Sarah Santaolalla has also attended the presentation event of the new La Séptima channel at the Complutense University, discussing the role that, in her opinion, La Séptima should play in a moment of profound transformation of audiovisual consumption. The journalist believes that, far from having lost importance, information is now going through one of its decisive moments. "Although some deny watching television, although some deny that everything is now more digitized, it is perhaps the most important moment for information," she stated.
Santaolalla used recent news as an example to warn of the risks of relying solely on what circulates on social media. "If we let ourselves be carried away by what happens simply and only on social media, we would know nothing" about certain current affairs, she argued, before asserting the role of the media in offering context and depth against the speed of digital content. "We would know nothing about the Mari Carmen decree, we would know nothing about the Sol encampment, and ElXocas would be telling us what score he gives Ester Expósito or any woman," she pointed out. She also used the example of the Pombo sisters to illustrate her argument: "Perhaps the Pombo sisters would be saying that in Ceuta there are many people who are having a very bad time, but they don't tell you that there are 150 dead immigrants and that there are children sleeping on a beach."
The battle for information "without interests, without lies"
For Santaolalla, this difference makes rigor one of La Séptima's main reasons for being. "The rigor of a media outlet, the objectivity of a media outlet, and the commitment to truth and democracy are important," she defended. The journalist placed the new channel in a labor and business context that she considers especially complex for those who do not fit into certain editorial lines. She assured that there are currently "more layoffs than contracts" and maintained that there is an editorial line "quite clear, very conservative and very right-wing" in part of the audiovisual landscape. In her opinion, this situation is difficult to explain in a country of almost 50 million inhabitants, because "there must be some different ones" and they also have the right to receive information from other perspectives. "It's a problem and it's a problem that makes you feel part of the solution or the opposite," she noted.
The journalist explained that her incorporation into the project responds precisely to that need. "The team at La Séptima has found me, and we have met on a path that I believe must be traveled with all the honesty and humility in the world," she stated. Santaolalla also asserted professional commitment to the citizen above any personal exposure: "The commitment to the profession, to the guild, and to the citizen is 100%. It cannot be otherwise." She also called for the role of students and future professionals in the birth of the project. "Not only should La Séptima be born, but you should accompany us in its birth, in its development, in the project. Because we need you," she affirmed. Her call is to find a common space "as democrats, as citizens, as students, as people" and to offer something that, in her words, is not simply "something decent, but something different."
Santaolalla was particularly forceful when speaking about certain news coverages that, in her opinion, cross the limits of journalistic rigor. "I refuse to participate in certain things we are seeing," she assured before referring to recent reports in which, she denounced, an attempt had been made to present Mari Carmen as a criminal. "Have you seen the reports some media have done these days trying to say that Mari Carmen was the criminal? Have you read that Mari Carmen killed Manolete?" she asked the students. The journalist also used a comparison to emphasize what she considered an informational distortion: "We are in this thing, where Bin Laden and Mari Carmen are first cousins." And she concluded: "That cannot happen in a decent media outlet." Against such practices, she defended that informing must mean telling the facts "without interests, without lies" and assured that she puts "her hand in the fire" for her colleagues and for the team so that such situations have no place in La Séptima.
A television that does not end on the television set
The digital dimension also occupies a central place in Santaolalla's conception of the new network. Faced with television understood exclusively as a domestic appliance, the journalist imagines a channel that accompanies the viewer wherever they are. "This TV is not just another channel," she affirmed. She herself gave her own consumption habits as an example: "I practically watch everything on my mobile phone, I no longer turn on the television." The idea is that La Séptima can be followed on any screen, from a mobile phone while waiting for the subway or in a health center to a computer or any other device, even allowing to fast forward, rewind, and follow the live program.
To this possibility will be added, as she explained, a specific strategy on social networks to keep current events in circulation and accompany broadcasts. "Social networks will be perfectly programmed to keep telling, telling, and following live," she pointed out. Santaolalla believes that this combination of television, web, mobile, and networks can provide the project with a different reach than traditional networks. "The ease and reach that this channel will have is not currently matched by any in the audiovisual landscape," she affirmed, extending this logic even to the university environment: "Who hasn't used their laptop watching the program or on the web or anything?" A television, in short, designed to also be outside the television set and accompany the viewer on the screens where they already consume a good part of their content.
Taking advantage of the crisis of other networks to make a niche
The situation that some traditional networks are going through also fuels the expectations with which La Séptima faces its launch. Before going into the figures, the deterioration of certain television formats was pointed out, with special programs, both nocturnal and diurnal, currently moving at shares of 2% and 3%. José Miguel Contreras linked this loss of audience to an increasingly fragmented market and an offer in which "all channels do a bit of the same and repeat the same discourse," a circumstance that, in his opinion, also ends up generating problems in market distribution.
The promoter of La Séptima used the premiere of La Sexta as a reference, which started with barely 0.1% audience. "I have committed that we are going to surpass that mark and if not, I will really retire definitively," he assured jokingly. Contreras also recalled the difficulties that channel had in getting viewers to watch it: from calling an antenna technician and agreeing with neighbors to adapt the antennas to resorting to a soccer match as a claim to force tuning. "We spent 60 million euros to get people to find out and we got 0.1," he recalled.
The scenario he now proposes for La Séptima is very different. Contreras expects the new channel to be able to position itself "above 1, 1.5" from its first stages thanks to a much wider distribution, with presence on DTT and also on YouTube and platforms such as Movistar, Vodafone or Orange. "You have no excuse not to watch it other than you don't feel like it," he joked to the students, claiming that access to the channel will be much simpler than at the birth of La Sexta.
Marta Márquez further raised that expectation, although she previously acknowledged the difficulty of making predictions on television. "The data is very complex on television," she said, before launching her own bet: "I think so, we are going to be at 2.5, 3 quickly." Sarah Santaolalla, on the other hand, approached the audience from a different perspective and downplayed limiting the success of the project solely to the TV data, echoing the phrase of other colleagues. "I don't have an audience, but I have decency," she joked, to then defend that La Séptima "is not just another channel," but a television designed to be consumed "on any screen."
Santaolalla focused on this change of habits: the mobile phone, the subway, a waiting room or even the computer during a class become, as she explained, new spaces to follow current events. The viewer will be able to watch a live program, fast forward or rewind in it and continue monitoring through social networks designed to accompany the broadcast. "The ease and reach that this channel will have is not currently had by any in the audiovisual landscape," she defended, precisely placing one of the main assets of the project in this ability to be present on different screens.