Antena Archives - usatoday24

Antena 3 does not have Pasapalabra’s El Rosco, but it continues to destroy its substitute. Telecinco wants to fix it in court

July 10, 2026 by usatoday24

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. In Xataka | Telecinco has ‘El Rosco’ but does not have ‘Pasapalabra’. Antena 3 has ‘Pasapalabra’ but does not have ‘El Rosco’

18 years ago he went viral for his famous “I’ve messed it up.” Now Antena 3 has paid him 50,000 euros to turn it into a meme

July 3, 2026 by usatoday24

Spain repeated the phrase “I have messed it up” with an unmistakable Madrid accent for almost two decades, being very clear about the origin (a young lifeguard whose intervention in the Antena 3 news program had gone viral on the Internet), but perhaps without knowing the true scope of the joke. The Provincial Court of Madrid has just set the effects of one of our most famous memes at 50,000 euros. The sentence. The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced on May 5 Atresmedia to compensate the woman who starred in the video for “La he liado parda” with 50,000 euros. The court raised the amount set in the first instance, which had been 40,000 euros, and rejected the appeal presented by the audiovisual group. The resolution also orders the removal of the recordings from all Atresmedia platforms and prohibits their reuse in similar circumstances. What happened. The origin of the video is in the summer of 2008: an Antena 3 interview with a young lifeguard after an incident with chemicals in a swimming pool in San Sebastián de los Reyes, where she utters the phrase that would become a classic of Spanish humor. The original interview, protected by the right to information, is outside the sentence. What the sentence punishes is subsequent reuse: The condemnation also extends to La Sexta, Onda Cero and Europa FM, stations from the same group that continued to exploit the recording for years in comedy programs and compilations. The demand. The woman filed the lawsuit in 2021, after verifying that her voice and image continued to circulate without her permission. more than a decade later from that afternoon at the pool. There is an episode that gives an idea of the scope and consequences of the video: years after the recording, some police officers, upon identifying her, came to comment among themselves “we are here with the one who has gotten into trouble.” It is just an anecdote that allows us to guess the pernicious reach of a video that went viral without the woman’s permission: it took her several years to return to work, it was an ordeal for her to see her image on television, she found herself wearing t-shirts with her face on it and she even had problems developing her profession almost a decade later, due to anxiety attacks, hospitalizations and medical leave. Who pays for the meme. The ruling does not hold Atresmedia responsible for the original viralization of the video, which attributed to the dynamics of the internet and social networks. The damage is “serious” in moral terms, although it is not entirely attributable to the chain. What he does attribute to him is the decision to continue broadcasting that material for years in his own programs, with massive audiences, when there was no longer any informative justification. Atresmedia is not planned appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court Other victims of memetics. The case of the Madrid lifeguard is, of course, not the first. The Star Wars Kid dates back to 2002, and his fame began when, at the age of 14, he recorded himself imitating a Star Wars lightsaber combat. A colleague found the tape, uploaded it to the Internet and the video became one of the first big virals on the internet. As a result, the boy suffered bullying, had to change schools and received psychiatric treatment. His family sued the colleagues responsible, claiming around $250,000 and reached an out-of-court settlement in 2006. Years later, he explained that a crime would have given him more legal protection than a viral video without his consent, since juvenile laws did not contemplate that scenario at that time, which was not yet known as cyber bullying. Victims in Spain. In Spain, the perhaps best-known case is that of Álvaro Muñoz, the 12-year-old boy who burst into unexpected racist comments when talking about tranquility is what is sought in the summer pools. He suffered his corresponding share of bullying and harassment when his address was made public, he received 17 complaints of racism and spent five years going to juvenile court. Recently has announced that he had regretted the comments and was entering a seminar, closing this circle of Celtiberia Memes. Luckily not all the protagonists of youth memes in Spain are broken toys: Miquel Montoro, the boy from “Host, piles”has become influencer of the rural world with social media accounts that exceed 400,000 subscribers. And José Gómez, who uttered the glorious phrase “You can’t live off petanque” has ended up becoming world champion of the discipline. The meme as a meat grinding machine. Researcher Limor Shifman defines memes, in her book ‘Memes in Digital Culture’as units of digital content created, imitated and transformed with the awareness of belonging to the same shared pattern. This is what explains why “La he liado parda” survived for so long: it stopped being the testimony of a specific person and became a reusable piece, without the need to reference the original event. The ruling recognizes, in some way, this mechanism: the magistrates distinguish between the legitimate informative use of the interview and its subsequent reuse for entertainment purposes, which they consider an interference in the right to one’s own image. Journalist Jon Ronson describe Similar processes occur when digital lynchings take place: the target loses its personal context and begins to function as a symbol of the transgression it represents, almost as if it were a company that has been involved in a public relations disaster and not a person with a life behind it. In this case, that symbol was not just constructed by anonymous users: the network itself that recorded the original interview fueled its circulation for more than a decade. In Xataka | When a town found a dead whale on its beaches, it decided to dynamite it. 55 years later they still celebrate it

Telecinco has just bought the rights to ‘El Rosco’ from ‘Pasapalabra’. The only problem is that ‘Pasapalabra’ is from Antena 3

May 28, 2026 by usatoday24

Among many other things that have happened in recent years with ‘Pasapalabra’, Mediaset paid a fine of 73 million euros for broadcasting the program without having the rights, lost the program in 2019 and has been watching for six agonizing years how Antena 3 turned it into the most watched contest in Spain. Now, Telecinco announces that it has El Rosco back. The only thing missing is everything else. Back to Mediaset. This Wednesday, Mediaset España confirmed in a very brief press release (consisting, in fact, of a single sentence, which could be interpreted as that Telecinco is not yet completely clear about its plans), that it is preparing “a new program that will include El Rosco as the final and main element.” we already knew that the Supreme Court had forced Antena 3 to withdraw that test from ‘Pasapalabra’, and abundant rumors were already circulating that approximately a year and a half ago Telecinco had closed the agreement to recover the test, conditional on the courts ruling in favor of the Dutch company MC&F, owner of the rights. High hierarchies. To get an idea of how coveted the Rosco is, you only have to keep one thing in mind: the new agreement between Mediaset and MC&F was negotiated directly by Alessandro SalemCEO of the audiovisual group. What Mediaset has acquired is the license to use El Rosco: the circle of letters, the dynamic of “passing the word”, the repetition of unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. What it has not acquired is ‘Pasapalabra’ in its entirety: the full format of the contest belongs to ITV, which maintains its current contract with Antena 3. That is, the new Telecinco program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor replicate the tests prior to Rosco. The importance of Rosco. All these shenanigans to acquire a test and not a program, without a doubt, put a question on the table: what is the true drawing power of Rosco alone if it does not have the previous forty minutes that generate tension and familiarize us with the contestants. That is the task that Mediaset now has before it: to build a program of prior tests that firmly support the star challenge. The fine. Telecinco does not come to this acquisition of Rosco with the joy of teenage boyfriends. The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Mediaset to pay 73.2 million euros to ITV for broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ without authorization between 2012 and 2019. The figure was increased considerably over the initial calculation of 44.3 million because the court estimated that the advertising revenue generated had been higher than those calculated in the first instance. Furthermore, the resolution recognized the “carryover effect”: the indirect benefit that the contest brought to the news and to the prime time later, which increased the main compensation by another 233,134 euros for that specific concept. Delicate moment. The Rosco announcement comes at the worst time in Telecinco’s recent history. The channel closed 2025 with a 9.5% annual quotathe worst record in its history for the fourth consecutive year. December 2025 marked an 8.4% share, the worst month in the regular season of his entire career. January 2026 was even more brutal: 8.5% and its worst start to the yearbelow the aggregate of the autonomous chains. The chain has been chaining minimums since July 2025, and they have taken brutal cost cutting measures such as merge the set of Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro. How Rosco affects audiences. ‘Pasapalabra’ is the most watched daily program on Spanish television for the sixth consecutive year, with an average share of 18.3% in the 2024/2025 season and a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025. But above all, El Rosco is the mechanism that keeps the viewer glued to Antena 3 until the nightly news. And whoever reaches the news program goes to ‘El Hormiguero’. Telecinco does not have anything comparable in that segment, but El Rosco as the driving force of a new contest would be a good way to fight Antena 3 at the time of day when the largest audience drags towards the final stretch of the day. Meanwhile, Antena 3 can continue broadcasting the already recorded episodes of ‘Pasapalabra’ that include El Rosco, until they receive official notification. Hectic times are coming in the afternoons of traditional television. In Xataka | Four years of historic audience lows: Telecinco is looking for oxygen this summer and its idea is to recycle presenters and formats

Antena 3 has been broadcasting the Rosco from ‘Pasapalabra’ for 26 years as if it were theirs. And justice has just put an end to it

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Is the most watched program on Spanish television. And he faces a considerable problem. It is a topic that affects not its mechanics, but its most iconic and recognizable moment: those final minutes in which two contestants review the alphabet against the clock. The Supreme Court has ratified that this circle of letters was never owned by Antena 3, and in fact, its true owners have been waiting for decades for the courts to agree with them. The time has come. The sentence. The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its resolution on April 30 and made it public on May 21, 2026. The ruling confirms the ruling of the Provincial Court of Barcelona and dismisses the appeals of Atresmedia and ITV Studios, producer of the program, concluding that El Rosco is a work protected by intellectual property whose ownership corresponds to the Dutch company MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution CV The sentence requires the cessation of broadcast of Rosco and a compensation of 50,000 euros for moral damages. Delete ‘Pasapalabra’. In fact, there are a detail in the sentence which is more impressive on practical levels for the average viewer than the fine itself: the sentence imposes the destruction of all recordings of programs that include El Rosco. Although this “destruction” comes from article 139 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, whose purpose is to remove copies from commercial exploitation (DVDs, platform licenses, sales to third parties), it does not necessarily refer to the chain’s internal archive, that is, ‘Pasapalabra’ is not going to become lost media. In practice, however, you cannot license, sell or distribute the program in streaming. If Antena 3 had, for example, episodes available on Atresplayer, they would have to be removed. The defense of Atresmedia. According to Atresmedia, El Rosco was a generic idea (questions ordered by the letters of the alphabet), and the ideas are not protectable by law. However, the Supreme Court, in reaching its decision, emphasizes that the test enjoys “sufficient originality” because it reflects free creative decisions of its authors, a “own uniqueness” that distinguishes it from other games based on the alphabet, and above all, it alludes to its visual configuration: the circular donut, the dynamic of passing and returning to unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. This idea was born in the Italian version of ‘Pasapalabra’, in 1999. As arrive El Rosco to Spain without rights. It is to that point in history that we must go back to understand the dispute. The game was created by two Italians, Reto Luigi Pianta and René Mauricio Loeb, as part of a program called ‘End Game 21×100’, which was later merged with the Italian version of ‘The Alphabet Game’, called ‘Passaparola’, at the end of that decade. The creators assigned their rights to the Dutch production company MC&F. Until then, no conflict. The problem came when ITV began licensing Pasapalabra to other European networks, including El Rosco in the package, as if it were part of the original format, something that MC&F has been calling illegal for decades. That is to say, Antena 3 has broadcast for 26 years a format that included a piece that was not its own, nor the person who sold it to it. When Telecinco also lost ‘Pasapalabra’. It is not the first time that the Supreme Court has reorganized the Spanish television map on account of this program. In 2019, the Supreme Court forced Telecinco to stop broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ following the lawsuit brought by ITV in 2010 over the rights to the full format. Following its victory in court, ITV assigned the rights to Atresmedia, and Antena 3 resumed broadcasting on May 13, 2020. Since then the program has not stopped growing. The importance of ‘Pasapalabra’. The contest is the cornerstone on which all of Antena 3’s late-night programming is based, currently the most viewed chain of Spanish television. In the 2024/2025 season, ‘Pasapalabra’ reached an average share of 18.3% of sharewith a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025, consolidating itself for the sixth consecutive year as the most watched daily program on Spanish television. And from there people do not turn away from television: El Rosco is the anchor that drags viewers towards the nightly news and towards the prime time of ‘The Anthill‘. What is the future of ‘Pasapalabra’. The ruling does not eliminate ‘Pasapalabra’ from Antena 3. ITV’s contract with Atresmedia remains in force and the program can continue on the air. What it cannot do is include El Rosco. Program sources have confirmed that Atresmedia will maintain the broadcast “normally” until receiving official notification of the ruling and knowing the deadlines for the process. From there, the possible paths are to negotiate directly with MC&F to obtain a use license, design a new final test to replace the Rosco or wait for ITV to reach an agreement with MC&F. Problem: None of the three options are quick and all involve altering a program that, as it stands right now, is working like a charm. Mediaset’s trick. And here comes the twist: apparently Approximately a year ago, Mediaset closed an agreement with MC&F to acquire the rights to Rosco, conditional on the Supreme Court resolving the dispute in the terms that have finally become known. With the sentence now final, Mediaset can create a program around Rosco. But that program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor have the mechanics of the Antena 3 program. In other words, if it is confirmed that Mediaset can use Rosco, the most famous program on television is now divided: its name and structure is from one network, its best-known test from another. In any case, we are going to see changes in the future, predictably in Access that Antena 3 now dominates. And whoever controls Access… controls the audiences. In Xataka | Four years of historic audience lows: Telecinco is looking for oxygen this summer and its idea is to recycle presenters and formats

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