The court has decided. Sacked from “Questions for a champion” in January 2016 after twenty-eight years at the head of the game, Julien Lepers had not stopped there. Believing that he had been dismissed on the basis of age discrimination, the septuagenarian had brought the case before the Labor Court in March 2017, and claimed more than 3.4 million euros. At first instance, Julien Lepers had won his case, but not enough to his liking: the host and lyricist had obtained “only” 798,146 euros, a sum calculated on the staggering salary of 39,907 euros gross, which he received for a week of recordings.
A sum that Julien Lepers had deemed insufficient, compared to that which he had in the first place demanded. Thus, the host had appealed. But according to our colleagues from The Informed, Julien Lepers has once again not won his case. If his lawyer, Me Pierre-Olivier Lambert, insisted on the presumed discrimination that his client would have suffered from Delphine Ernotte, the president of France Televisionswho, at the time of his dismissal, had made it known publicly “that there were too many white men over 50 on French television” and that “(had) to change”, the courts did not consider it necessary to take this argument into consideration. And for good reason: Julien Lepers’ successor is none other than Samuel Etienne.
To see also: Julien Lepers makes a big dumpling on Twitter, Samuel Etienne does not miss it!
Stressful, corny and heavy
To defend itself, the production company FremantleMedia France denounced, with supporting documents, the drop in audiences for “Questions for a champion” over the period 2010-2014. The producer indicated that satisfaction studies had been established in 2014 with the public of “Questions for a champion”, and that these, which presented him as “too fast, stressful, cheesy and heavy”, inevitably played against his flagship animator. The question of separating from Julien Lepers had therefore arisen since 2014… even though Delphine Ernotte was not yet president of the France Télévisions group.
Unsurprisingly therefore, Julien Lepers was dismissed and will not get the 3.4 million he had claimed in the first and second instances. Contacted by the site PureMediathe host, visibly furious, described as “grumpy” by our colleagues, refused to comment on the failure of the procedure he had initiated.
CG