The risks of Prisa's change of course

The departure of Àngels Barceló from the SER fuels the theory that the group is veering to the right. There are reasons to support this. 1) Prisa's president, Joseph Oughourlian, is chastened by the attempted mutiny staged by executives closest to Moncloa when they wanted to launch a television in greater glory to the PSOE. Barceló, in this struggle, did not distance himself enough from the rebels. 2) Oughourlian owes Sánchez one, because his government maneuvered to favor a change in the group's board of directors as retaliation for having rejected that Telepedro that could not be. This explains, for example, the hardening of the editorial line experienced by El País, since Jan Martínez Ahrens became its director. 3) Pepa Bueno ended up jumping fromEl País during the purges following the mutiny and Barceló was also among those considered. However, it was more complicated to apply the axe in her case because she is the radio host with the largest audience in all of Spain: 3.3 million daily listeners. No small matter when she decides to speak.

That said, the CEO's actions profile him more as a pragmatist than a sectarian. And, in the end, the current model of the magazine Hoy por hoy showed signs of exhaustion, with Carlos Herrera making his presence felt from Cope. The listeners who would allow distance to be regained are more to the center-right than to the left of the current ones (as they do not have many alternative media). Furthermore, in memory there is the abrupt turn of El País to the right with Antonio Caño, which alienated the historical base of the newspaper's readers. For all these reasons, I doubt they will repeat the same mistake with the SER, even though the line between opening the medium to the center with the argument of business strategy and playing into the hands of the PP and Vox – with an eye also on post-Sanchismo – is fine. Very fine. Dangerously fine.