Paris (AFP)
Eric Zemmour Boosts CNews Audience: More than 250,000 viewers watched the first issue of "Face to the News" on Monday night, the new show whose polemics are in the spotlight, allowing Canal +'s channel to triple his usual audience at that time.
According to Médiamétrie data broadcast on Tuesday by the channel, the debate program, broadcast from 7:00 pm to 7:55 pm, was watched by 253,000 viewers (all categories combined).
This first, devoted to topics of predilection of the polemicist (Turkey, the place of Islam in the Republic and the wearing of the veil), gave CNews an audience share (PDO) of 1.4% on this schedule.
While this score remains modest compared to those of historical channels, it represents a spectacular gain for CNews compared to its usual audience that is moving around 0.5% on this time slot (excluding very high-profile type "yellow vests").
This performance, which remains to be seen if it will be sustainable or not, has allowed the former iTELE, during its broadcast, to exceed its rivals LCI (182,000 viewers and 1% of PDA) and Franceinfo (47,000 viewers / 0, 3%), and to get closer to the champion of the news channels, BFMTV (301,000 viewers and 1.6% of PDA), according to other Médiamétrie data obtained by AFP.
"Face the info" is a daily program presented by Christine Kelly, and Eric Zemmour is the star editorialist. CNews decided last week to recruit him despite the intense controversy triggered by his very virulent speech on Islam and immigration pronounced at the end of September at the "convention of the right".
It is a homecoming for the writer and polemicist who had already participated in a debate program on iTELE (former name of CNews) from 2003 to 2014, arrested after a controversy over anti-Muslim statements published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
© 2019 AFP