Ciné-Télé-Revue explains the strategy implemented by RTL-tvi. With an average of around 150,000 viewers so far, Facing Buxant did not take off as desired. In any case, we are far from the audience scores that Pascal Vrebos achieved in the same box before his departure from the channel. By moving its political meeting to the evening, RTL-tvi hopes to give a boost to the show hosted by Martin Buxant.
Instead of Facing Buxantviewers will be treated to a family film.
Chronicle of an announced disappearance
The deprogramming of Facing Buxant Sunday lunchtime is not strictly speaking a surprise. The show was the last survivor of a long tradition whereby Sunday mornings on television in Belgium were strongly tinged with politics. Gone are the days when the war raged between RTBF and the private channel on this level, with the confrontations between Focus et ControversialFor example.
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In July 2017, the DH revealed that the public service was withdrawing In your opinionhosted by Sacha Daout, from his Sunday grid. At issue: audiences which continued to crumble. Fewer than 100,000 viewers remained loyal to the program each week. Insufficient.
Sacha Daout, the king of TV debates, is the guest of our Big Interview: “I was a shitty kid”
In doing so, RTBF drew a line under 52 years of Sunday political debate. It was an earthquake in the French-speaking audiovisual landscape. The adventure had in fact begun in 1965 on what was still only RTB – without the F, therefore –, with the show Take stock.
A vain resistance
RTL-tvi will have resisted for six more years, thanks to It’s not every day Sunday hosted by Christophe Deborsu. But in December 2023, the ax also fell for this meeting, replaced by Appointment which only lasted a few months. At the start of the school year, in September 2024, it was deleted from the TV schedules. Only one still remained facing Buxant…
Christophe Deborsu: “The forum space is more essential than ever”
The erosion of audiences or the impossibility of increasing them will therefore have got the better of what for half a century was an institution of Belgian television, at least on the French-speaking side. Let us add that the private channel had warned. In January 2023, it announced an overhaul of its weekend news events, with new formats and magazines integrated into the news to give rhythm to its schedules.
Pascal Vrebos on the end of the Sunday political debate on RTL-TVI: “It’s a shame that this box disappears”
To see under other skies…
It is not because those that have long been called the Sunday debates have disappeared from the air at the time when they once triumphed that political debates no longer have the right to be quoted on television. Facing Buxant does resistance on Sunday but in the evening now. On RTBF, if QR: news fell by the wayside last October, QR: the debate still remains relevant, just like Thursday as a bonus. Without forgetting the various news stories which are full of politics, of course.
“De zevende dag”, the last bastion
With the deprogramming of Facing Buxant at midday on Sunday, there is little other than Flemish television to perpetuate the tradition of Sunday midday political debate in Belgium. Every Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Eén, the first VRT channel, The seventh day occupies the antenna. For its return on September 1, the program attracted 230,000 viewers. Far from the 370,000 counted on January 7, 2018… However, the political situation in the country seems to keep Flemish viewers in suspense more than French-speaking ones. The last show of the year, broadcast on December 22, was followed by 325,000 people! And on average, since the start of the school year in September, The seventh day is favored by 265,300 viewers.
