France Télévisions will stop “Numbers and Letters” at the start of the school year

With more than fifty years of existence, the show is the oldest game show in France.

The oldest game show in France, “Numbers and Letters”, will disappear from the France Télévisions schedules at the start of the school year, announced broadcast director Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, in an interview with The gallery Sunday May 5. “The weekend programming [l’émission] was not crowned with success”, he admitted. Since the start of the school year in September 2022, the game created in 1972 has only been broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays.

“After fifty years of existence, it is an emblematic meeting. It is a difficult decision, but we have made the choice to stop this program”explained Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez. “A goodbye show will bring together Patrice Laffont and Laurent Romejko [le premier présentateur et le dernier de l’émission]and will thank all the teams”added the antenna director.

“The Health Magazine” extended

The place on France 3 for the emblematic game, on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15 p.m., will now be occupied by the television adaptation of another emblematic program from Radio France, “The Game of 1,000 euros”, until now broadcast only the Saturday.

Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez also announced the non-renewal of more recent shows such as “Bertrand n’a pas slept” or “En bande organised”, “because they have not fully found their audience.” “On the other hand, many recent programs are being renewed, like ‘C media’ [France 5] and of ‘Indeed’ [France 2]. We will also continue our strategy aimed at young audiences by investing in the Twitch platform from the start of the school year.”he continued.

Furthermore, France 5 will finally keep “Le Magazine de la santé”, whose deletion announced after 25 years on the air had sparked a wave of protests expressing alarm at the end of a popular science program on health and medicine . Nearly 170 personalities, including the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn and the pulmonologist Irène Frachon, had judged that “save ‘The Health Magazine’ is a public health duty.”in a forum at Figaro. This program will now be presented by Jimmy Mohamed alone, without Marina Carrère d’Encausse.