We arrive in Cornellà just when Arnau París (Barcelona, 1988) and Rais Esteve (Sant Boi de Llobregat, 1989) have left their twins, Artur and Robert, at the nursery school. It has been a year of many changes for this couple, who met at MasterChef, in which Paris won the 2021 edition and Rais Esteve worked in gastronomic consulting. Since they knew they were receiving a visit from the ARA, they waited for us with the table set for breakfast. Paris insists that we taste the sobrassada that they make.

The people in charge of TV3 must not watch their own television on Sunday mornings. It is a time slot that has remained as a religious stronghold where some content causes astonishment. Every last Sunday of the month they broadcast Néixer de nou, a space from the Evangelical Council that explains what the country's Protestant community does. It has an initial part that is more informative and can be interesting, but, in the end, every week a different pastor appears who addresses the viewer while looking at the camera. After quoting a biblical passage, the pastor gives a sermon. These are some literal fragments of last Sunday's little sermon: “There are situations in our life, perhaps diagnoses of illness, perhaps situations in our house, our marriages, our friendships..., that can make us fall. But what is the promise that the Lord gives us? It is that, as many times as we fall, the Lord will raise us up again”. With an exhortative attitude he continues: “How do we find this strength to get back up? The answer is not in the actions that we take but in what Jesus has done for us. When you find the name of Jesus, when you open your heart to him, he fills you with hope and your base, your foundation, is completely different before knowing him”. And he continues with a messianic tone and raising his index finger: “We depend on the work of Jesus in our heart. What fills your heart? Because if what fills your heart are temporary things, things that pass, things that today you have and tomorrow you don't, when you fall maybe you don't have the strength to get up. But if you let the name of Jesus enter your heart, that his hope be your foundation, it doesn't matter how many times you fall. In the name of Jesus you will be able to get back up and you will be able to declare ‘The Lord has been my help’”. And finally he concludes: “This is my prayer for you, that in the name of Jesus you find the strength to stand tall”.

The well-known film, theater, and dubbing actress Pepa Arenós (Barcelona, 1948) passed away this Sunday at the age of 78. For some, Rosalia from Ventdeplà is gone; for others, one of the actresses from the first Catalan soap opera, La Granja, where she also played a Rosalia; and for still others, the voice of Baba, the fortune teller from Dragon Ball, one of the numerous characters she dubbed, has been silenced. In addition to being a great actress, Pepa Arenós demonstrated a strong political commitment, first as an anti-Franco militant of Bandera Roja and the PSUC and, more recently, as an independence activist. She participated as a presenter at the National Day of Catalonia on September 11, 1976, in Sant Boi. In recent years, in addition to the Procés, she participated in the hundreds of demonstrations held to turn the Via Laietana police station into a memorial site. Colleagues from the Via Laietana 43 platform confirmed her passing to ARA.

After nine years off the air, Crackòvia will return to the screen with a new season that will combine the characters that turned the program into a benchmark for Catalan sports humor with new additions linked to current football events. 3Cat is bringing back the format with a new distribution strategy that places the digital platform at the center, but also maintains conventional broadcasting on TV3. The first episode will premiere on Monday, October 26th at 8:30 PM on the 3Cat platform and can be seen on Thursday on television, after Polònia.

On Monday, TV3 premiered In vitro, a series that takes place in a fertility clinic. An innovative idea that, inevitably, forces a balance between comedy and drama. On one hand, the humor typical of work environments and everything related to sex and the intimacy of a couple, and on the other, the suffering that surrounds the difficulties of conceiving a child. Added to this are the human miseries surrounding expectations about offspring and the female universe in complex hormonal situations. A common aspect in many contemporary fictions also emerges: the normalization of an immaturity and infantilization of the characters that enhances the drama of any circumstance, however insubstantial it may be. All in all, a very fertile context for building fiction. In vitro asks, or rather, begs the viewer for a good dose of condescension regarding plausibility. One thing is the reality of reproductive processes and another, very different, is for the characters' actions to be hardly credible: a researcher tricking music students into donating eggs that will satisfy a pianist's longings, or a devoted wife trying to put her husband's semen into a jar, without him noticing, with a furtive straw in his law office. Fried eggs and bananas will become symbolic elements to enhance this zygotic breeding ground. zygotic.

Assisted reproduction, the limits of science, and social expectations surrounding motherhood are some of the topics addressed by In vitro, the new series from 3Cat and HBO Max. The production, created by Alejandra Guimerà and Marc Crehuet, premieres this Monday, October 19, on TV3, on the 3Cat platform, and on HBO Max, coinciding with the opening of the Serielizados Fest. Starring Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer, the fiction explores the experiences of people who turn to fertility treatments and the professionals who accompany them.

On Monday, Salvador Illa posted a tweet on the X network to protest against the approach of the program Vèrtex for having given a voice to anti-vaxxers and demanding responsibility for not putting public health at risk. The day before, Ramon Pellicer had introduced the debate on vaccination with a very fragile premise: “This week the flu and COVID vaccination campaign has begun, and we wanted to focus on the other side of this reality: that of the people who distrust vaccines.” The program turns a minority position into a counterpart to the vaccination campaign, endorsed by the journalistic cliché of “the other side of reality.” This other side perhaps does not justify so much attention. In any case, the video of the anti-vax couple they interviewed did not last more than three minutes, and they used very vague arguments. The man said that for him, smiles and hugs were more important for maintaining good health. They were not presented as experts, nor did they use a falsely scientific discourse. The program then dedicated four times as much time, twelve minutes, to refuting the anti-vaxxers' arguments with two expert professionals: Gemma Moncunill, lead researcher of the Caixa Research Institute group, and Judit Vall, professor of applied economics at the UB, to clarify aspects linked to the interests of pharmaceutical companies. Both insisted on the benefits of vaccines, and Moncunill stressed that it was advisable to get “all the vaccines recommended by the Generalitat.” A reporter provided statistical data that consolidated their explanations, including figures on the lives that vaccines save.

On Wednesday, TV3 aired the third episode of País d’altura, the program that travels across Catalonia from a bird's-eye view, with the ordeal of the corny jokes in the script read by David Verdaguer. During the aerial journey, from time to time, it touches down to earth to interview people linked, both geographically and emotionally, to the area being discovered. The episode was dedicated to the Terres de Lleida, and three of the interviewees in the latest broadcast were very interesting because they are profiles that, unfortunately, are not often seen on television.

Carolina Ferre (Cocentaina, 1974) has been a familiar face on television for more than thirty years. She began her career at the now-defunct Canal 9 and has worked for Telecinco, Antena 3, La Sexta, and À Punt, where until 2023 she presented the Valencian version ofCatch me if you can. She has also been a collaborator on various TV3 programs, which selected her as one of the contestants vips of the new edition of The crossing, which this week has landed on 3Cat.

TV3, oblivious to the debate over the influencers crisis, chose Dulceida to present the Mercè Piromusical. Very timely, because her limitations in front of the camera added a few sparks to the fireworks festival. The crisis was confirmed. The presenter expressed herself with an unnatural affectation because she had to read the teleprompter script as if it were an exercise that caused her enormous tension and difficulty. She exposed herself. Once the initial introduction was finished, her cry of relief for having managed to read the entire paragraph was leaked through the microphone. Cheer up, then. 3Cat is giving a crash course in TV presenting to the country's influencers.Next, Vèrtex, premiered, and with the return of Ramon Pellicer to the screen it was inevitable to observe a symptomatic fact. Three of the most important programs on the TV3 schedule are presented by men over sixty years old: Xavier Grasset on La Selva, Jordi González on Col·lapse and now Pellicer. Experience is a virtue, above all because it has to do with authority and credibility. But it turns out that female presenters over sixty, on the other hand, are not seen leading a program. TV3 prefers influencers, young and inexperienced, like Dulceida and Laura Escanes. In the promotion of La travessa they show us Escanes playing a mermaid underwater and emerging from the sea in a swimsuit just like James Bond's partners used to do. They even include a close-up shot of her hip. They are presenters who have to work in recorded formats to hide some of their shortcomings and who struggle in live broadcasts. Their level would not be accepted in professionals of the network. But these shortcomings are tolerated because it is considered that they compensate for them with arguments of image and impact. The physicality of these digital celebrities is prioritized over their television skills. Escanes herself acknowledged this in an interview on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio. “I am a very empty entertainment profile,” she said, and she generalized it to the influencers who dedicate themselves to explaining “what clothes they wear and where they have eaten.” Plain and simple. But TV3 chooses them over professional presenters with talent and background. And this reveals a sexism improper for a public television station. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Col·lapse kicked off with Jordi González making an announcement to the audience: “I have agreed with the management of this company that I am happy to do this season, but with one condition: this show is long and I need to rest a little and they have granted me this whim. To rest for a minute and a half every night, because, otherwise, I won't reach old age, do you understand me?” Afterwards, he interacted with the audience with his usual condescension and added that he didn't remember what else he wanted to say. It is understood that the whole thing was an implausible little comedy to try to energize a show that remains as stiff as ever. So many weeks of vacation to start with a Jordi González who already seems to begin tired.

The influencer and presenter of La travessa, Laura Escanes, has reflected on the crisis of influencers in a conversationthis Monday on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio. "I am not a role model nor am I setting an example for anything, I make mistakes so many times. I always say it," states the communicator regarding the impact of her posts, which have almost 2 million followers on Instagram. From her point of view, the debate about the role of influencers is good and she considers that "when you are ignorant or you don't know something 100%, it is better to be quiet". "I am a very empty entertainment profile, really. I cannot give myself that much importance nor can we give so much importance to what an influencer who is dedicated to showing what clothes they have worn and where they have eaten thinks", underlines Escanes.

Sigfrid Gras, director of TV3, admitted in the CCMA control commission that took place this Friday that the removal of a mention of RAC1 in the broadcast of the play Dones de ràdio was an internal error. "It was our mistake," he said. However, he remarked that the management of 3Cat had no knowledge of the alteration of the work and that at no time did they give any instruction regarding it. On September 17th Jordi Basté denounced during the Davantal of El món a RAC1 that during the broadcast of Dones de ràdio on TV3, a mention of RAC1 made by the character played by Àngels Gonyalons had been removed. Specifically, in one scene, Gonyalons' character says: "I host a radio program on one of the country's main stations. It's RAC1, I don't know why I hide it. It's an evening magazine show, where I can do my own thing quite a bit… and have a large audience. I mean that on the radio, I am also the queen." But the phrase "It's RAC1, I don't know why I hide it" was not heard in the recording that TV3 broadcast.

Wednesday is the day for Catalan self-esteem on the TV3 schedule. In prime time it broadcasts the contest Soc i seré, which evaluates the participants' knowledge of Catalan identity, and, subsequently, it broadcasts País d’altura. The documentary format is a kind of Catalunya des de l’aire that has evolved in line with the times we live in. It is no longer necessary to hire a helicopter to see the country from a bird's-eye view because now we have drones, which lower the cost. Nowadays, seeing the landscape from the sky no longer surprises us as much as it did thirty years ago because technology has democratized the possibility of observing the territory as if we were a celestial entity. Both fiction series and true-crimes and documentaries have generalized this visual resource to provide spectacularity. It always has a component of fascination, of a privileged gaze. Adjusting to the title of the program, the image includes small signs on the landscape that indicate the meters of height above sea level, a piece of data that provokes more indifference than curiosity. To break up the aerial flight, interviews with people linked to the area are included. The background music is like a cheap commercial report and there are moments when the editing gives the image little room to breathe and the landscape is fragmented with too much haste.The differential factor of High altitude country is the script. If thirty years ago the voice of actor Jesús Ferrer was limited to providing an informative description with moderate epicness, now humor has been incorporated. Actor David Verdaguer is in charge of reading a text that forces him to be funny in every comment and, of course, in the first person singular. If stories are not told from the 'I' now, it seems they have no value. Navel-gazing is the new proximity. In front of an extraordinary landscape, Verdaguer's slightly cocky intonation proclaims: “If I saw this from the toilet, I wouldn't look at my phone while taking a dump”. Just the image we needed to imagine. Or when flying over the Empordà wetlands, he clarifies: “They are one of the main wetlands in Catalonia, along with the Ebre delta, the Llobregat delta and my father's pillow, which he drools over every nap, which is saying something”. To highlight the beauty of the area, the sentence is forceful: “The Baix Empordà and I have the same problem: we are very attractive”. How funny. We are a country of high altitude and funny people. The script treats us to jokes of such caliber as “Joan de Serrallonga is the Robin Hood sketchy” or “More blocks have been made in La Selva than in the NBA”. The landscape ceases to be the protagonist and the one who conquers the territory is this 'I' of the friendly narrator. It is a very symptomatic aspect of current television and the concept held of the audience. It is this tyranny of humor in the face of the terror that everything might turn out heavy or dull. This need to liven everything up with childish silliness as the only alternative for the viewer to be able to swallow the content.

This week Jordi Basté denounced, in his opening segment of El món a RAC1, the manipulation of the text of the play Dones de ràdio which was broadcast on Monday evening on TV3. At the beginning of the performance, the character of Rosa, played by actress Àngels Gonyalons, mentions that she works at RAC1. Basté's team, knowing the public television's historical reservations regarding the rival station, checked whether that reference to RAC1 had been respected. And they hit the mark. Gonyalons' intervention was mutilated. At the time of writing this article, the censored version can still be found on the 3Cat platform. If you retrieve it, you will be able to observe how, at the beginning of the play, just after Gonyalons' character explains that she hosts a radio program on one of the country's main stations, there is a cutaway shot of actress Sara Diego listening to her colleague that serves to make the cut go unnoticed.

This week marks one year since TV3 premiered the new set for the Telenotícies and launched the 3CatInfo universe. After a large financial investment and months of self-promotion, the renovation was sold as a turning point for the public television news programs. One year later, the results allow us to call that into question. The technical flourishes that seemed like something special have resulted in the same old inertia. There was talk of much more dynamic sets thanks to robotic cameras. The forty-meter screen was supposed to allow for more organic and natural movements from the presenters. After a few shaky tracking shots, the news programs are as static as they were before. Beyond a tacky zoom in the style of Lazarov to kick off the TN migdia, we see no relevant dynamism. To close the Telenotícies, they have to show us the cameras in a wide shot taken with a crane. It seems they show us those huge contraptions to justify the change and the expense. But, for the viewers, visually it has made no difference.While news programs from the most prestigious networks in Europe tend to create more diaphanous and lighter spaces, the new sets are cluttered. The vertical totems cause distortions in proportions, and the step to access them limits movement. A resource that, instead of facilitating the work, has complicated it. It has forced the recording of fragments of the Telenotícies in the news analysis sections because they do not trust that live dynamics can withstand the section without problems. It is logical: errors and blunders are frequent. It was said that the format would allow graphics to be more exportable to mobile screens. An insignificant aspect that is more of a sales argument than a practical and tangible reality. The graphic design has already become outdated and in the set there is a saturation of semiotics. They want to give so many messages that the set is nonsense. On one hand, the view over Barcelona. Above, planet Earth. On the side, the projection of orange human shadows that simulate a newsroom moving in an unsettling way behind the presenters. What sense does it make to falsify reality in a news program that must convey truth? It was also announced that in the new stage, the editions would be more differentiated. The TN comarques was supposed to have “more practical contribution and experiences that would inspire”. But, for the moment, we see almost the same thing as in the TN migdia. One of the two great stars of the Telenotícies, Raquel Sans, who was taking on a new role giving more weight to the weekend evenings, has disappeared for four months. She has been on sick leave after participating in La travessa VIP, a program with precarious audience. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.3CatInfo, meanwhile, conveys the poverty it was already dragging along. It still looks God-forsaken, with some poorly edited news bulletins and that feeling of a boring, inhospitable, and lonely workspace. A year later, the change does not seem to justify the investment. More smoke and mirrors than television results.

On the afternoon of September 11, TV3 dedicated a special to live coverage of the demonstrations for independence throughout Catalonia. After half an hour of preliminary news, they sent viewers who wished to remain connected to the Diada to 3CatInfo. TV3 prioritized the broadcast of the apocalyptic film El rastre del llop, a Catalan-produced dystopia that transported us to the end of the world. The vaccine from a fascist government had made the population sick amidst a desolate landscape destroyed by a terrible drought. It seemed like a way of telling us that there is always something worse. Meanwhile, just in case, a sign with huge letters kept scrolling across the bottom of the screen reminding the audience that coverage of the demonstrations was taking place on the news channel. At eight in the evening, TV3 recovered the spirit of the day with the live broadcast of the institutional act of the Diada from the National Theatre of Catalonia. It was a very elegant and poetic gala, well calculated, which paid tribute in a very pertinent way to the fifty years of the Sant Boi day of 1976. The ceremony even included this year's breakthrough artist, Naim Smaili, author of the Mambo d’en Patufet. The organization did not dare to commission any of his versions of the traditional songbook and he read us a poem by Josep Vallverdú.But either the people in charge of the institutional gala fell short or those at TV3 miscalculated the end time of the event. When it ended, there were still thirteen minutes left until the start of the Telenotícies vespre and the channel did not seem to have the continuity prepared. We viewers spent almost a quarter of an hour mesmerized by an endless festival of advertising. We swallowed up to fifteen promotions for the channel. We saw the long self-promotion ad for 3Cat twice in the same break. We also saw the promotion for the 30 minuts episode on Ceuta twice. They broadcasted the promotion for the Oscar-winning films of the summer Saturdays twice, which was already a bit out of season. And they advertised the broadcast of the play Dones de ràdio on Canal33 up to three times. It was as if the public television had become stuck in a kind of infinite self-referential loop. In thirteen minutes, only six commercial ads to cushion that strange impasse of self-promotions. The return of Raquel Sans to the Telenotícies after many months without the presenter had a disturbing prelude, in which the channel seemed to have lost control. These are circumstances that convey a certain neglect of the broadcast and little capacity for foresight. A television station that is not very precise in its live broadcasts and leaves a feeling of internal lack of coordination, where unforeseen events and blunders are increasingly common. Just like the country, TV3 has seen better Diades.

Although 3Cat's daily programs have already started the season this week, the public television station presented some of its main bets for this season this Tuesday. This year, the common thread is fiction, represented among others by three premiere titles, and entertainment, with novelties such as the return of Crackòvia, the sports parody program, which will return to the platform starting in October.

This week TV3 began airing the promotional spot to let us know that next Monday the daily programs are finally returning. That is to say, beyond the Telenotícies, which have run all summer, the entire regular schedule and the usual presenters are returning. The ad, in a montage of phrases from different programs and series, begins by saying: "We are back! It's intense!" Well yes, it is intense that in the first week of September the public television is still in vacation mode when the rest of the channels and media stars of the competition have already returned to work and routine. TV3, in no hurry. After a very intense summer informatively, they haven't even started Els Matins. A good part of the audience has already picked up their work dynamics, but the TV has its own rhythm. It even causes a certain jet lag to see the summer version of Atrapa’m si pots with a beach-themed set while the viewers are already thinking about the Puríssima long weekend and the Christmas holidays. The promo says: "Returning has its thing. It's knowing what day you are living in. [...] Recovering the rhythm. Seeing familiar faces again". Well, it is about time, yes. Because beyond the Telenotícies, TV3 has been left without faces. Canned programming that has abused British series as filler. It has also become clear that the 3Cat platform does not have the capacity to worthily and interestingly nourish TV3's programming during the holidays. The Onze of Esport3, the football space scorned by the management during the last season, has managed to surpass TV3 in viewers. The audience appreciated seeing that there was live life on the other side of the screen.The day of the solar eclipse now seems like a mirage, a dream. The network kept reminding us and preparing us for the phenomenon months in advance, summoning us in front of the screen on August 12th. At TV3, few events have received the anticipation, involvement, insistence, enthusiasm, and deployment of resources that they invested in this natural spectacle. But it was a flash in the pan. After that festival of connections, professionals, and excitement, the TV returned to being deserted and in a lethargic state.For too many years, public television has interpreted summer with parameters of disconnection from the audience that no longer align with reality. People are on vacation, but that does not mean they disconnect from media current events or screens. The television summer is as if time stood still. The bar for quality and proximity is lowered. Second-rate television. It is not even used to experiment with new formats, or to give opportunities to the network's professionals to assume different and more responsible roles. Except for the News, it is a television that closes in the summer. Which is a way of saying that there are months when it is not necessary.

This September, Sigfrid Gras's term as director of TV3 ends, pending whether the Corporation's governing council renews it for two more years. Taking advantage of the end of the season, we review how this season has gone and the future plans for this public television.

For a couple of years now, TV3 has found the key to surviving summers: British series. When the holidays arrive and Com si fos ahir says goodbye until the new term – this year the final episode will be broadcast this Monday in prime time – the public television's schedule is filled with English fictions. They are not strictly new, as most of them premiered years ago in their country of origin, but they usually yield good audience results, as demonstrated at the time by Dr. Martin or The Durrells. This summer TV3 is repeating the strategy with the following series: