Legal-legislative review of the financing of public Spanish Radiotelevision in entertainment programs

Abstract

On January 1, 2010, Law 8/2009 on the Financing of the Spanish Radio and Television Corporation came into force in Spain. This legislation proposed a new way of financing public television in which, in theory, there was no room for advertising spaces. However, ten years later, the strictness of compliance with this legislation is not totally strict, even more so in programs with a high audience. The objective of this work is twofold: on the one hand, to verify the perception of the population under study of the application of this legislative policy and, on the other hand, to verify, from a legal point of view, the effective application of this law. The methodology is qualitative, combining the scientific literature review and content analysis; with a corpus of study that ranges from its launch in 2013 to the ninth season in 2021. The results point to a covert breach of the legislation that occurs on a repetitive basis, becoming the modus operandi of this TV program since it began its broadcast. The contribution of the investigation is of particular value insofar we identify the presence of commercial interests in the context of the Spanish state radio-television medium, which should be governed exclusively by its public function responsibility. Among the conclusions, we highlight the reasons that confirm the illegality of the case and propose alternative formulas to overcome this situation.