The new voices of Europe 1 like Dimitri Pavlenko, in the morning, or Laurence Ferrari, at the end of the day, have not yet convinced listeners. In September-October, the station owned by Lagardère lost 200,000 listeners over one year, falling to 2.4 million listeners (4.4% cumulative audience, against 4.9% last year). “We know that it takes time when we change a grid”, justifies Constance Benqué, the boss of the radio. Like its competitors, Europe 1 is also suffering from listeners’ disaffection with radio accelerated by the pandemic: as a whole, the media has lost 900,000 listeners since 2019, and 200,000 over one year. France’s leading radio station, France Inter left 281,000 faithful over one year and RTL 200,000 as well.
But, proportionally, the fall is more important for the radio of the Lagardère group. “We have suffered a lot from the smear campaign. But I want to say that Europe 1 is not an opinion radio, but a generalist radio for executives aged 40 to 60 ”, continues the boss of the station, alluding to the strike that followed, in the spring, the arrival of several faces of CNews, the news channel of Vivendi, Lagardère’s largest shareholder.
The loss of Canteloup
If the station still programs story or entertainment, with Christophe Hondelatte (“Hondelatte tells”) or Stéphane Bern (“Historically yours”), the co-broadcast with CNews of “Punchline”, hosted by Laurence Ferrari on CNews, or the arrival by the conservative essayist Mathieu Bock-Côté at the “Grand Rendez-vous”, the political interview on Sunday, testify to a change of line. “Racialism, intersectionality, Wokism, security or immigration are themes that we are now dealing with. We don’t hide behind our little finger ”, assumes a station executive. Every evening, Laurence Ferrari, who cut his teeth at Europe 1, attracts 3.5% audience share, or 0.5 point more over one year. “It’s slowly increasing”, assures Constance Benqué.
Completely overhauled, Dimitri Pavlenko’s morning show suffers from the loss of Nicolas Canteloup, who was until last season his strongest audience crossroads. “Nicolas’ departure was justified by the need to give an identity back to the morning, to bring it up to range”, says Constance Benqué. The brutal landing at the end of July of the comedian, on contract until 2022, cost the radio a million euros, the amount of a season, which the station paid without complaining. At Vivendi, we hardly tasted the impertinence of the host. According to our information, its producer, Jean-Marc Dumontet, knew in the spring that his fate was sealed.
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