PRISA Media forges ahead with digital transformation, creating PRISA Audio and overhauling management at SER

• PRISA Audio will be a transversal platform encompassing all the Group's podcast content. This is PRISA’s first step towards pioneering an organization based on platforms – ultimately aimed at streamlining the company's organizational structure.
• María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, the driving force and director of Podium Podcast (PRISA's podcast platform), will be the new Managing Director of PRISA Audio, reporting directly to the Executive Chairperson of PRISA Media, Carlos Núñez.
• SER merges content and management divisions and promotes internal talent to key management posts.
• Ignacio Soto, current head of the Management division, with a long and successful career at PRISA and extensive experience in media and the digital sector, is appointed Managing Director of SER.
• Montserrat Domínguez, a journalist with an outstanding track record and multi-channel experience, will be the new Director of Content for Cadena SER and will coordinate the News, Broadcasting, Programs and Sports divisions.
• Guillermo Rodríguez, until now Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost, takes over as head of News as well as digital content at Cadena SER.

PRISA Media continues to forge ahead with digital transformation with a major overhaul of its radio division and changes to SER’s management team. The latter sees the promotion of internal talent, as the business pioneers the new transversal platform PRISA Audio, which is set to bring together all of the Group’s podcast content.

The new structure builds on the changes made in the Group in February, when it established PRISA Media, which encompasses all the Group's media under the same unit, with a firm commitment to the convergence of resources around a structure of transversal platforms.

María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros will be the Managing Director of PRISA Audio and will report directly to the Executive Chairperson of PRISA Media, Carlos Núñez. The new platform will group together all PRISA Media media podcast content, from both radio and press (EL PAÍS, Cinco Días, AS) in both Spain and in Latin America. Espinosa de los Monteros has been for the past five years at the helm of Podium Podcast, which till now was part of Prisa Radio. She is also a regular contributor to EL PAÍS.

This latest move sees PRISA take another significant step towards becoming a pioneering organization based on platforms, a structure that simplifies and makes the company's organizational framework more efficient, and allows for greater optimization of resources while, at the same time, maximizing the impact of content with a global perspective.

At the SER network, the two divisions – content and management – are being merged under the direction of Ignacio Soto, until now head of Management. He’ll also be overseeing many of the functions that were till now the purview of Daniel Gavela. Ignacio Soto has a successful track record in media management and digital transformation and has worked in both radio and press at PRISA.

Meanwhile, Montserrat Domínguez has been appointed Director of Content at Cadena SER. Domínguez is a journalist with a broad and distinguished career, and who combines deep multi-channel experience both within the PRISA Group and in other audiovisual media, such as Antena 3 and Telecinco. She currently coordinates the production of podcasts for EL PAÍS. Domínguez will also coordinate the News, Broadcasting and Programs and Sports divisions.

Guillermo Rodríguez has been appointed head of News, and will also oversee digital content for Cadena SER. Rodríguez has been Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost for three years, and comes from an eminently digital background. He has extensive experience in newsroom management, and at the helm of HuffPost, he has managed to position the medium among the most followed digital news outlets in Spain.

The newly appointed managers represent a new generation and all have been promoted from within the Group. All have a solid digital background and experience across a range of different media.

The company has expressed its gratitude to Pedro García Guillén, Daniel Gavela and Daniel Anido, until now Director of News, for their successful tenures as managers. Together they were instrumental in consolidating Cadena SER as the leading broadcaster in Spain, in positioning the music stations as audience leaders and weathering the most turbulent period in the history of the Group’s media.

The SER network is Spain’s leading radio brand and sets the gold standard for news. It broadcasts widely popular programs across all time slots such as Hoy por Hoy, La Ventana, Hora 25, El Larguero, El Faro,  A vivir que son dos días and Carrusel Deportivo. It enjoys an uninterrupted lead of more than 25 years, and is renowned for its rigor, reliability, quality and high professional standards. Its teams are known for their own trademark style when it comes to news and entertainment, both of which have come to form part of Spain’s social history. Last April, the network registered its best result of the last four years, with 4,367,000 daily listeners, according to data from the audience audit bureau Estudio General de Medios (EGM).

Meanwhile the music station LOS40 continues to hold on to its Number One spot in the sector, with 2,792,000 listeners from Monday to Friday. Its morning show, Anda Ya, clocked up 25 years as the top program in its time slot last April, and was the show to see its audience climb the most. LOS40 Classic was the fastest growing music radio station according to the last round of figures from EGM, and Cadena Dial is the third most listened to music station, with about a million and a half listeners.

Biographies

María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros García (38 years old, Valencia) has a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Cardenal Herrera-CEU University, with a DEA (Diploma in Advanced Studies) in History, Documentation and Film Analysis from the the Complutense University of Madrid. She previously worked as a production coordinator and culture editor at COPE Catalonia.

In 2012, she co-founded the digital radio station El Extrarradio, a project which garnered her the Ondas Award for radio innovation and the Academy of Radio and the Arts award for radio innovation in 2013.

In March 2016, Espinosa de los Monteros was appointed project manager of Podium Podcast, PRISA Radio's global podcast network in Spanish, of which she has been the director since 2019. In 2016, Podium Podcast received the Ondas award for the best online radio broadcasting platform.

She lectures on Radio Innovation, Podcasting and Journalistic Entrepreneurship at a range of different universities in Spain and Latin America. She is a contributor to El País Semanal, Letras Libres, The Objective and Valencia Plaza, among other media. Since 2018, she has coordinated one of the first newspaper sections dedicated to analyzing the world of audio and podcasts in the newspaper El País. In 2019, she also became the director of Podium Studios, PRISA Radio's audio branding production company. That same year, she was chosen by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 Most Creative Minds in Business. In 2020, she received the Ondas Award in the Radio Advertising category for the branded podcast Pienso, luego actúo (I think, therefore I act), a Podium Studios production for Yoigo. Since that same year she has co-directed the first Master in Podcast and Digital Audio at the Escuela Arte + Diseño Barreira in Valencia.

Ignacio Soto (51 years old, Bilbao) is an executive with extensive experience in the management and development of media and digital companies. Prior to working at SER, he was Chief Revenue Officer at PRISA, where he oversaw the transformation of business models and the development of new monetization businesses nationwide and internationally. Previously, he was CEO of PRISA Noticias, where he was instrumental in the digital transformation and international development of the news business unit, which includes EL PAÍS, AS, Cinco Días, El Huffington Post and the magazine division. He has also held the positions of managing director of the television channels Cuatro and CNN +, of Digital Operations of PRISA and CFO of PRISA. Outside the Group, he has acted as managing director of Vertice360 and he launched Onza Venture Capital Investments, dedicated to investment in digital companies.

Montserrat Domínguez (57 years old, Madrid) has a degree in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York, with a Fulbright scholarship. A renowned journalist, she has a wide and varied career in the field of communication media in Spain, having worked at Radio España, Agencia EFE, Canal +, Telecinco, Antena 3, Cadena SER and EL PAÍS, among others. She has been a political columnist for the newspaper La Vanguardia and a contributor to various other publications. Domínguez has deep multichannel experience thanks to numerous projects within Grupo PRISA. She has directed the Cadena SER show  A vivir que son dos días, for which she received the Antena de Oro award. She was also at the helm of Huffington Post for six years. In 2018, she joined EL País as a deputy editor, where she currently coordinates the newspaper's podcast division.

Guillermo Rodríguez (47 years old, Madrid) has a degree in Geography and History from the Complutense University of Madrid, with a specialty in Contemporary History. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost, where he was deputy director from 2012 to 2018. He has been working in online journalism since 1999, and was part of the founding team of Público.es, of which he was editor-in-chief. He also worked in the newsroom of the Vocento Group. In addition, he has been editor-in-chief of Baquia.com. He was culture editor at the newspapers Ya and Hoy Madrid and worked on the business and finance magazines Ideas & Negocios and Ranking. In the field of television, he has been on the panels of the politics shows 'El Programa de AR' and ‘Está pasando’ and Telemadrid’s ‘Madrid al Día’. He also has his own spot on the programs ‘Likes’, on Cero (Movistar) and ‘A partir de Hoy’ (TVE), where he covers international politics. He currently lectures at the UAM-El País School of Journalism and teaches online journalism classes at the European University of Madrid.