciating at a fixed rate.

Cuarta Milonga: when the promo airs twice

The segment has been announced with two nearly identical messages. From the "last stronghold" it moved on to being presented as "the only program that speaks plainly, without euphemisms, without prejudice and without having a clue about almost anything." The repetition, far from reinforcing the brand, reads as a symptom: the joke has already been told. Some have admitted to thinking the show was not even airing anymore, which says a lot about the buzz it generates.

The gap left by Beatriz Montañés and the talent that left

One participant fondly recalls the era of Beatriz Montañés, when the format, they argue, was better. The same participant remembers Ángel Martín, who left to do free humor without swallowing certain scripts, and considers Dani Mateo a capable comedian when he improvises outside the format, not within it. About the host, there is even a psychological analysis circulating of his speech at the Premios Ondas (Spanish broadcasting awards) that dwells on one line —"I have white hair, but I don't lie"— and interprets it as a justification nobody had asked for. The detail is, at the very least, curious.

With this material, the reasonable assumption is that the format will survive on inertia and the weight of its brand. But if the audience sustaining it retires faster than it renews itself, no grandiloquent promotion will plug the hole. The question is not whether they will change it: it is when.