TF1, which had bet on a tighter election night this Sunday before rebroadcasting Visitors, came well ahead of the TV audiences of the first round of the presidential election, according to figures from Médiamétrie published on Monday. On average, 7.27 million viewers followed the election night broadcast on TF1 from 7.50 p.m. to 10 p.m., or 29.1% audience share. According to the channel, this is a record for an election night since 2007, all channels and all elections combined.
Over a longer period, France 2 brought together 4.58 million viewers (20% audience share) from 7:30 p.m. to 10:50 p.m. (in total, its evening lasted until midnight). France 3 attracted 1.45 million viewers (6.1% audience share) from 7:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., and M6 some two million viewers (8.1% PDA) from 7:45 p.m. to 8:25 p.m.
“Visitors” followed by 2.27 million people
TF1 was also in the lead at 8:00 p.m. sharp, when the faces of the two qualified candidates for the second round, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, were revealed. At that time, 7.9 million viewers were watching TF1 (30% PDA), 7.1 million France 2 (26.8%), 2.2 million M6 (8.3%) and 1.4 million France 3 (5.5%). TF1 had made an impression by announcing at the end of March that it would not devote all of its Sunday evening to the presidential election, a great first.
The channel had notably highlighted a weariness of viewers with very long classic evenings. She had originally planned to stop hers at 9.30pm to rerun the hit film Visitors, while indicating that this schedule could be postponed if the news required it. This is what finally happened on Sunday: Visitors started around 10:00 p.m., to give TF1 time to broadcast the speech of Emmanuel Macron, who spoke later than most of the other candidates.
From 10 p.m. to around midnight, the film starring Jean Reno and Christian Clavier was watched by 2.27 million viewers (16.3% PDA).
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