Mediaset hires Carlos Franganillo to lead Telecinco's new commitment to news

Mediaset is going ahead with its changes to give a twist in its information bet. After the signing in October of Francisco Moreno as the new news director after his successful stint at the Canarian regional television, now comes what will be one of the changes of the year: Carlos Franganillo moves from RTVE to Telecinco, according to El Diario and confirmed by this newspaper from sources in the group led by Alessandro Salem. Franganillo had become one of the most recognizable faces and a benchmark in the public entity's news, first as a correspondent and then in his time at Telediario 2, where he arrived in September 2018 to make a place among the audience, a job that had earned him an Iris from the Television Academy or an Ondas award in 2019, among other recognitions.

Franganillo will take over in January from Pedro Piqueras, who at the end of the year will retire from the small screen "by his own decision, communicated and agreed months ago with the company", according to reports from the group. In this way, Piqueras puts an end to a career that he has developed at Mediaset over the last 17 years.

The 43-year-old from Oviedo's leap to Telecinco, which will pit him on Monday to Friday nights against the leader of the strip, Vicente Vallés, on Antena 3, and whoever takes his baton on La 1, adds to Mediaset España's new commitment to its news services, which also includes the renovation of the set and the recovery from January of Noticias Cuatro. For now, Ana Roldán, Franganillo's usual replacement, will be in charge of Telediario 2 from this Monday, since the journalist is currently on vacation, explains TVE. The public entity assures this newspaper that it has not yet decided if the presenter will return to the screen before his jump to Mediaset, or who will be the person who will succeed him permanently in the nightly news of La 1.

Recover Audience

This reinforcement of information in Mediaset is one of the banners of the new management of the group, immersed in a great audience crisis that has caused it to lose the first position in the monthly ranking and currently places it behind Antena 3 and La 1 and without reaching 10% of the average share of the screen. While waiting for these changes to be implemented, Mediaset's channel reached its lowest point in the summer. Francisco Moreno joins the group after Televisión Canaria's coverage of the eruption of the La Palma volcano, which spared no innovative technological resources, attracted the attention of media around the world and won awards such as the 2021 Ondas Award and the 2022 National Television Award. Now Franganillo is the main face of this revolution in Mediaset's news.

RTVE journalist Carlos Franganillo, with the national Ondas television award for the best presenter in 2019.Quique García (efe)

The journalist has a degree in Audiovisual Communication from Nebrija University and in Journalism from CEU San Pablo University. In 2008 he joined RTVE by competitive examination and shortly afterwards he joined the editorial staff of Internacional, covering various events as a special correspondent. His beginnings, however, were in Los desayunos de TVE, a schedule that, as he confessed in 2019, hardened him and was "a crash course in television". In 2011 he began working as a correspondent for the Spanish Television News Services in Moscow, from where he covers, among other news, the fall of the government of Viktor Yanukovych, the occupation and annexation of Crimea and the armed uprisings in Donetsk and Lugansk. He also served as special envoy to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Japan, where he covered the tsunami. In July 2014 he became TVE's correspondent in Washington, replacing Lorenzo Milá, and four years later he returned to Spain to present the second edition of the Telediario. Since then, he has also been in charge of news specials in various national and international electoral events.

"You have to take chamomile from time to time. The discourse of communication can be very toxic. The media have lost their rudder, technology has changed the way we consume information and, in some ways, some people are running amok chasing viewers or readers. I'm not criticizing it, uh, I'm describing it. Many see a way out in positioning themselves in a trench. It's a very toxic dynamic," he said in an interview with EL PAÍS in 2021 when asked about the maelstrom in which he lived day by day.

A self-confessed addict to tortillas and to consulting social networks, Franganillo assured in 2021 that he did not consider the news as a way to climb the RTVE organizational chart. "I can see myself reworking stories," he said. That plan, for now, will have to wait.

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.