La Casa de los Famosos Mexico, the phenomenon that shook the media landscape

La Casa de los Famosos Mexico‘s success on open television had the spin-off effect of a powerful union between the TV and digital worlds in recent years. In addition to being the biggest media phenomenon in the history of that country and reviving the reality show genre since Big Brother (in Mexico), it showed that the open signal is still alive, thanks to a network with the power that TelevisaUnivision has worldwide.

Claudia Benassini, a specialist in restricted TV and digital platforms, mentioned to Expansión magazine some keys that led to the resurgence of the reality show: reinvention with new dynamics, challenges, and tests; emotional stories emotional; fulfill the need to offer light entertainment and, above all, adapting it to the nowadays times, knowing how to leverage on social networks to keep the audience hooked during and after the broadcast.

According to figures produced by EndemolShine Boomdog for TelevisaUnivision, the show reached 21 million viewers on Las Estrellas on open TV, combined with the 5 million hours consumed on ViX and the 40 million digital votes registered in the final; added to this, it reached more than 5 billion video views on social networks; on TikTok alone, it exceeded 15 billion views and 27 million with its official hashtags: #lacasadelosfamososmx 15,900 million; #LCDLFMX 7,500 million, and #LCDLFMéxico 4,300 million.

In advertising, more than 45 brands joined only in the final, most of which followed the reality show during the two months it was on the air. According to public data from TelevisaUnivision and an analysis by the Expansión outlet, ads sales during the broadcast rose 29%, subscriptions to ViX grew 27% in Mexico, and the number of new users exceeded 20 million, similar to the figures reported during the coverage of the World Cup in Qatar.

WENDY GUEVARA, THE MULTI-SCREEN QUEEN
Beyond the numbers in terms of audience, new users on ViX, and advertising sales, the program made visible the power of digital content creators to travel naturally from the online world to the offline world and vice versa. In addition, it opened screens like open TV to unrecognized communities such as the LGBTTTQ+ with the participation of Apio Quijano, a member of the musical group Kabah, and Wendy Guevara, who won in the reality show. She became the first transsexual woman to be part of and win a project like this in the history of Mexican television, casting 18.2 million votes out of 40 million posted during the grand finale.

Guevara is today a digital native who took over the TV screen and thus leads the new generations to a screen little consumed by them, in addition to turning traditional viewers into digital consumers, not only in Mexico but throughout the world thanks to ViX or social networks. Today they applaud that a country with the second highest number of trans-femicides (15 murders of trans women for every 100,000 transgender inhabitants, according to the organization Letter S-) gave the victory to a trans woman in television content.

This combination allowed the winner to increase her presence and number of followers on social networks, which, in just over two months (during the reality show and a week after being crowned the winner), went from 1.6 million (when she entered LCDLF México) to 6.8 million to date. In addition, one of her YouTube accounts, @soywendyguevara1113, reached 1 million subscriptions.

Previously, Guevara had a special participation in the series Ellas Soy Yo, Gloria Trevi for ViX, and now she will have her reality show within this platform, as well as other projects with TelevisaUnivision, demonstrating that the line between digital and the traditional is more and more blurry.

THE IMPACT
Public figures from different sectors – politics, social, and even economists – joined the conversation, and singers like Thalía supported this format. She highlighted that the reality show triggered a change, not only socially but in the content industry, by sitting new generations, as never before in decades, in front of the TV set – thanks to social media -.

“It has been a long time since I saw something like this; it reminded me of the old days of my Marías (María La del Barrio, María Mercedes, and Marimar) who at the time brought the Mexican family together, and this happening once again makes me happy. The figures reported on both social media and the digital world combined with TV, show how things have changed and how the way of having a dialogue between generations has evolved,” she pointed out.

This first Mexican edition had such success that its producers are already working on the new installment, where they will apply everything they learned, promoting the achieved cross-media and a more open and inclusive traditional TV.