The Sunday ratings battle promises to intensify this spring. TVA will air a new current affairs program piloted by Stéphan Bureau, which will compete directly with Everybody talks about it at Radio Canada.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
According to our information, this new weekly format of 60 minutes will be broadcast on Sundays at 9 p.m. Four meetings are scheduled for this spring. The show will then take a break during the summer and resume airing in September.
Because true nature will end its regular season on April 3 and that a special “confidences from the chalet” is scheduled for April 10, everything indicates that Stéphan Bureau will start on Sunday, April 17.
He will benefit from a formidable locomotive with Star Academywhich draws nearly 1.5 million live viewers every weekend, according to data from Numeris.
A pilot program will be recorded in a few weeks.
Stéphan Bureau should be surrounded by a group of panelists from various backgrounds to talk about current events. Their recruitment is currently in full swing. TVA seeks to offer a diversity of opinions, we hear.
Reached by telephone, Stéphan Bureau did not wish to say more because he had not obtained “the green light from the organization with which [il] works” to talk about the project. In an interview given to Montreal Journal published on Thursday, the main interested party mentioned this new television adventure without, however, giving more details on the network, the day and the time of broadcast. The host simply spoke of a “non-traditional news” program. The article specifies that a press release should be sent “in about ten days”.
New strategy
With this new interview show, TVA is visibly changing its strategy to erode the audience of Everybody talks about it. After spending years favoring “lighter” entertainment to counter Guy A. Lepage’s high Canadian radio mass, the broadcaster has decided to go play in its flowerbeds.
In recent years, the Sunday hut of 21 ha has housed, in addition to true nature by Jean-Philippe Dion, Family jewels with Charles Lafortune, Everybody Loves with Sonia Benezra, By invitation with Stéphane Rousseau and Flight 920a reality show that was to replace Double occupation.
TVA could also, next fall, invest in another time slot in which Radio-Canada is doing well. The Quebecor channel recently revealed that it was preparing a daily drama for September.
Starring Sébastien Delorme, Mathieu Baron, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé and Marilyse Bourke, the legal drama Indefensible could inherit the 7 p.m. slot, especially since District 31 will bow out next April, after six seasons of total domination.
Back to TV
This new TVA news program will mark the return of Stéphan Bureau to the small screen. Since the end of Great interviews in 2016, the journalist favored the radio waves of ICI Première, in particular writing a column on the 15-18, as well as making replacements for Catherine Perrin and Pénélope McQuade. It’s actually last summer, after having spent another summer season at the helm of Of coursethat he decided to pack up and give up his job at Radio-Canada.
This planned departure came less than a month after he received a reprimand for his interview with French infectious disease specialist Didier Raoult.
CBC/Radio-Canada’s ombudsman for French services, Pierre Champoux, concluded that the host and his team had failed to carry out the necessary checks and had violated the broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices.
During the interview, which dealt with COVID-19, the controversial Marseille doctor had expressed doubts about the risk-benefit ratio of vaccination for those under 70, a theory that contradicted the largest studies.
After the publication of the reprimand, Stéphan Bureau had refused to apologize on the air, stressing that he did not respect the opinion of the guardian of ethics and that he left “to others the care of crawling”.
Stéphan Bureau had already left the public broadcaster. In 2003, he had chosen to leave his position as head of antenna at the Telejournal – The Pointwhich he had held since 1998.