– France Télévisions will stop “Numbers and letters”
After more than fifty years of existence, the famous France 3 game show will disappear at the start of the school year to make way for the “1000 Euro Game”.
Published today at 10:06 a.m.
Laurent Romejko, one of the hosts of the France Télévisions program “Des Numéros et des Lettres” poses on the set of the show, on February 16, 2012 at the France Télévisions headquarters in Paris.
FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP
The oldest game show in France, “Numbers and letters”will disappear from the schedules of France Télévisions at the start of the school year, after more than fifty years of existence, announced the director of the antennas Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, in “La Tribune Dimanche”.
“The weekend programming of Numbers and Letters was not successful. After fifty years of existence, it is an emblematic meeting. “It’s a difficult decision but we have made the choice to stop this program,” he declared.
Since the start of the school year in September 2022, the game created in 1972 has only been broadcast on weekends. “A goodbye show will bring together Patrice Laffont and Laurent Romejko (his first and last presenter, editor’s note), and will thank all the teams,” added the broadcast director. If stopping broadcasts is “part of the normal life of all channels”, according to him, the deprogramming of “Numbers and Letters” marks the end of an era.
The end of a cult show
First called “The Longest Word”, the show quickly became cult on Antenne 2. After Patrice Laffont or Laurent Cabrol, Laurent Romejko is at the helm of the oldest PAF show, after “Le jour du seigneur”, for thirty years.
Everything is cult: the mental arithmetic test, “the count is good”, the vocabulary test with its alternating selection of consonants and vowels, the credits music (“Western Patrol”) which appeared in 1972.
The principle has not changed, even if the last few years have been more turbulent, marked in particular by the departure of Bertrand Renard and Arielle Boulin-Prat, the Mr. Figures and the Mrs. Letters of the game, ousted in mid-2022 and who have since then attacked France Télévisions in the industrial tribunal.
“Numbers and Letters”, which is also one of the oldest shows in Europe, has been exported to many countries, from Belgium to Australia. Several tens of thousands of candidates participated and hundreds of clubs exist, outside of TV, with their tournaments or their champions.
A new program instead
The place on France 3 for the emblematic game, on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15 p.m., will now be occupied by the television adaptation of another emblematic program from Radio France, “The Game of 1000 Euros”, previously broadcast only on Saturday.
Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez also announced the non-renewal of much more recent programs such as “Bertrand n’a pas slept” or “En bande organised”, “because they have not fully found their audience”.
“On the other hand, many recent programs are being renewed, such as “Cmedia” (France 5) and “Bel et bien” (France 2). We will also continue our strategy aimed at young audiences by investing in the Twitch platform from the start of the school year,” he continued.
AFP
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