Risto Mejide

Risto Mejide realized very early on that on commercial television, likability doesn't sell as well as calculated discomfort. Before sitting in front of the cameras, he spent years designing campaigns at agencies such as Bassat Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi. There he learned the rules of quick impact, advertising concision and how to manage rejection.

After earning a degree in Business Administration and Management from ESADE, he taught and founded his own creative projects, but his true laboratory was mainstream television. He came to the medium without author pretensions and with a method borrowed straight from shock marketing.

The dark glasses gimmick

In 2006, he burst onto Operación Triunfo with a meticulously calculated persona. Hiding behind tinted glasses, he built an aggressive style that sent the channel's ratings soaring, reaching peaks that came close to a 50% screen share during his appearances. His judgments had nothing to do with musical tuning; they tore apart the contestants' ambitions as if they were defective products from a catalog.

And the calculated provocation worked flawlessly.

In July 2009, a head-on clash with Jesús Vázquez hastened his permanent exit from the music format. But his public image was already set in the collective memory, and networks soon offered him new shows such as G20 or the talent contest Tú sí que vales.

From the judge's chair to the velvet sofa

In February 2014, he premiered Viajando con Chester, an interview format that ditched the noise of the studio to seat politicians, writers and athletes on a plush sofa. The relaxed conversation and close-up shots helped soften his public image without losing his bite in follow-up questions.

The Chester sofa replaced the sunglasses.

His relationship with Mediaset blew up in 2015 over financial disagreements during the renewal of his contract. He then signed with Atresmedia to host Al rincón de pensar, a similar-style show that ran for one season in the late-night lineup. In 2016, he returned to the Fuencarral group under a multiyear deal that allowed him to join the judging panel of Got Talent España for nearly a decade.

Alongside his TV work, he maintained a steady output of books, including essays such as Urbrands, which won the Espasa Essay Prize in 2014, and novels such as the story of Johann Sebastian Bach's life, titled Dieciséis notas, published in 2023.

The daily trench and the business of control

In January 2019, he took over hosting Todo es mentira in the afternoon slot on Cuatro to compete with the traditional daytime talk show. The format blended political satire, live connections and heated debate with panelists holding polarizing views.

Because daily television demands industrial-level stamina, the advertising executive decided to secure control over the intellectual property of his shows. In May 2024, he founded the independent production company Vodevil TV after La Fábrica de la Tele was dropped from the private network's lineup.

With that corporate maneuver, he kept the executive production of his two main programs and launched new formats such as Demos: El gran sondeo at the end of 2024. In July 2026, Mediaset secured the show's daily run with a guaranteed broadcast contract through 2029, which locked in a fixed production schedule of more than two hundred and fifty episodes a year.