On December 31st Médiamétrie published its data on French television’s audience ratings for 2018. The public television group France Televisions is in the overall lead, with 28.4% of audience share. That is slightly ahead of the privately owned TF1 group, which has 27.6% audience share across its various channels.
Nevertheless the individual channel most watched by the French was once again TF1, with 20.2% of audience share. It ranks first in every programme category: entertainment, news, French drama, cinema and foreign series. In part TF1’s high score can be explained by the World Cup, for which it shared the TV rights with BeIN Sports. Indeed the final of the World Cup attracted 2018’s biggest audience, with 19.4 million people following the event at home.
France 2 – the channel experiencing the strongest growth – climbs to second place on the podium, with a 13.5% audience share, and a particularly sharp increase in viewers between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., its best results since 2010 (+3 points). For the second year in a row M6 loses ground in the French broadcasting landscape, being overtaken by France 3, which now occupies third place with 9.4% of audience share. Arte obtains 2.4%, a record for the Franco-German channel and largely due to the success of its early evening programmes.
Sources: Lefigaro.fr, lesechos.fr
