At the end of the season, the radio remains powerful but it is marking time. The media once again recorded a drop in its overall audience, with 39.3 million listeners aged 13 and over every day, down 124,000 faithful over one year, according to the survey published on Wednesday by the Médiamétrie institute on the period April-June 2023. On the other hand, the listening time per day and per listener remains at 2.37 hours in a context where the digital audio and streaming offer continues to grow – 131 million French podcasts were listened to or downloaded, for example, in the month of June alone.
In this context, France Inter remains firmly established on the first step of the podium. After having reached its historic record at the start of the year with some 7 million listeners, the most powerful station of the public group Radio France fell moderately, to 6.967 million faithful, against 6.898 million last year, and 12.5 % of cumulative audience. The “7/9.30” by Nicolas Demorand and Léa Salamé, with Sonia Devillers, brings together 4.5 million listeners every morning and remains the leading morning show in France, with a cumulative audience of 8.1% and an audience share by 17.9%. “ We have had a season of performances and stabilized France Inter, Franceinfo, France Culture and France Musique at high levels”, underlines Sibyle Veil, the president of Radio France. The only downside is the France Bleu station, which is still seeing its cumulative audience drop on this wave to 4.5%, compared to 4.8% in April-June 2022. “Céline Pigalle, the new director of France Bleu, has just arrived . We haven’t changed the grid yet during the season. We are going to install a new dynamic at the start of the next school year. But it takes time, the radio is a medium of habits, ”recalls Sibyle Veil.
The developments expected at the start of the school year in the morning of France Inter do not worry the boss of Radio France. Already extended by half an hour this year, the morning will be extended again next season, until 10 a.m. It will always be carried by the two “ pillars” Léa Salamé and Nicolas Demorand. Léa Salamé and Sonia Devillers will, however, swap their interview times, the second taking the 7:50 a.m. slot. Léa Salamé will provide a quarter-hour daily interview, at 9:20 a.m. “The morning show will gain in power , this is the bet taken by Adèle Van Reeth ”, who took control of the first radio station in France at the end of August 2022.
Still well established in second place in the ranking, ahead of the thematic station Franceinfo, RTL has run out of steam over one year, with a cumulative audience that has slipped from 10.1% in April-June 2022 to 9.5% on this last wave of audience of the season. The M6 group station brings together nearly 5.3 million daily listeners (compared to just under 5.6 million in 2022). The real surprise of this quarterly Médiamétrie survey concerns Nostalgie, owned by Jean-Paul Baudecroux’s NRJ group, which, with a cumulative audience of 6.2% (compared to 5.5% a year earlier), outweighs the generalist RMC (5.6% cumulative audience) and musical Skyrock (5.8%) and thus takes fifth place among radio stations in France with nearly 3.5 million listeners. For its part, NRJ is still suffering with a cumulative audience of 7.7% against 7.9% and 4.3 million followers. The situation is more tense for the stations of the Lagardère News group. After stabilizing in the first quarter, Europe 1, which is in the process of being sold to Vincent Bolloré’s Vivendi group, fell below 2 million daily listeners, to 1.963 million, and its cumulative audience fell from 3.8 % to 3.5 %. The station intends to turn the tide at the start of the school year, notably with the arrivals at the end of August of journalist Pascal Praud at midday and host Sophie Davant in the afternoon. The musicals of Lagardère, Europe 2 (2.2 %), ex-Virgin Radio, and RFM (3 %), also weaken. As one radio manager reminded us, “in terms of audience, you go down with the elevator but you go up by the stairs… Listeners don’t appreciate regular changes to the appointments to which they are attached. »
