This Monday, May 6, Laurent Romejko spoke in Media culture on Europe 1 to comment on France Télévisions’ decision to stop broadcasting the game Numbers and letters. A program that he has presented for almost 32 years.
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Surprise this Sunday, May 5, Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, the director of antennas and programs at France Télévisions, indicated in the columns of La Tribune Sunday that the game Numbers and letters would soon cease to be broadcast: “The weekend programming Numbers and letters was not crowned with success. After fifty years of existence, it is an emblematic meeting. It’s a difficult decision, but we have chosen to stop this program“. Previously broadcast during the week, France 3 decided to now broadcast it only at the end of the week, before making the decision to stop it. As a reminder, Numbers and letters arrived on television sets on September 19, 1965 under the name The longest wordand became the one we know on January 4, 1972.
Laurent Romejko experiences “sadness” upon hearing the news
This Monday, May 6, Laurent Romejko, who has presented the game since 1992, reacted to this news at the microphone of Media culture on Europe 1. And for him, it’s not really a surprise: “It’s an ending that we’ve been predicting for two yearssince the transition from weekdays to weekends. Maybe it’s not disappointment but sadness“. He then returns to the “record longevity” of the show, this is the reason why he has difficulty coping with his stoppage: “There is emotion at the announcement of this judgment. It’s a UFO in the PAF. It’s a very silent show, with its gimmicks, with its famous ding-dong at the end, its consumables/vowels gimmicks. It’s a show that has its enthusiasts, but which was unlike any other.“
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Laurent Romejko: “We knew we wouldn’t still be here in 50 years.”
Indeed, Laurent Romejko assures that the cessation of the show was accelerated by the choice of France Télévisions to disrupt its broadcast. “Afterwards, for two years, when we switched to weekend programming, we felt that there was a drop in performance. We knew that we would not still be here in 50 years (…) In weekly broadcasting, it is always harder, we knew from experience that it would be random in terms of audiences. (…) We don’t have the same broadcast schedule on Saturday and Sunday… The absence of fixed schedules doesn’t help with the public, especially with ours. These are not implementations that favored us“, he confided in The Parisian about “this professional page that turns“. Note thata “goodbye show will reunite Patrice Laffont And Laurent Romejko and will thank all the teams” will be broadcast at the end of the season, in July 2024.
