First of a series
Antuli “Kobbo” Santarrosa spoke exclusively with the spokesman about some questions about his figure and his Comay character, with whom he returns to the girl screen today at 5:55 pm via TeleOnce.
The “hell” he claims lived on Mega TV, what happened to Rocky The Kid, his arrival on TeleOnce, his “enemies” and his second retirement are just some of the topics under discussion as part of the series that starts today with this diary.
Santarrosa ended his six-year retirement in the state of Florida on January 28, 2019 with the return of Comay for Mega TV.
In this way he brought back the character who remained on the air for 14 years on SuperXclusivo, for Wapa TV, where he was fired in January 2013 after a boycott that managed to cancel -numerous trade guidelines.
His motivation to leave his farm with horses in Florida, sell it and give the battle to local television says it arose from the lack of oversight on the Island.
“We lived in Ocala, which is a field and we had a fabulous house, but we felt a little lonely. And in the face of an offer made to me by Raúl Alarcón (president of SBS), we decided to come to Puerto Rico,” he said.
However, his return was motivated by much more.
On the reaction of his wife Iris Lugo to this determination, he commented that “she always follows me, and does what satisfies me and makes me happy. She supports me in everything.”
The puppeteer did not regret leaving television.
“I didn’t regret it because those six years were great, I did things I wanted to do. I wanted to have a farm or a farm here in Puerto Rico. When Wapa’s passing, I retire, we go to Orlando and see the city of I nod and say, ‘This is where we will make our dream come true,’ “he recalled.
He describes as a “hell” his passage through Mega TV
December 18, 2020 was his last show on Mega TV, alongside Rocky The Kid, when he decided not to renew his contract.
He said that during his first months at the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) station he felt at ease. However, “then it was hell, it was hell. And what I’m saying here, Raúl Alarcón (president of SBS) knows that I wrote to him; not one, not two, not three, five , ten times … of the things that were happening in Mega. I won’t go into details, but Raúl knows all the hell I lived there “, he insisted.
He detailed that a month before informing him of his decision, he wrote him an extensive email.
“I have a good thing and I write everything because this is my test. I was very sorry, but I had to say, ‘I can’t take it anymore!’. I was there for two years, but the first two months more or at least I said, ‘This will be fixed.’ But the rest was hell. My employees can tell you they suffered too, ”he stressed.
Santarrosa clarified that “the people at Mega got along very well with me. I have no complaints about them. It’s a conglomerate that didn’t have a number of things for me to be able to do my program well,” he specified.
His passage through Mega TV was not without controversy either. In June 2020 he faced a boycott for some expressions of the Comay, considered racist, towards the president of the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC), Ana Irma Rivera Lassen. While in October of this year the inconvenience was caused by the dissemination of a photo in which appeared the candidate for mayor of San Juan, Manuel Natal, with the daughter of Alexandra Lugaro, candidate for governor for MVC.
On social media, in the face of the announcement of his departure from TV – on December 11, 2020 – some noted that it was due to the culmination of the general election.
“What happens is that they are coincidences of life. Politics is over, but people don’t know that my contract was also ending. If it had been that way I wouldn’t be here (on TeleOnce),” he expressed.
Precisely his entry into TeleOnce, he says, was at the request of its owner Lenard Liberman, president of Liberman Media Group, which he acquired from Univision Puerto Rico.
“Mr. Liberman called me, I wasn’t prepared for that. We had quite a few meetings because I wanted to meet not only TeleOnce, but him. He has shown me that he has a lot of interest and he knows, because there are people who don’t know about television and are in the environment. He knows a lot about television, “said the person who signed a contract for two and a half years.
Kobbo advanced that he will have no limitations on the part of the channel to express himself freely and monitor politicians.
“Whoever says that is lying, the agreement that Mr. Liberman and I have is that La Comay must be La Comay. La Comay will be La Comay. Of course, I want to do other things that I can’t say now because I want to It’s not that it’s a change in La Comay, because it’s always going to talk about gossip, the ‘bloopers’, the hesitation, but I want to delve into other things that benefit the people. time will tell. “
“Rocky did want to be”
Today he will unveil the animator accompanying the wrist, “in view of Rocky the Child was not left.” Kobbo said he asked Alarcón “please” to allow the announcer to continue on SBS Radio and join TeleOnce, like other of his employees who work on channels other than Mega TV.
“Rocky did want to be, everything was iron, but in front of that I said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want you to get hurt.’ Dad (Roque Gallart) works with him, his brother (Rogie) is a programmer there and I would have felt bad if they had retaliated against Rocky and his family. He was left sad, “he said.
By the way, he did not contemplate bringing back his former teammate Héctor Travieso, who left shortly after starting the program in the last stage.
He added that Travieso “sat with me like a month before and said to me, ‘I have to go.’ I asked him if something was going on, if he was sick or his wife, and he said no.”
He admits that many hate it
On the other hand, the producer also talked about his “enemies”.
“It all depends on what is meant by enemy. I have a lot of people in the environment, who already hate me. An example, when La Comay came to Mega, made Telemundo make a lot of changes, that Wapa too and Univision “This bothers the media, not the public. Now that we’re on TeleOnce, put the stamp on it that both Telemundo and Wapa are going to make their adjustments, they’re already shaking because he’s a strong character. be the enemies, ”he argued.