The managers of TF1 had to wait perhaps more feverishly than usual for the result of the hearings on Sunday evening. Ultimately 4.42 million viewers followed the France-Canada match (0-0) on their antenna despite its fifteen-minute delay retransmission, placing the channel in the lead for this evening like no other with a share of honorable audience (22.8% audience share). Enough to reassure her about her choice the day before.
The kick-off of the Blues match had already been delayed, a few weeks ago, by a quarter of an hour (9:15 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.) due to the European elections, but the announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly at 9 p.m. Sunday evening, to everyone’s surprise, once again shook things up. And the decision to broadcast the match on a delay of a quarter of an hour (the broadcast took place at 9:30 p.m.) was taken fairly quickly.
A switch to TMC or TFX was not considered
“In view of the President of the Republic’s announcement at 9 p.m., given this news, the election evening was bound to last a little longer than expected. We had to leave a little time to debrief and analyze the consequences of this decision”we announced this morning to TF1.
The question of switching the meeting to TMC or TFX, which both broadcast a film, would not have arisen. “Les Bleus is on TF1”, we say within the channel. As well as the possibility of catching up on the “delay” at half-time by skipping the advertising pages that some, particularly on social networks, were calling for. TF1 assumes that it is a commercial channel that makes its living from advertising and also adds that a football match is “two halves with a break in the middle. We kept the match going according to its normal course. And given our audiences, the viewers understood it. »
“A decision that no one had considered”
The fact that the meeting is also a friendly match, without stakes, and not an official match, like the France-Austria next Monday where the Blues will make their debut in the Euro on TF1 at 9 p.m., also made the decision easier. “But managing an antenna remains complicated, we admit on the chain side. You can never anticipate everything, and even less so when it comes to a decision that no one had considered in the previous days. »
Some also wondered why the channel had not mentioned the announcement of the quarter-hour delay a little earlier, to reassure viewers anxious to see their match. She recalls that“a first banner first evoked the dissolution, an event of great importance for our viewers, before a second on the delayed broadcast of the match. And Gilles Bouleau (election night presenter) also announced the delay. »
