El fenómeno José María García: publicidad de radio deportiva española en prensa (1972-1981)

From 1972 to 1981, José María García succeeded in the sports programming on the Spanish private radio network Cadena SER. His investigative, reporting journalism and his polemic style gave him a huge audience, advertising incomes and impact, which created a «García phenomenon» (Díaz, 1995: 346; Alcoba, 2005: 170) concerning «the most famous journalist in Spain» (Fe­rrer, 2016: 101). This paper analyses how his popularity was reflected in the advertisements paid by SER in the generalist daily journals, as well as if the García trademark generated differences on the advertising strategy of SER comparing to the other radio stations’ sports offers. Eighty-five ads were found from five different networks (SER, RNE, RCE, Radio Intercontinental and Radio España de Madrid) in Diario 16 and ABC. A denotative, connotative and strategic analysis sheet was applied to the corpus of the study, as well as a qualitative focus, to find the distinctive features of each one. The results show that, although some other private stations followed a personality-driven strategy, the public image of radio star García was used by SER to attract the listeners, but with a more significant prominence in the promotion of his regular programming rather than the broadcasting of live events.