Sport, series... What are the best television audiences of 2023?

The French XV may have been eliminated in the quarter-finals at the last Rugby World Cup. But he transformed the ratings field test. In 2023, the competition took 8 of the first 10 places in the Top 100 best audiences. Captain Antoine Dupont and his teammates set the record of the year by bringing together 16.5 million viewers on October 15, during the match lost against South Africa. They captivated 15.6 million French people during the opening match of the competition between the Blues and New Zealand.

These scores are far from eclipsing the 24.1 million fans watching the France-Argentina final of the World Cup in 2022: the absolute record recorded by a TV program on a single channel. But it is proof that sport remains one of the great pillars of the TV medium. With 38 of the 100 best audiences, compared to 32 a year ago, the weight of sports competitions on TV is even growing.

But it is, however, French fiction that retains its gold medal in the list of favorite French programs. The genre is popular, with 42 places on the list of highest audiences. Created by UGC and broadcast by TF1, the HPI phenomenon is not running out of steam. The series played by Audrey Fleurot alone took 9 places, including one in the Top 10, with 10.4 million followers watching the episode of May 11.

Still on the front page, the new fiction Panda, with the duo Julien Doré and Ophélia Kolb, takes 24th place in the ranking with 7.7 million aficionados for the episode broadcast on November 30. Master Crimes, another unpublished fiction (UGC), carried by Muriel Robin, was well received on TF1, with 6.5 million fans watching the first part at the beginning of November. On France Télévisions, the detective series Alex Hugo with Samuel Le Bihan (France 3) or Astrid and Raphaëlle (France 2), carried by the shock tandem between Sara Mortensen and Lola Dewaere, are popular with the public with up to 6 .2 million viewers for the latter.

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Conversely, American series are absent from subscribers. Not a single one has won their ticket to appear in the Top 100 audiences. Cinema is not doing much better, with only two films in the charts, Pourris gâtés on TF1 followed by 5.8 million curious people and Antoinette dans les Cévennes on France 2 which interested 5.6 million. Entertainment also pales in comparison, with 5 small places, for the Concerts des Enfoirés (8.5 million viewers) or the Miss France election (7.5 million viewers) on TF1.

Proof that audiences are declining, to be part of the club of the 100 most watched programs, this year it was necessary to cross the threshold of 5.4 million viewers. In 2022, the bar was set at 5.8 million people. It even reached 6.5 million French people five years ago, in 2018. This year again, TF1 retained its crown by claiming 69 of the 100 most watched programs. But France Télévisions is on the offensive. The group's flagship, France 2, took 22 places, thanks to rugby, while France 3 took 8. That's 30 places in total. M6, for its part, landed only one program in the Top 100.