This is in the line of what Miguel de Bustos (2004: 15) commented: “[...] today more than ever it is essential to establish regulatory pluralism policies, because it is fundamental to ensure that the design of new networks and their capabilities are not created exclusively for commercial purposes, which could lead to an exclusion of the less advantaged groups”.

There are regional bodies which are entrusted with certain functions (Catalonia, Andalusia and the first steps in other communities), but the gap in the state context causes projects such as the one presented here, to be essential in order to know the relevant data on political programmes in the most popular communication media. From the European arena, the European Commission has not required televisions to comply with the minimum standards of democratic quality not as a means of information nor as to its structure, as “the only clear reference to democratic -informative significance of the media activities is relegated to the press sector”-Rodríguez Pardo (2005: 125), analysing the control of the Commission on media concentrations- and “this position, however, is not transferred to the television sector whose informative work is undoubtedly minor, but of much greater influence.

Therefore not having a robust regulatory support, it is more useful to use the ethical standpoint. So, to guide us roughly on what should be found in the programmes analysed, this is McChesney’s proposal (2013, 110-111): accurate information on persons in positions of power or aspire to be; feasible methods for identifying falsehoods, or at least prevent those who lie, circumvent responsibilities and lead nations to serious situations, such as wars, crises and internal discord; if there is a bias in the extent or tone that is dedicated to a matter, it would be in favour of those with less economic and political power; a wide range of informed opinions on the most important issues (not only what is currently the news, but also the challenges on the horizon), which will not be confined to that which concerns the powerful.

The last point enunciated by McChesney is very relevant in that it contains the two subjects under study in this paper: agenda setting and pluralism of opinions about such issues. These issues can and should be analysed in the light of numerous verifications, among which we will take the following 3:

A) Over half of the 10 problems most mentioned in the CIS interviews of October and November 2017 will be present in the analysed programmes of Al Rojo Vivo (hypothesis A1) and the programmes of Las Mañanas de Cuatro (hypothesis A2) in a proportion representing at least one third of the percentage of people who reported this subject as being one of the most important.

B) The time dedicated to the 10 topics most dealt with in Al Rojo Vivo will show a Pearson correlation above 0.75 regarding the time dedicated to these same topics in Las Mañanas de Cuatro.

C) The number of men and women participants respects the principle of balanced gender presence established by the Equality Act and the LOREG (Organic Law of General Electoral Procedure, Article 44 bis) fixed at a minimum of 40% for each sex with regards to the electoral lists.

Agenda setting is a successful theory in that it is based on powerful intuitions. The complexity begins when defining and specifying the changing and fleeting causal relationships between the media agenda and the public agenda. Not only how the first one determines the second but how they interrelate and at what rate. Frequency is certainly a key variable and therefore is granted a central role, not without referring to at least more sceptical standpoints, as for example that of Wolf (2000: 188): “conceptualizing only the frequency variant as a degree of perception of the relevance of the topics seems