Saturday June 25, France 2 broadcast the first episode of Drag Race France, in the second part of the evening, on an exceptional basis. The idea was to support the launch of this drag-queens contest intended for the public service platform France.tv. On the strength of this audience success – some 914,000 viewers attended – the channel decided to review its plans. It announces, exclusively to 20 Minutesthat the entire season will finally be broadcast on air, starting this Saturday, July 2, after Fort Boyard: always stronger!around midnight.
The France.tv platform retains the exclusivity of the first broadcast of each of the remaining seven episodes, which will be put online every Thursday at 8 p.m.
“A long-term commitment to diversity and inclusion”
“It is important today, in this constantly changing world, to be able to speak to all our audiences, relying on the complementarity between our linear antennas and our France.tv platform, for which Delphine Ernotte Cunci and Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez have a very strong ambition”, indicates to 20 Minutes Alexandra Redde-Amiel, director of entertainment and games at France Télés. The objective is to make Drag Race France accessible to the widest audience possible. She continues: “It is a long-term commitment by France Télévisions in favor of diversity, inclusion and tolerance. It is a great pride to offer this program and to promote and discover this art among the general public. »
Among the half-dozen adaptations of the franchise Drag Race internationally – Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also have their own versions – the French version is the only one, with the British, to be entitled to broadcast on a public channel. Most foreign adaptations are only available for streaming – Drag Race Italia was programmed on the private channel Discovery+ several weeks after being broadcast online.
“All the audiences gathered around the show”
The first episode of Drag Race France put online on the France.tv platform on Saturday evening, got off to a very satisfactory start. “We will communicate on D+7 with the consolidated audiences. But, to date, the broadcast of the first episode is comparable to that of a good launch of a fiction series on the site, confides Alexandra Redde-Amiel. We are more than enthusiastic. »
The patron saint of public service entertainment also points out that “all the public gathered around the show” during the broadcast of the episode on France 2 in the second part of the evening on Saturday. “We scored extremely interesting and encouraging targets for the future, for example 10.3% for 25-59 year olds,” she says.
Drag Race France is an adaptation of the American concept RuPaul’s Drag Racecreated in 2009 and whose cult aura, especially within the LGBTQ+ community, has been consolidated over the years. Ten drag-queens take part in this first tricolor season presented by Nicky Doll, surrounded by two permanent jurors, Daphné Bürki and Kiddy Smile. In each episode, the candidates submit themselves to different challenges using their sense of humor, fashion, comedy and allowing them to reveal their different talents. A queen is eliminated at the end of each episode. During the final, only one will be crowned “superstar drag-queen”.