The journalist who hosted on RTL "Les auditeurs ont la parole" arrives on Europe 1 "from August 28. From Monday to Friday from 11am to 13pm, he will take control of +Pascal Praud and you+ live around all the topics that make the news, "announced Europe 1 on Twitter.

"That's it! It makes me very happy to join the big house Europe 1, the big blue house, "responded the host in a video posted by his new employer.

For months, the press announced the 58-year-old journalist leaving for Europe 1, radio of the Lagardère group, whose absorption by Vivendi, a group of Vincent Bolloré, has just been authorized by Brussels under conditions.

On June 30, Pascal Praud announced live his departure from RTL (M6 group), where he presented the midday segment since 2018. Life will be elsewhere, without you," he said at the end of the last issue of the season, without specifying his destination.

This transfer, the most important of the media transfer window, further strengthens the rapprochement initiated two years ago between Europe 1 and the news channel CNews, owned by Vivendi, which already share several headliners such as Laurence Ferrari and Sonia Mabrouk.

The press echoed a difficult choice for the host, who leaves RTL, the second most listened to radio in France (10.1% cumulative audience in the first quarter) for the red lantern of generalist radios, whose audiences have stabilized on the last wave (3.9% of AC) after more than ten years of tumbling.

Will the arrival of Pascal Praud allow Europe 1 to get back on track?

On CNews, his show "L'heure des pros", where he leads debates on current topics, surrounded by columnists, many of whom are very right-wing, seduces the public: it gathers around 400,000 viewers in the morning and 600,000 in the evening.

Sophie Davant

Radio should also count on another popular figure, this time from the public service. Sophie Davant, replaced at the presentation of "Case concluded" on France 2 in September, confirmed in the columns of her magazine S that she would be at the helm of a two-hour program on "a large national radio", probably from 16h to 18H.

Another change planned for September on Europe 1, the departure of Philippe Vandel, the presenter of the daily show Culture Médias, who will be replaced by Thomas Isle.

So far, multiple grid changes have never succeeded at Europe 1, including its rapprochement with CNews, which led to a historic strike at the station in the summer of 2021, which resulted in massive, forced or forced departures.

Many of his historical voices had then denounced the "growing influence" of Vincent Bolloré in the media, the billionaire being regularly accused of interference and wanting to transform them into opinion media.

A new strike has also been underway for thirteen days in another title of the Lagardère group, the Journal du dimanche, its editorial staff denouncing the arrival at its head of the journalist marked to the extreme right Geoffroy Lejeune, former editorial director of Valeurs actuelles.

In 2016, the ancestor of CNews, i-Télé, had experienced 31 days of strike, before seeing nearly a hundred of its members leave the ship, failing to obtain the guarantees of independence they demanded. Pascal Praud and Laurence Ferrari, among others, had chosen to stay.

Before becoming the strong man of CNews, Praud was a sports journalist for a long time, notably in "Téléfoot" on TF1.

© 2023 AFP