Installing Patrick Cohen at the presentation of the Franceinfo morning show, which Marc Fauvelle left to head the France Inter editorial team, was Jean-Philippe Baille’s idea. The thunderous failure of this recruitment, which would have harmed France Inter according to those who opposed it, could have led the director of Franceinfo to take action. But the departure for the Les Echos-Le Parisien group of Vincent Giret, the radio group’s information director, at the end of August, gave him, on the contrary, the opportunity to broaden his field of action by taking over this function . Formerly of RTL, where he headed the editorial staff from 2014 to 2018, Jean-Philippe Baille, 54, today enjoys the success of the Radio France channels, to which the group’s information largely contributes.
At 9 cumulative audience points, Franceinfo’s audience has returned to its level of September-October 2021. Are its listeners immune to information fatigue?
With 200,000 more listeners over one year, Franceinfo even achieved its best return in eighteen years. This means that by increasing, during the week, by 197,000 listeners, the morning show of Jérôme Chapuis (and of Jean-Rémi Baudot from Friday) seduces them. Early morning (5 a.m. to 7 a.m.) gains 220,000 listeners and is approaching a million. These good results are a great performance for all of us. Listeners have the reflex of public service news when events are rushing, we had already observed this during the Covid-19 crisis, in 2020, and at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, in 2022.
Jérôme Chapuis needed a few weeks to find his rhythm…
Editor-in-chief then editorial director of The cross, he hadn’t done radio for four years, and the mechanics of Franceinfo are sport! But the hearings show that the graft took hold, and very quickly. The same goes for the weekend morning, which helps make Franceinfo the second radio station in France, ahead of RTL. The 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. slot on France Inter gains 155,000 listeners, while the morning show on France Culture is up by more than 70,000 listeners. All the new features that we have put on the airwaves have been validated.
Is the disappointment caused by the non-recruitment of Patrick Cohen over?
This episode is behind us. It allowed us to see that, perhaps, decisions as structuring as this one were not taken in a sufficiently collegial manner. From now on, we have a special body to decide on such strategic editorial decisions.
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