The first audiences are disappointing for the media decryption program presented by Mélanie Taravant. If the host seems to have found her style, the show’s formula is still being sought.
One month after its launch, C media, the France 5 program devoted to the media, is struggling to find its audience. Broadcast on Sundays at 1:30 p.m., it attracts an average of around 253,000 viewers (2.1% audience share). A rather disappointing figure for a magazine which, six years later Media, the mag (already on France 5), aims to settle and to impose its view on the processing of information. “Welcome to your date. The program that sifts through all the media, what you read, listen to, watch on your screens because the media are everywhere and everything is media. formula at each start of a Mélanie Taravant program. The journalist presenter who confided at the time of the launch to want to propose “a different treatment because we will have time to reflect, to step back on the information, to deepen certain subjects”.
The “big” runaway
After four episodes, the promise is not necessarily kept. The show has indeed all the trouble to extract itself from the news, which it comments on more than it analyzes. Like the first, broadcast on September 11, but recorded the day after the death of Elizabeth II. “A planetary explosion, a shock wave”, announces Mélanie Taravant who is launching a long report “at the heart of the reactor” at RTL, Paris Match and The Parisian “in full boiling” after “this bomb that fell in all the newsrooms”, insists the presenter. A step back or step aside not obvious in the choice of words and the summary. We would almost have fun with the confidences of Marc-Olivier Fogiel, general manager of BFMTV, on the cover of his channel and “the race against time” to be able to set up all the sets in London. “That’s what makes this job interesting when suddenly the news is accelerating”, says the former host. “This queen was a bit ours”, dares for his part Nicolas Charbonneau, editorial director of the Parisian to justify the successive ones. “Also the assurance of a good sale?” » finally tickles it Mélanie Taravant. In the end, more than twenty minutes devoted to the coverage of “the icon among the icons”, says the presenter. For the analysis or the beginning of a critique of this “big” runaway, we will have to wait.
A rookie mistake that will be rectified later with the choice of broader themes: “Climate: the impossible media revolution? » (September 18), « Big bang which agitates the French media, who to buy M6? » (September 25) then “Communication: has Macron lost his touch? (October 2). All discussed on set by specialists in a round table format that is still popular on television. We even dare a second service around lighter subjects such as Miss France, the Football World Cup or the asteroid Didymos deflected by NASA. But here again, another limit appears, that of the editing, which can greatly affect the fluidity of the subject. So the conversation around the TF1 and M6 merger during the third show, on September 25, turned out to be quite complicated to follow.
The show, which wants to be rhythmic, multiplies the sequences, small subjects and chronicles. Not easy to fit everything in fifty-two minutes. “True or fake”, a chronicle by Julien Pain (fake news hunter on Franceinfo), often well seen, and “Le temps de brain disponible”, a caustic portrait signed by journalist Raphaëlle Baillot, are for example integrated into the debates. Not always in the right tempo or in the mood.
Efficient social media processing
Precisely question atmosphere, Mélanie Taravant announced to us “impertinence without taking oneself seriously”. Here again, the challenge is not quite met. Like the soap opera “The lights of the screen”, modeled in its dressing on the famous American soap the fires of love, which retraces the media news of the week with sarcasm and a very (too) overplayed irony, sometimes even embarrassing for its author.
On the other hand, Mélanie Taravant seems to have found her style. The one that also presents The world in frontur this same channel runs the store rather well, knows how to be relevant or bounce back pugnaciously on the responses of its guests. Also to his credit, a little scoop snatched from Marc-Olivier Fogiel: the end of Ségolène Royal’s lightning collaboration with BFMTV. Guilty of having relayed fake Russian news claiming that the bombing of the Mariupol maternity ward had not taken place, the candidate for the presidency of the Republic in 2007 refused to apologize to BFM, choosing LCI for the To do. Finally, we will emphasize an effective treatment of the news around social networks with well-regarded subjects such as those on the beauty influencers in the service of Putin, the astonishing backstage of Z-Event or the portrait of Father Matthieu, the tiktok priest. Enough to attract a young audience and allow the show to take off? Yesterday, Sunday October 2, there were only 217,000 viewers to watch C media.
What is “C media”, the new Sunday program on France 5 worth?