“I’m tackling new adventures…”. Catherine Matausch bowed out this Sunday, July 2, 2023 by presenting her last 19/20 newscast on France 3. After 40 years on the air in public service, she has turned the page on a long career rich in encounters and surprises. .
While the famous journalist, cured of lung cancer, was concluding a subject on the film festival, she was abruptly interrupted by her colleague Francis Lettelier. The journalist uses the pretext of “a change of program” on the news to arrive unexpectedly and surprise the presenter. “I know it’s a special newspaper for you. It’s your last newspaper tonight after 40 years of television news, you have to do it. It’s a hell of a journey”, unfolds the host, “missioned for [ talk to him and [him] say bravo”.
From her beginnings in the region to the presentation of the newspaper in Picardy, Catherine Matausch has embodied many news events such as Le Soir 3 and Le 12/13, not to mention the weekend editions. “40 years of career, it can’t be improvised”, according to Francis Lettelier who adds in front of his collaborator. “Because you have succeeded in creating this link with the editorial staff, the people who work here, with the viewers. This empathy that everyone recognizes, which makes you popular, that’s your signature Catherine”.
On this occasion, the accomplice of Catherine Matausch took the opportunity to send him more personal words. “Thank you for welcoming me here and for also accompanying me all these weekends, these years of weekends by your side”. With the complicity of the teams of the television news of France 3, the 63-year-old journalist was also surprised to review her career through archive images, mixed with unusual sequences and testimonies from French people interviewed during the reports.
After this nostalgic page, Catherine Matausch appears on set, visibly moved, surrounded by her many colleagues who shower her with flowers and applause. “Every Sunday evening, I give you an appointment for the next weekend. Well not this time, it’s the last 19/20 that I had the honor and the pleasure of presenting to you”, launches the sexagenarian facing the camera to the public. “Your trust carries us. A pleasure because a newspaper relies on the strength of a team”.
The opportunity also for the journalist to thank the viewers for “all your looks, this sharing by interposed screens, your messages of sympathy”, before thanking her teams who have surrounded her all these years on France 3, journalists from the editorial staff and technicians included. But, as she prepares to talk about her “new adventures”, Catherine Matausch is cut short by the publicity in her thanks (as evidenced by the images).
Victim of the same incident as the weather presenter Fabienne Amiach in June 2021, the sequence of failed farewells by Catherine Matausch was not to the taste of many Internet users, pointing to the channel’s lack of “class”. It was without counting on the support of Laurent Delahousse, who broadcast the end of the farewell of his colleague at the end of the 8 p.m. of France 2.
The journalist who will no longer like the national edition of 19/20 concluded with the following words: “I am approaching new adventures, there is so much to do in the light and in the shadow of television. For pleasure, let me say one last time, ‘madam, sir, good evening!'”. A last JT which brought together 2.48 million followers on France 3, according to figures from Médiamétrie.
