Only 3.1 million French people watched the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday, giving the channel a third place on the scale of TV audience, 0.5 ahead of M 6.
This poor result is no big surprise for eurofans as the two other main channels had strong programmes. TF 1 gives another of its popular shows, under the title of "Les 30 histoires les plus spectaculaires" (the 30 most spectacular stories), where as France 2 offered the final of the French football cup : Lyon (winning leader of the French championship) versus PSG – the Parisian team – which nearly got relegated from the first league, a couple of weeks ago (but finally managed to remain among the 20 best clubs).
As TF 1's got a 26.1% share of market, France 2 climbed up to 31.7%, leaving France 3 and Eurovision at 16.7%.By the way, the same situation happened last year. France 2 won the challenge with 34,3% (and the football cup final match, Marseilles vs Sochaux) whereas TF 1 was 2nd, with 29.1% on a "CSI : NY" episode. The 2007 Eurovision final reached 3r place, with 18.5% and 3.5 million people watching the contest. As it's nearly impossible to have much more viewers on Eurovision due to big prime-time events on the others channels, some also think that France 3 makes no big enough effort to promote the contest.
This year's entrant, Sébastien Tellier, was invited on many occcasions on France 2 and France 2, and also had a lot of coverage from small TV channels. Still, it didn't stop the loss of interest of the French audience. A rather small number of articles on Eurovision can be read today in France, showing that it is no longer the big same event. The "Festival de Cannes" as well as many important sports events over the week-end also contributed to the loss of interest from the media.
