CNews was the leader of the continuous news channels in June for the second month in a row, after having taken this place from BFMTV in May for the first time in its history, it announced on Monday, citing figures from Médiamétrie.
With this new first place over a full month, CNews marks another point in the relaunch of its TNT frequency, currently in progress. The channel belongs to the Canal+ group, itself controlled by Vivendi, the group of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
While the news was very rich in June with the announcement of the early legislative elections, CNews achieved 3.5% audience share (PDA), compared to 3.4% for BFMTV. LCI comes third among the news channels with 2% and the public channel - last with 1%.
CNews marks its “historic monthly record”, she said in a press release. In May, it achieved an audience share of 2.8%, compared to 2.7% for BFMTV.
CNews is boycotted by many left-wing figures who accuse it of being positioned on the extreme right, which it disputes.
Two of its ex-columnists, Pierre Gentillet and Guillaume Bigot, are RN candidates in the legislative elections. In the first round on Sunday, they came first in their constituency, Mr. Gentillet with more than 43% in Cher and Mr. Bigot with almost 38% in the Territoire de Belfort.
“There are a lot of sensitivities” at CNews, Mr. Bigot assured AFP before the first round. “There is something Pavlovian about saying right – extreme right – Bolloré, it is much more complicated than that,” he said.
“We are a mirror of society. Our progress has been constant and has accelerated for several months,” Serge Nedjar, general director of CNews, declared in May.
Like C8, which belongs to the same group, CNews is regularly called to order by the audiovisual regulator, Arcom, because of comments made on its airwaves.
In May, Arcom fined him 50,000 euros for comments made by journalist Geoffroy Lejeune, according to whom anti-Semitism and prison overcrowding were consequences of “Arab-Muslim immigration”.
CNews was created in 2017 from the ashes of iTélé after Mr. Bolloré took control.
In the procedure for putting its TNT frequency back into play, it will defend its case on July 15 before Arcom, which is hearing all the candidates.
