The evening was to be the climax of the internal campaign for the presidency of the Les Républicains party.
This Monday evening, the three candidates, Éric Ciotti, Aurélien Pradié and Bruno Retailleau, participated in their only television debate, live on LCI.
A difficult date as it is hard to exist in the face of the 2022 World Cup, broadcast at the same time on TF 1, where the United States entered the smooth face of Wales in front of 4 million sports fans.
For a little over an hour and a half, the presentation of the nuances within the right-wing party, which fell to 4.8% in the last presidential election, struggled to captivate viewers.
Only 288,000 people watched the debate between 8:30 p.m. and 10:11 p.m., i.e. a 1.2% market share of the overall audience.
In all, 2.03 million citizens zapped on it, at least one minute.
Over the entire duration of the discussions, the TF 1 group channel was only the third most watched news channel, just behind the end of Pascal Praud's program on CNews (1.4%) and a section devoted to the Ukraine on BFMTV (1.3%).
The Republicans scared away young viewers.
Average age of the evening: almost 65 years old, with an audience share of only 0.3% of 25-49 year olds, the preferred target of broadcasters.
For LR, rejuvenation is not now.