During the visit, Chairman of the Grupo Antena 3 Board José Manuel Lara and the group's CEO, Silvio González, gave King Juan Carlos and other selected guests, including Liz Mohn, a guided tour of the channel's facilities. They visited the newsroom and the channel's digital hub, the News Operations Centre. The King listened intently as the Group's Technical Director, José María Casaos, explained the challenges posed by digitisation and talked about the new opportunities which have arisen as a result of digital technology as well as the group's two digital-terrestrial channels, Antena Neox and Antena Nova.
Liz Mohn, King Juan Carlos, Queen Sophia, Gerhard Zeiler (from left to righ)
Antena 3 first aired at 20:00 on 25 January 1990 and has since played a pivotal role in shaping the television landscape in Spain. In April 1993 it was the first Spanish channel to broadcast a head-to-head debate between the candidates from the two leading parties for the prime-ministerial elections and in 2002 became the first private television channel in Spain to broadcast the football World Cup, in so doing attracting millions of viewers. In 2005, the news programme Antena 3 Noticias was the first to achieve higher ratings than a public television news programme, namely TVE's Telediario.
In its first year, Antena 3 notched up an audience share of 9.1 per cent; this figure grew steadily until, in 1996, the channel achieved a record high share of 26 per cent. Since then, the launch of countless new channels and the associated audience fragmentation has resulted in this figure now dropping to 12.3 per cent. In the target group of viewers aged 16 to 54, the channel was a market leader with an average share of 15.4 per cent.
Liz Mohn and King Juan Carlos
Antena 3 is also celebrating its 20th birthday in its schedule with a number of its past and present hit shows, including the talk show Pánico en el plató (Panic on Set) and a remake in the form of a TV-movie of the series La última Guardia (Last on Duty). The channel will also be broadcasting En Antena 3 cumplimos 20 años (Antena 3 Celebrates 20 Years), a special programme on the channel's highlights over the past 20 years.
Chairman of the Grupo Antena 3 Board José Manuel Lara, King Juan Carlos I, Queen Sophia, Nieves Goicoechea (Secretary of State for Communications) and Antena 3 CEO Silvio González (from left to right)
RTL Group has held a stake in Grupo Antena 3 since 2000, their current shareholding standing at 21.5 per cent. RTL Group is represented on the Grupo Antena 3 Board by the CEO of Groupe M6, Nicolas de Tavernost, and Elmar Heggen, CFO of RTL Group. Elmar Heggen also chairs the Board's Audit Committee.