New voice on the verge of extinction on RTL. Confined to Corsica, Jacques Pradel continues his program at 8 p.m. every night at "L'Heure du crime" thanks to the small studio he set up in his house on the eastern coast. But, at the beginning of the summer, the journalist specializing in various facts will put an end to it. He will stop his daily life on July 3, and will leave the station of the M6 group where he arrived in 2010, as he announced in an interview with Corse Matin. A departure which comes in addition to that of Stéphane Bern, while Sidonie Bonnec and Thomas Hugues will be, them, deprived of their magazine "Curiosity is an ugly defect", not renewed at the start of the school year.
“It has been agreed that I will not resume L'Heure du crime next season, and I will leave the station at the end of my contract at the end of July, confirms Jacques Pradel, 73, who took over the air on May 11 , after a month of interruption. I've been thinking about stopping the show for two years already. I had then raised the issue with the previous RTL boss, Christopher Baldelli, but we had finally decided to renew it. This year, I was replaced several times by Jean-Alphonse Richard with my agreement. I decided to stop, because it is better to do it in full success than to wait until the listeners leave! In the past two years, our audience has increased by 20% on this schedule! It is a great happiness, but I did not want to reconnect with a very heavy daily rhythm and which has been mine for twelve years. "
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Formerly of France Inter, then morning worker of Europe 1, Jacques Pradel had launched “Café crime” there, each early afternoon in 2008, before settling into the microphone of RTL two years later. RTL which he did not really imagine giving up. “They didn't offer me another weekly or monthly program. I can only take note of it, but it is not a subject of dispute between us, he insists. I am in a quiet phase. "
And the journalist to refine plans for the future. He will remain the voice of “Criminal Chronicles” on TFX and podcasts imagined from his comments for the TF1 group. In addition, he is preparing a “Jacques Pradel” collection of six books (published by JPO), devoted to criminal cases, which will be launched in September.
“I am going to give the floor to unknown actors in the judicial and police world. With the knowledge I have among journalists, gendarmes, police, judges, lawyers, I think they have interesting things to say, he comments. We will start with the testimony of a young woman who was forced at 16 and a half to organize a kidnapping for her father, a domestic tyrant. The second book will go behind the scenes of the work and reports carried out by the journalist Alain Hamon, a great specialist in criminal files. "
And the radio professional concludes: “I continue to be passionate about this field. I would now like to give more time to think, to write. "