MADRID — Who said there's no such thing as bad publicity?
Bowed March 25 in Spain by broadcaster Antena 3, "Cambio radical," the Spanish reversion of "Extreme Makeover," is raising a storm in Spain.
Whether it's going down a storm, however, is another question.
Broadcast Sunday primetime, the reality's frosh episode chalked up a strong 24.2% share, 6.1 percentage points above Antena 3's channel average through March 29; 4.05 million viewers watched the first show.
"Cambio" provoked a spate of print ads for esthetic surgery.
"You know what will be in fashion this summer?" asked Dorsia Esthetic Clinics on Monday in El Mundo, showing a busty beach blond.
It's first answer, a boob job, cost Euros 4,995 ($6,643).
Yet show's second episode on Sunday notched up just 18.8% and 3 million eyeballs.
"Cambio" was hugely dented by rival Telecinco going head-to-head with the first two episodes of a new season of "Aida," its top rating sitcom. They pulled in 28.6% and 27.9% shares respectively.
"Cambio" has also been criticized for being over-long and too gory.
But a spate of protests probably didn't help its cause, either.
Spain's most-read quality newspaper El Pais ran a near-full page article Saturday, criticizing one of the shows' slogans: "My partner won't leave me."
The article also re-ran a complaint from Spain's Colegial Medical Organization that the show "promoted a consumerist idea of health."
For once a spat may have proved an audience deterrent.
"After two episodes, the series still has to settle down. But with kids off on holidays, it looks as if some parents were concerned about what they could be seeing," said Eduardo Garcia Matilla, prexy of audience research company Corporacion Multimedia.
Contact the Variety newsroom at
news@variety.com