‘Informe Semanal’, the oldest program on national television, turns 50 years old

A special broadcast from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on Saturday, April 1 and a party at the Teatro Real will serve to commemorate the 50th anniversary of 'Informe Semanal', the oldest program on national television and the oldest of its kind in Europe.

On March 31, 1973, he was born Weekly Report, a format dedicated to reviewing the international, national, social and cultural news taking as main references “reflection, context, analysis and careful execution.” 50 years later, the program is still going strong and continues to represent the present and future of RTVE. In the words of Elena Sánchez Caballero, interim president of RTVE: “Currently, in a context in which information is consumed very quickly, the program continues to be a reference for in-depth information, with calm, analysis and reflection.”

Numerous RTVE figures participated in the event in which it was announced how this half century of life will be celebrated. Among the speakers, the RTVE news content director, Josep Vilar, has highlighted that Weekly Report It is "a way of telling current events with reflection, a ritual. It is journalism of trade, of experience, of pause. It is the journalism that we try to do in RTVE's Information Services." On the other hand, for Jose Carlos Gallardo, director of non-daily News on TVE and current director of the program, the format is “a collective work of many hands”, among them “women who dared to pave the way for so many figures in journalism” who will be reflected in the hour-long 50th anniversary special, presented by Ana Blanco and recorded at the Guggenheim, which will be broadcast this Saturday by La 1.

50 years of Weekly Report, from the Guggenheim

Weekly Report will leave the studio to celebrate his birthday at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on Saturday April 1, a place that, for RTVE, represents “the transformation of the country, society and the program itself, and also the future.”

The special will start with the special headline of 50 years and a message from the queen Joy, which began its journey on TVE presenting the program in the summer of 2000. Among other contents, it will include the testimony of Carmen Sarmiento, the only woman on the program's initial team, who addressed information from a gender perspective, avoiding censorship and opening paths to many other informants who would follow her. Virginia Martín and Dunia Etura, professors of Journalism at the University of Valladolid, who have studied the role that reporters like them played in the normalization of the new roles that women were acquiring since before democracy and about the contribution of Weekly Report to the democratic process.

There will also be an extensive report on How has it changed when it comes to telling the news in these 50 years?, especially on topics such as politics, feminism or the environment. This block will be addressed with the testimony of journalists such as Rosa María Calaf, Diego Carcedo, Pepa Bueno, Lorenzo Milá, Baltasar Magro, Mari Carmen García Vela, among others.

The special will also remember the Weekly Reports as an adult impact throughout these years and an analysis with professionals who were in front of and behind the cameras, like Rosa María Artal in the fall of the Berlin Wall; Evaristo Canete, who recorded the unforgettable images of the girl Omayra and the Nevado del Ruiz volcano; or Vicente Romero and the Kigali Hotel.

The genesis of Weekly Report

Weekly Report was born on March 31, 1973. Pedro Erquicia was commissioned to get it up and running in just a month. He noticed the 60 minutes of the American network CBS with the aim of addressing the information from reports from all areas, although, at the beginning, few national political issues were discussed. At least, openly, because the team managed to address issues such as divorce or abortion, telling how these issues were in other countries. For this reason, from its beginnings, international coverage stood out.

“Mirror of the desire for change, thermometer of the transition, reflection of democracy,” according to RTVE, Weekly Report has sought to show the transformation of a country and a society in continuous evolution. Defined as a program that was born with public service vocation and set the agenda, especially during the time when TVE was the only television, it has managed to accumulate more than a hundred awards and distinctions.

Finally, RTVE also highlights the role of the program as reporter school and as “almost from the beginning” the role of the director was introduced in the script to enhance the audiovisual image.