L’Equipe 21, the free-TV channel broadcast on French DTT, "whose audience is struggling to take off, is now going to focus on live programming," the TV channel announced during the presentation of its new programming schedule on Tuesday, according to the AFP. It "hopes to capitalize on the good audience ratings" from the FIFA World Cup. L’Equipe 21 reached its peak audience in June, with a 0.7% share, compared to its average of 0.2% in ’13. In September, the channel reported that its share was 0.45%. L’Equipe 21 CEO Xavier Spender said, "The balance point is a 1.2% or 1.3% audience share,” adding that the chain "will balance for the next World Cup in 2018." Some of the events that will be broadcast this season include Eurocup basketball games, the freestyle skiing world championships in January, boxing matches, and the inaugural European Games, a multi-sport event to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in June ‘15. The new schedule also shows the emergence of several shows, including "L’Equipe Type” -- a new daily talk show dedicated to football -- and "On va s'en mêler" -- a show dedicated to rugby -- airing every Sunday. At the same time, "sales of the daily paper continue to drop." While it remained unaffected by the newspaper crisis for a long time, L’Equipe "saw its sales drop" 11% in '13 (AFP, 10/15).
