On Friday, 25 September 2026, ¡De viernes! drew 1,130,000 viewers and an 18.7% share after Belén Esteban returned to the programme. It led the evening against La Voz on Antena 3.
The result also pushed ¡De viernes! above one million viewers for the first time since 2024. Several Spanish television outlets called the 18.7% share one of the programme's best results and a record for the format in its regular Friday-night slot.
One strong broadcast cannot repair a network. But it can force Mediaset to face a decision made three years ago.
Esteban's audience is striking, but so is the wider picture: much of the television world Mediaset tried to leave behind is already back inside Telecinco. Jorge Javier Vázquez presents El diario de Jorge in the afternoon. Terelu Campos and Lydia Lozano are linked to ¡De viernes!, while Rosa Benito appears in reality-related content.
Esteban has returned as a proven audience driver for a major prime-time broadcast. The pieces are there, but Telecinco has yet to decide how to put them together.
In May 2023, Mediaset España's new leadership moved against Telecinco's previous identity. After Paolo Vasile's departure, the group confirmed that Sálvame would end. It also announced that Ana Rosa Quintana would leave the mornings and take charge of the afternoon schedule after the summer. Telecinco closed 25 September with a 10.6% daily share, well above its September average of about 8.3%, information from audience reports cited by El Mundo and ElPlural.
The change went beyond one programme. It replaced a programming system built around recognisable personalities and stories that moved across the channel.
Sálvame had been on air for fourteen years and was already showing clear signs of exhaustion. Its audience had fallen below its best levels. The case for reform was real.
The strategic mistake may have been treating one programme's decline as proof that the identity built around it had expired. Telecinco removed Sálvame but found no alternative with the same recognition to organise its afternoons.
That did not lead to an easy rescue elsewhere. Members of the television family tried to rebuild on another channel, but La familia de la tele on La 1 showed that familiar personalities do not automatically bring their audience with them.
Sálvame was built around Esteban, Jorge Javier, María Patiño, Lydia Lozano and Terelu Campos, but its pull also came from Telecinco's codes, the schedule, internal competition and the bond with viewers.
That distinction matters beyond television. A previous cinema analysis described how a title could become a shared event before its release. Telecinco has now seen a similar effect in another form: one familiar personality turned a routine return into a measurable television event on the channel that made her famous.
Mediaset tested a partial reunion during the summer. De lunes a viernes, presented by Santi Acosta and Beatriz Archidona, brought Lydia Lozano, Terelu Campos, Rosa Benito and Karmele Marchante into the afternoon schedule.
The programme was canceled in September. Ana Rosa's production company reclaimed the slot, while the people involved remained part of Telecinco's wider environment.
Jorge Javier's position makes the next few months a useful testing period. He renewed with Mediaset in 2024 until July 2027 and already hosts El diario de Jorge.
The programme could remain a testimony format. It could add current-affairs and celebrity coverage, drawing contributors from other Telecinco programmes. Esteban's appearances could show whether viewers respond to a new mix instead of a direct revival.
Mediaset does not need to recreate Sálvame exactly as it existed in 2015 or 2020. It could expand El diario de Jorge and connect it with another programme, or build a new afternoon structure around personalities already under contract or linked to the network.
The name is secondary. The real question is whether Telecinco can rebuild a coherent environment where stories and presenters support one another across the schedule.
The 18.7% share proves neither that Sálvame should return nor that a new afternoon would succeed. It does show that Belén Esteban and the codes tied to that earlier Telecinco can still create an event on Telecinco itself.
Mediaset should treat the result as a test of how to build a recognisable present with the people it already has, not a call for simple nostalgia or an unchanged return to the past.
As eldiario.es and other Spanish television outlets have noted, Esteban's return is part of a wider reappearance of figures linked to the Sálvame universe. This was not an isolated booking.
