The 2021 figures confirm those of the previous year. TF1 and France 2 respectively retain their first and second places in the ranking of TV audiences in 2021, the two channels posting strong increases in one year. Same dynamic for the continuous news channel CNews, whose audience has jumped without overtaking its rival, BFM-TV.
According to figures published Monday, January 3 by Médiamétrie, the audience share (pda) of TF1, all categories of viewers combined, increased by 0.5 point to 19.7%. The front page is approaching the 20% mark, a level below which it had fallen in 2019. The first channel recorded 70 of the 100 best audiences in 2021, in particular the strongest of them: the eighth of final of the France-Switzerland football Euro, which gathered 16.4 million viewers.
Also to the credit of TF1, the audience card of the French series HPI which attracted 12.4 million viewers, achieving the best French fiction audience of 2021 but also since 2005. On the daily news shutter, the One achieves 95 of the top 100 television news audiences over the past year.
“These remarkable performances illustrate our desire to be at the heart of the daily life of the French with an event offering, popular and demanding, and are the result of our editorial and digital transformation in response to changing uses”, welcomed Gilles Pélisson, CEO of the TF1 Group, quoted in a press release.
France 2 at its highest since 2012
France 2’s audience share jumped 0.6 point to 14.7%, the highest since 2012. The second channel thus achieved its best audience of the year in the first part of the evening with the France-Scotland match of the Six Nations Tournament which gathered more than 7.6 million viewers.
The broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics last summer also contributed to the channel’s overall performance, which also prides itself on the success of series such as Captain Marleau, Astrid and Raphaëlle or, more recently, Around the world in 80 days.
France 3 remains on the third step of the podium with a stable audience share over one year at 9.4% just ahead of M6 which garners 0.1 point audience over one year at 9.1%. France 5 posted 3.3% audience share, down 0.2 point, followed by TMC (3% audience, stable over one year) and Arte, which remained at 2.9% over one year .
BFM-TV remains the leading news channel with an audience share of 2.9%, similar to last year. On the other hand, CNews jumped 0.6 point and achieved 2% audience share. LCI follows, at 1.1% down 0.1 point, and Franceinfo, stable at 0.7% over one year. The overall television viewing time in 2021 has returned to its level before the health crisis and the confinements, or 3 h 41 per day on average against 3 h 58 in 2020.