‘Factor M’, the Venezuela talent show that will choose Nicolás Maduro’s campaign song

The song for Nicolás Maduro’s presidential campaign is to be chosen in a reality show produced by a state television channel. The show takes the Venezuela government’s omnipresent propaganda campaign to a whole new level.

The first of eight episodes of Factor M (M, needless to say, stands for Maduro) was released a few days ago. The program is a talent competition that tries to emulate the format of The X Factor, which became world famous due to one of its judges, the fearsome music producer Simon Cowell, known for his acidic criticism of aspiring performers. In the studios of Televisora Venezolana Social (TVES), the channel that took over from the defunct Radio Caracas Televisión — the first television station in the country against which former president Hugo Chávez waged war 17 years ago — the production emulates other shows of this type, down to the musical effects, the emotional stories of the participants, the slow motion takes following gestures interspersed with shots of previous auditions, many LED lights and pyrotechnic effects, a studio audience that’s always smiling, and an entertainer with a sweet intonation, accompanied by his actress wife and the director of the channel on which the show is broadcast.

A total of 35 participants who were selected in auditions held in mid-April in Caracas will compete in the final, which will be held shortly before the presidential campaign officially kicks off. The competitors in the first round were varied. There was a llanero with a hat and leather jacket, a young balladeer who was very nervous on stage, a veteran salsero and another younger one who combined salsa with reggaeton, as well as a former model and actress converted to the Bolivarian Militia who tried her hand with a pop song.

The jury brings together a group of musicians who are regular fixtures at Chavista events, some with public positions and links to high-ranking government officials. The judges are the merenguero Omar Enrique; the reggaeton musician, former baseball player and former sports minister Antonio Potro Álvarez; Xuxo, an artist with 9,000 subscribers and 20 videos on YouTube who got here by performing the theme of the campaign for the Essequibo referendum last December; the singer and music producer Omar Acedo, who was part of local youth groups such as Salserín and Calle Ciega and, in addition, is the son-in-law of the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello; and as an international representative, the Dominican artist Bonny Cepeda, remembered in the playlists of Venezuelan weddings for Cuarto de hotel and Asesina, and who these days serves as vice-minister of culture in his country.

Other national political figures participated in the auditions such as Camilla Fabri, wife of the businessman Alex Saab, who was returned to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange with the United States.

Each musical presentation was commented on by Winston Vallenilla, who was a famous game show host for the extinct RCTV. For this new reality show — which has a very low audience rating in line with almost all public television in Venezuela — the network has tried to emulate commercial television stations with various talent shows in different musical genres, although the broadcaster will always be associated with the endless official speeches that have scared Venezuelan audiences off since the times of Hugo Chávez.

In the first of the seven rounds, the competitors sang songs with titles like The president is Maduro; Maduro is the future; Vamos, Nico; Here I am, here I am; and Let’s all go. Vallenilla, at the end of each presentation, invited the participants to send messages of encouragement and support to the president, assuring them that he would be watching the program from his office. The participants dutifully told the presidential candidate not to give up, “that great leaders are measured by how many times they overcome adversities,” as one of the salseros put it.

Factor M is one more attempt by Chavismo to rebuild its support for the presidential election scheduled for July 28. Efforts have been focused, in part, on trying to reach the youngest voters, since Maduro has been left alone, with a hardcore voter base of just 15% of the population, according to most surveys. From a weekly television program, Maduro +, where he has tried to show his most intimate side alongside his wife Cilia Flores while interacting with trending Tiktokers, to a video podcast complete with giant headphones and professional microphones, the president has tried everything to counter the enormous foothold that the opposition has gained around María Corina Machado and the Unitary Platform. The opposition’s latest candidate, the 74-year-old diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, has finally been allowed to register, and has gone from being an unknown person who does not even go out on the streets to campaign, to a celebrity with thousands of memes of approval and even a series of songs created with artificial intelligence that activists have made available to his campaign. Whoever wins the final of Factor M, Vallenilla said in the presentation of the program, will be rewarded with a professional recording of their song and “the privilege” of accompanying Maduro on the campaign trail, although the prize, in reality, is for the candidate himself.

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