Michou, who organizes the Internet version of Dance with the stars, announced to its community that the finale of the show would be broadcast on TF1 in the second half of the evening. Many people are offended by this decision, seen as a victory for traditional television over Twitch.
“The final, you heard it, crazy, it’s on TF1”.
By saying this sentence, Michou is not fooled. Since the announcement of the creation of Dancing with the Internet Starsa spin-off of the show Dance with the stars which features web creators with a more relaxed tone, the French streamer is under fire from critics. Some accuse him of plagiarizing a concept, of lacking inventiveness, of bringing television closer to Twitch or of giving credibility to TF1.
This war between a part of young people and linear television is not new, even if it should be remembered that a majority of young people do not demonize television. On the contrary, many of them watch it regularly. It is in this context that it was announced that the final of DALSIscheduled for March 29, will not be broadcast on Michou’s Twitch channel but on TF1, after the real DALS.
A turnaround? Those who are offended lack discernment about the nature of the program.
Dancing with the Internet Stars helps promote TF1+
Since the announcement of the creation of the show, a form of incomprehension has reigned on social networks. Some of Michou’s fans initially thought that it was an in-house initiative, unrelated to the real show (Michou himself participated in Dance with the stars and shares her life with Elsa Bois, a dancer in the program).
In reality, Dancing with the Internet Stars has been, from the start, a TF1 creation. A press release published by Europe’s leading channel on March 1 confirms this: DALSI is “a variation of one of the biggest entertainment franchises with internet stars”. The show was initially presented as a streaming production on Twitch and on… TF1+.
TF1+ is the advertising-financed streaming service launched by TF1 at the beginning of January. The stakes are high for the group, which does not want to leave the online advertising market to Netflix and Amazon. The first channel wants to make TF1+ a reflex, by encouraging young people looking for on-demand content to go to the application, rather than to Netflix, YouTube or Twitch.
With these elements in mind, the fate of Dancing with the Internet Stars becomes obvious. Picking up Michou and his community is a clever move by TF1, which rebroadcast the show exclusively on TF1+ (you have to register to access it). Aware of DALSI’s success on the internet, the channel is unsurprisingly trying to take advantage of it by broadcasting the final on its traditional channel, while banking on the fact that people will subscribe to TF1+ to watch it live. A win-win partnership, with the support of BBC Studios France.
Opposing television to Twitch makes no sense
That being said, Michou attracts a lot of criticism because, for years, Internet creators have regularly been seen as more inventive and creative in the audiovisual sector, at least compared to traditional TV, perceived as more sclerotic. and old-fashioned — web stars have also played on this contrast.
A group like TF1 represents, for a certain number of Internet users, a channel which only thinks about money and advertising – Patrick Le Lay’s little sentence about the available human brain time does not help anything and gives food for the media’s critics. It would also be a channel aimed at older people, therefore looking down on younger people. An erroneous shortcut, which however amplified due to several incidents, such as Squeezie’s interview with Thierry Ardisson (on Canal+) in 2017.
However, linear television and Twitch can coexist and their audiences are not always the same.
The idea that no one watches TV anymore is wrong, just like the idea that Twitch is much more powerful than TV today. The GP Explorer is an admirable and deserved success, but only the distribution channel changes fundamentally. The production teams are the same. It is the same thing for DALSIwho benefits from the plateau of DALS, part of its teams, its jury and its mechanics. The broadcast channel is only the last step.
For TF1, the broadcast of Michou’s show in the second half of the evening is a test. Recent experiences of crossover between the world of TV and the Internet have proven that what makes one successful rarely makes the other successful. Interviews with YouTubers on TV, for example, are often big audience flops. DALSIwhich is based on TV mechanics, with people unknown to part of the TF1 audience, is a good test.
To hate Dancing with the Internet Stars because of its broadcast on TF1 and TF1+ is a whim, even if we can deplore the disappearance of the chat in the mechanics of the show.
Watching the show on Twitch or on TV ultimately amounts to the same thing: promoting a format owned by TF1, in addition to watching creators we appreciate on a dance floor. And its broadcast on TF1 does not prevent creators from offering their own additional videos on their channels.
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