The General Media Study (EGM in Spanish) is a method used to measure media audiences. It's especially valued among radio stations.
It releases its results quarterly and the latest figures have been made public. They answer who rules sports radio at night: El Larguero from SER or El Partidazo from COPE.
They are two true giants of sports information that compete daily to get the best audience numbers. The latest results haven't pleased Cope. While El Larguero gains listeners, El Partidazo loses them.
The EGM has shown that El Larguero is back enjoying the nighttime radio leadership by gaining 11% more listeners, reaching 733,000. El Partidazo from Cope, on the other hand, loses the lead, shedding 250,000 listeners and settling at 641,000.
Juanma Castaño is Outraged by the EGM Results
At Cope, they didn't see it coming. Juanma Castaño, the program's head, expressed it with a tantrum:
"According to the EGM, this program has lost 250,000 listeners in months, three Bernabéus. All this in months," he said live on his show.
He added that he's convinced the EGM results don't match reality: "We handle the data. We haven't lost a single viewer on YouTube.
"There hasn't been an exodus. In podcasts, we've smashed the numbers, our own numbers, which are already the best in Spain for a sports program.
"On the COPE app, our records are more or less the same as last season's. The end-of-season ones when the League, the Champions... were being played."
"When There's a Drop, We Notice and Analyze It"
"The interactions we receive are the same or more than when we were leaders. We haven't noticed a drop. On social media, it's already overwhelming how things are going.
"If we had noticed a serious loss of listeners, at some point, one of these indicators would have lit up an alarm light telling us: 'Hey, something's happening.'
"We experience this at the end of some days because we have a screen here, we say: 'Today there was a 7% drop. Oh, damn, tomorrow's a holiday in the Valencian Community.' When we notice a small drop, we analyze why that drop comes," said Juanma Castaño.
"If we had noticed this brutal decline, we would've seen it. We haven't noticed anything. To lose 250,000 listeners, the explanation would be that no one answered our call, interactions...
"I insist that this doesn't question whether El Larguero or SER has won. Or whether other programs in this floor are doing well, poorly, or okay. There's no indication that we're in a situation of listener exodus.
"If only the EGM tells us and in such a brutal way... It's an incomprehensible drop."
"You've been Swimming and Swimming for Years. And When You Reach the Shore..."
"I have a lot of respect for the work of the EGM people. But they should have such responsibility that, when there's a study of these characteristics and they see that the rest of the indicators don't support it, they should review or cross-check it in another way."
"Either the data the EGM gave in July was wrong, or this one is wrong. It's impossible that we had almost 900,000 listeners before and now 600-something thousand. For a program of this kind, it's impossible.
You can lose. Everyone loses. We're going to lose much more than we win.
But this... They give you a slap... You've been swimming for years and years, and when you reach, boom, back to the shore. We're back where we started. It's absolutely unbelieveable."
"I'm convinced that they're the same or practically the same. Something strange has happened."
The EGM is prepared through individual surveys conducted among the media-consuming public.