2024-01-07 13:30:10
Published on Jan 7, 2024 at 2:30 p.m.
They’re just a few piano notes, but they’re not quite the same anymore. This Sunday, the faithful listeners of “Masque et la Plume” will have recognized the first measure of “La Fileuse” by Mendelssohn, which since 1978 has introduced this France Inter cultural program created in 1955, one of the oldest on French radio .
But the rest of the credits differ. And this is not the only change: for the first time following 35 years on the air, its presenter Jérôme Garcin gives way to Rebecca Manzoni, another voice dear to France Inter listeners. A heavy task begins for the journalist and columnist.
Because in addition to being essential in the French cultural landscape, the show remains one of the pillars of the Inter schedule. According to Médiamétrie, in September and October 2023, it gathered on average more than 1.3 million listeners in its first broadcast on Sunday at 10 a.m., then 704,000 once more in the second broadcast on the same day at 8 p.m., winning in both case the place of leader (for 19 years in the evening slot). Added to this are some 700,000 podcast downloads per month over the same period (+17% in two years).
Freedom of tone
“The challenge is to make ‘The Mask and the Feather’ exist as listeners know it while putting my touch on it over the weeks,” summarizes Rebecca Manzoni. The show therefore maintains its schedule, its alternation between literature, cinema and theater (which might open up to stand-up). It remains recorded in public and will retain its character, made of “debate, freedom and absolute independence of speech”, she indicates.
The casting of critical leaders, whose witticisms are the spice of the program, has on the other hand been largely renewed, with the departures, among others, of Eric Neuhoff, Frédéric Beigbeder and Olivia de Lamberterie.
In the opposite direction, journalists from “World of Books” (Raphaëlle Leyris), “Point” (Florence Colombani), “Télérama” (Marie Sauvion) and “Libération” (Laurent Goumarre), arrive, but also the writers Blandine Rinkel and Laurent Chalumeau, the actor Christophe Bourseiller and the academic Pierre Lesquelen.
Prescribing effect
It is up to this new team to convince listeners sensitive to the opinions of critics. “The show has real prescriptive power because it has an audience of great readers,” underlines Sophie Charnavel, director of the Robert Laffont publishing house (Editis). At the beginning of October, the book “Proust, family novel” by Laure Murat was praised by Jérôme Garcin and his colleagues. “We saw sales take off immediately,” confides Sophie Charnavel. The book is now close to 50,000 sales.
Rebelote a few weeks later with “Le Cheval en feu” (Actes Sud) by Anuradha Roy. “This doesn’t happen with every book. But then, overnight, we saw readers coming to us asking for this book, telling us that they had heard regarding it on the show,” confides Anne-Laure Vial, co-founder of the Ici à Paris bookstore. A dream scenario in these specific cases, but which turned into a nightmare in others; the show having made its reputation on its blunt criticism and its sometimes acerbic tone.
“If you arrive with a book that makes an event and it gets trashed in this show as soon as it comes out, the outcome can be catastrophic,” notes Muriel Beyer, member of the Humensis board of directors. “It’s part of the game and it’s the hallmark of the show. It’s because they can knock out a book that they are credible,” adds Sophie Charnavel.
But a good review in “The Mask and the Feather” is not everything. “La Grande Bibliothèque” on France 5, “Télérama”, “Le Monde des Livres”, Inter’s morning show… Other programs and publications also play a fundamental role in the commercial destiny of a book. “If you release a book of general literature, you need as many of them as possible to speak well of your book,” argues Muriel Beyer. It is a necessity today for the vast majority of authors. »
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