Ten days before the first round of the early legislative elections, is CNews taking off against its competitor BFM-TV? The ultraconservative channel of the Canal+ group outclassed it again, Thursday June 20, for the fourth day in a row. Since Monday June 17, the channel on which Pascal Praud, Laurence Ferrari and Christine Kelly officiate, with its share of right-wing debates, has oscillated between 3.9% and 4.8% audience share, or between 0.5 and 1 .2 points ahead of BFM-TV (3.1% to 3.6% audience share), both remaining well ahead of LCI (2%) and Franceinfo (1.1%).
Leading the category of news channels since 2011, BFM-TV ceded, for the first time over an entire month, in May, its leading position by 0.1 point, to CNews (2.8% versus 2 .7%). Since the beginning of June, the podium and the gap between them remain unchanged according to our information: CNews is in the lead, at 3.6%, followed closely by BFM-TV, at 3.5%.
Among the factors explaining the opinion channel’s progress is the greater age of its audience: 65.1 years on average, compared to 59.6 years for BFM-TV in May. That same month, CNews remained second in the different age groups, with the exception of those aged 78 and over, where it was well ahead (4.2% against 3.4%). This audience stays longer in front of the television: viewing time has increased from thirty-seven to forty-three minutes on average on CNews, while it has increased from twenty-four to twenty-nine minutes on BFM-TV.
Full of viewers
The two competitors, as well as LCI and Franceinfo, have in any case been full of viewers since the surprise announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron on the evening of the large victory of the National Rally in the European elections, June 9 . Cumulatively, the four channels have a total audience share of 11.2%, the best week since the start of the war in Ukraine (11.8% at the time).
LCI reached 2.8%, on June 11, its highest audience since the riots which followed the death of Nahel M., in June 2023, killed by a police officer following a road check, while Franceinfo climbed to 1.5% audience share on June 12, the best performance of the public channel since March 2022, far from the 0.7% on average in May.
At BFM-TV, management prefers to note that it retained its title of leading news channel (with 4.1% audience share) from June 9 to 16, mainly thanks to weekends, a period during which she stays in the lead. Also, since the European elections, it has increased its gap with its pursuer in number of daily viewers: 14.7 million people, compared to 9.8 million for CNews (compared to 12.1 million and 8.2 million people respectively in May ).
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