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 this Monday, citing the figures. of Médiamétrie.
With this new first place over a full month, CNews marks another point in the relaunch of its TNT frequency, 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 news channels with 2% and the public channel - last with 1%. CNews has achieved its “historic monthly record”, it congratulated itself in a press release. In May, it achieved 2.8% audience share, compared to 2.7% for BFMTV.
CNews is boycotted by many left-wing personalities who accuse it of being positioned on the extreme right, which it disputes.
Two RN candidates
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, Pierre Gentillet with more than 43% in Cher and Guillaume Bigot with almost 38% in the Territoire de Belfort.
“There are a lot of sensitivities” at CNews, Guillaume 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, due to comments made on its channel. In May, Arcom fined him 50,000 euros for comments by journalist Geoffroy Lejeune, according to which anti-Semitism and prison overcrowding were consequences of “Arab-Muslim immigration”.
CNews was created in 2017 from the ashes of iTélé after Vincent Bolloré took control. In the procedure for bringing its TNT frequency back into play, it will defend its case on July 15 before Arcom, which receives all candidates for hearing.
