The station was sentenced to 10.3 million euros fine for messages broadcast on the air, suggesting to listeners the responses to be provided in the event of a survey.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
Fun Radio was sentenced to more than 10.3 million euros in damages for “unfair competition” after calling on its listeners to twist audience figures, complainants and convicted. The case, tried Monday, January 23 by the Paris Commercial Court, dates back to 2015 and 2016. After a historic audience record, according to Médiamétrie, for Fun Radio in the first quarter of 2016 (7.5 %, + 0.8 point), his competitor NRJ had court to denounce a fraudulent practice.
She consisted of the star host of the station, Bruno Guillon, in encouraging listeners to answer that they listened to fun radio all day when they were contacted by a sonmer. “Take ten minutes. Why? Because this person will ask you questions: what radio did you listen to yesterday morning? You say fun radio. Hop! And after, when I got home from work, what radio you listened to? I listened to fun Radio. And by going to bed? I listened to fun radio, “he explained for example.
” your humorous “
These messages “had allowed Fun Radio to artificially increase its audiences, which had the effect of increasing its income to the detriment of the NRJ group radios in particular,” NRJ said in a statement on Monday evening.
Fun Radio, which belonged to RTL at the time and today to the M6 group, estimated that there was no fraud. These messages were “pronounced without any intention to manipulate the audience results, in the wake of a market practice which was widely used on the radio market at the time of the facts”, according to Fun Radio.
The station asserts a dismissal rendered in the criminal procedure launched after a complaint of NRJ. In March 2022, Fun Radio noted, the investigating judge had concluded that these messages “pronounced in a humorous and spontaneous tone” did not fall under the law. After investigation, Médiamétrie had corrected the measures of the first quarter of 2016, and had not included Fun Radio in those of the second quarter.