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2007 witnessed the fourth series of Intervilles International since
its inception in 2005 (there having been two series in one year during 2006).
This year, teams from China, Kazakhstan and the USA lined up to try to knock
the highly successful Russian competitors off their stride... but they
achieved only limited success in this objective.
Meanwhile, Spanish fans of Grand Prix del Verano were
treated to a return of the series which has last been made and produced in
2005. Original broadcast Radio and Televisión Española (RTVE) had decided
against transmitting further series - possibly due to the poor audience
figures recorded in 2005 - and the baton was passed to La Federación de
Organismos de Radio y Televisión Autonómicos (FORTA), an association of different regional channels. Compared to the
RTVE, FORTA was a relatively young radio and television service, having been
founded in 1989, and with more modest expectations in audience terms, they
welcomed the addition of Grand Prix del Verano to their collective
bosom. The greatest financial support came from regional broadcasters
Telemadrid (Madrid) and Canal 9 (Valencia), and the transmissions were also
carried by Castilla-La Mancha TV (Castilla-La Mancha), IB3 (Baleiric Islands),
7RM (Región de Murcia), Aragón TV (Aragón) and Canal Extremadura (Extremadura), as well as
one channel not affiliated with FORTA, Televisión Castilla y León (Castilla y
León). Canal Sur 1, in the autonomous region of Andalusia, finally decided not
to broadcast Grand Prix because of the high economic cost involved in
the production of the programme.
Ramón García, the regular presenter of the TVE version, was
not available for the relaunched Grand Prix, so Bertín Osborne (who had
appeared in the series previously as a Team Patron in the 2004 Grand Prix
Final) was chosen to take on the role in his absence.
The first programme to be broadcast in the new run was a
special edition contested by children from the two founding communities most
heavily involved in the series' financing: Madrid and Valencia. This was of
course inspired by the Peque Prix run by TVE between 1998 and 2000.
On the subject of audience viewing figures, those relating to
the second phase of Grand Prix del Verano may seem poor compared to its
original run on TVE. This is because FORTA was a community of regional
broadcasters and not all regions aired the show. Consequently, while viewing
figures are in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions, the
audience share remained impressive (this was calculated by determining the
percentage of viewers watching Grand Prix in the areas that could
receive it, rather than it being calculated for the whole of Spain). |
