INTERVIEW
There is movement on the side of BFMTV. The chain announced Monday to make two changes: the arrival of Bruce Toussaint on the tranche of 9/12 in place of Thomas Misrachi, thus dropping his evening box and his Tonight Bruce Infos; and the recruitment of Maxime Switek who will therefore leave the program "C à vous" on France 5. We contacted Marc-Olivier Fogiel, general manager of BFMTV, so that he can give us his first comments on these changes.
"Soul supplement"
"Rather than promoting someone internally, I wanted to seek a different culture. What I like about Maxime, I could already see it at Europe 1 ten years ago and then "C à vous" is that he has this news culture and this interesting way of thinking about information, grinding it to tell it differently and having a differentiated tone ", explains Marc-Olivier Fogiel. Maxime Switek is, according to him, one of the journalists "successful on the news and who have this different culture which makes it possible to enrich a slice by bringing an additional soul".
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CNews, "what we don't want to do"
The other change is the arrival of Bruce Toussaint in the morning, at a time when the competition with CNews is particularly strong. Between 9 a.m. and noon, Pascal Praud and Jean-Marc Morandini continue to post solid audience scores. So is it the rise in power of his rival that motivated this change and the arrival of a personality more known to the general public than Thomas Misrachi? "Bruce and what he represents today for the general public has an additional dimension in the morning: he is a presenter who has more strings to his bow and which the general public knows more about," specifies Marc-Olivier Fogiel.
However, he says, "certainly CNews 9-12 works, but it's so much different ... They found a way to get FoxNewsiser, it's consistent and effective, but it's so that we don't want to do. I didn't put Bruce to challenge a competitor who is on an efficient path but who is not at all ours. When I saw Philippe De Villiers for 1h30 without advertising or Marion Maréchal ... that's all we won't do. "
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The battles promise to be close at this time because this niche is strategic: according to Marc-Olivier Fogiel, 9 am - noon represents 20% of the audience of BFMTV.