France 24

I'm surprised by some of the comments! I watched about an hour or two lastnight and it really grew on me. Standing up to read the news is nothing new lets be honest, and since the bulletins are only ten minutes in length its not that bad. For breaking news they might use 'Studio A' as Andrea Sanke called it. Lastnight, she was like another woman! I have never seen her with so much character and personality. What certainly stands out is that the channel is far more informal and relaxed that CNNi and especially so when compared to BBC World. I find that quite refreshing.

All in all, I'm not sure if I will turn to it for news, but for none news programming I think it will be ok. Time will only tell. Sky News was pants to begin with, and I think the flash bang whallop of AJE's launch has well and truly fizzled out. It feels a bit turgid now.

I see the English version of France 24 has now finished it's run of all-English programming, and is now showing a fair bit of stuff in French. There's a news bulletin in English as I write, though.

Slower Paced than N24 or SN, I do hope the internet feed is a permanent feature of the channel. It'll be interesting to drop into from time to time.

As a start 7.5/10

http://adrianmonck.blogspot.com/2006/12/france-vingt-quatre-as-seen-on-tv.html

I thought they were meant to have seperate English and French channels?

I found the first evening a bit disappointing. They had technical difficulties with a blank screen coming up and in one case staying up for around 20 seconds. Andria Sanke seemed to struggle with her current affairs debate, as did the production team on the arts/lifestyle segment. They seem to have some big advertisers on board with commercials from Citroen, Renault, Dior, IBM and HSBC. Anyway I hope to see an improvement today.

They seemed to be broadcasting in mono this morning although I think that's fixed now.

I find strange that during the English language bulletins the presenter referes to the channel as "France Vingt-Quatre" instead of "France Twenty-Four". It just doesn't sound natural, particuarly because he says it with a very stressed French accent. When he said "France Vingt-Quatre's correspondent" the saxon genitive sounded really awkward.

A part from that I liked watching the channel earlier today. Nice astons, very interesting music, even a countdown to the "journal". And I really like this mixture of English and French.

got a mention on Have I Got News For You tonight. they showed a pic of a french woman with onions super-imposed around her neck.

haha, I'm sure that programme used to be funny

BBC4's The Late Edition did a parody of France 24 complete with beret, french stick, red wine, ropey allo allo accents and American and British bating.

...then Ian Hislop went on to batter the idea of French stereotypes in general, and the panel very much agreed with his sentiment. They didn't even state that the picture was made by them. I'd be more inclined to believe that it was made by some rag and HIGFNY were actually taking the pìss out of that more then anything.