Climax of the presidential election, the debate between the two rounds, presented this year by Gilles Bouleau and Léa Salamé, broadcast live from the plateau of La Plaine-Saint-Denis on TF 1 and France 2, captivated 15 .6 million viewers, on average, until 11.50 p.m. this Wednesday April 20 (14.05 million, according to the Médiamétrie site, without the count of the news channels, known at 11 a.m.) i.e. an audience share of 67 .4%.
The duel opposed Emmanuel Macron, outgoing president, and Marine Le Pen, RN candidate.
In detail, 7.41 million people were connected to the front page (32.4% of PDAs), 6.64 million to the public channel (29%) and 1.55 million to the news channels (6% ).
Read alsoPresidential debate: Macron and Le Pen, project against project, blow for blow
In 2017, the first leg, which already opposed Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, presented this time by Nathalie Saint-Cricq for France Télévisions and Christophe Jakubyszyn for the private channel, was watched by 16.4 million French people on average (8 .14 million for TF 1, 7.01 million for France 2 and 1.25 million for the news channels).
It was, already at the time, the lowest historical audience.
In 2012, the debate between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande interested 17.05 million viewers.
Then, you have to go back to 1995 and the face-off between Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin to find a score of less than 20 million people since only 16.78 million voters were in front of their television set.
By way of comparison, the debates of 1981 and 1988 brought together 30 million French people.
Among the other channels, only France 3 is doing well on Wednesday evening, with an issue of "Faut pas rêver" devoted to tasty encounters in Franche-Comté, which made 1.2 million gourmets salivate (5% PDA).
M 6's “Nightmare in the kitchen” interested 721,000 fans (2.9% PDA) and Arte's film, “Nureyev” 626,000 moviegoers, or 2.5% PDA.