Antena 3 has been leading the audience in Spain for five consecutive seasons, and a good part of that dominance was built letter by letter, in the Rosco of ‘Pasapalabra’. In May, a court took away the iconic final test of his Access talisman. And three weeks after the channel replaced it with a very similar test, Mediaset intends to demonstrate that the change is not legal either. That’s why, will sue Atresmedia by AlaZ, the new final test of ‘Pasapalabra’.
The judicial decision. Last May 21the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed that the Rosco format belongs to MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution, and not to ITV Studios or Atresmedia. The ruling ratified a previous ruling from the Provincial Court of Barcelona in 2022 and forced Antena 3 to stop broadcasting that specific test, although the rest of ‘Pasapalabra’ could continue on the air.
It is a legal dispute that comes from afar. ‘Pasapalabra’ was born in 1996 as an adaptation of the British format ‘The Alphabet Game’, from ITV, although the final test grew on its own until it became an element with its own identity. In 2019, Telecinco already lost a similar legal battle against ITV for the global rights to the program and had to withdraw it from its schedule: ITV and MC&F have licensed it separately, and that has generated problems. Atresmedia recovered the competition in May 2020, but the judicial shadow over Rosco was never completely cleared, until this year’s ruling.
The substitution. On June 19, Antena 3 replaced El Rosco with AlaZ, an adaptation of the Swiss contest ‘DallAZetA’. Mediaset, meanwhile, with the exploitation rights of Rosco finally under its belt, has begun to prepare its own contest built on that test, predictably for Telecinco. Its own ‘Pasapalabra’… which cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ or imitate the rest of the tests. The problem is that in Mediaset’s opinion, Antena 3 continues to culminate ‘Pasapalabra’ with a Rosco that cannot be Rosco.
The resemblance. The company supports its claim on the Supreme’s own definition of Rosco: two or more contestants compete against the clock answering questions whose answers follow alphabetical order. Under this criterion, Mediaset maintains that AlaZ retains almost all the essential elements of the Rosco: two contestants, a tour of the 25 letters of the alphabet, accumulated time from previous tests during the program, a cumulative jackpot and visual signaling of successes, errors and pending questions almost identical to that of the Rosco, only in a line instead of a circle.
The differences. However, there are also details that distinguish both tests: The AlaZ system is more closed and strategic and the contestant can no longer give probable answers, but must guess an exact word whose length is revealed by dashes, in the style of ‘The Hanged Man’. The stopwatch also changes, from the usual 85 seconds in the Rosco to 110, and a penalty is introduced for receiving clues that does not exist in the Rosco.
Of course, for Mediaset none of these adjustments alter the essentials of the game. The company states that “only minor differences have been introduced to make something substantially the same.” The comparison it offers contrasts these changes with the real differences of the original Swiss format, where a single contestant competes, there is no accumulated jackpot and each program is independent of the previous one. For MC&F and Mediaset, AlaZ is more similar to Rosco than the Swiss contest from which Atresmedia bought the license.
The hearings. Since Atresmedia recovered ‘Pasapalabra’ in May 2020, the chain went from an average share of 11.7% in 2019 to around 13.9% in the following years, consolidating a leadership which has been maintained for five consecutive seasons. The most important thing is the drag effect that ‘Pasapalabra’ generates on the network’s news programs and ‘El Hormiguero’. And things have not changed with the loss of Rosco.
The premiere of AlaZ, on June 19, was already a hit: the program signed 21.9% of share and 1.6 million viewers on average, with the final test shooting up to a 28.3% share in its closing minute. The new mechanics improved the average that Rosco had been recording that same season by three points. The first full week confirmed the trend, averaging 17.1% share. And that sometimes competes with the World Cup, a sporting event that has devoured the Telecinco audiences (although in July, the only weak days for Antena 3 have coincided with free-to-air World Cup matches). Without that competition, the program continues to exceed the 18% quota, a level similar to what it already had. Antena 3 has no one to complain, with or without Rosco.
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