French TV

Today Franceinfo has gone into holiday mode. Despite the channel having a dynamic presentation style and generally being positively seen - this is poor. All other news channels only go into holiday mode during Christmas and the summer, where as Franceinfo runs like a pre-school with every half term off and 2 months off for summer! I wonder if this has any effect on its audience figures?

Also Catherine Gonier-Cléon finished her 4-month stint on weekday 12/13 s - she should have been retained, IMO she's better than the actual main presenter, handled the breaking news of Chirac's death very well. They'd be crazy to not get her back on a national broadcast soon.

In other news, France TV bought the hit series Bodyguard which will shortly be shown on France 2 and CNEWS changed its primetime line-up which has done well in terms of audience share despite it leading to almost 6 hours of debates with the most extreme commentators they can find (Their 1900CET new programme absolutely trounces Franceinfo in that slot - no surprise as the new 17h:20h format is terrible - condescending chit chat presented as analysis, no actual news bulletins, every segment with a ridiculous name, social media comments read out like its uni campus TV. It's the weak link of this season. Shocking.)

What kind of holiday does France celebrate at this time of year? I'm not seeing anything in October; just All Saints' Day on November 1.

They call this holiday period precisely that ('Toussaint'), although it's only November 1 that is a public holiday. It's essentially the French October half term (two weeks long). I too find it a bit ridiculous that Franceinfo scale back their coverage so heavily every time schools are on a break. The other channels will have fill-ins but don't cancel half their schedule. Christmas and summer being the exceptions, as France does truly grind to a halt then...

French holidays never really seem to affect weather presenters rotas, if I recall, in the summer at least, the F2 forecasters take at least three weeks off each, but not at the same time, yet they're there during this holiday period and at Easter and Christmas. There appeared to be one exception to the rule with jockeys, BFM Paris had the normal line-up on Bonjour Paris.

France 3 Paris IDF has finally gone HD for local programming.

Christmas starts earlier on French tv. Some programmes already have had Christmas trees for over a week and Comedie+ has it's animated Christmas DOG from today.

With a national strike across France today affecting many public services, TéléMatin was from the cupboard today, but the main France 2 bulletin at lunchtime was from the main studio.

Over on France 3, Émilie Tran Nguyen was also in her normal studio, but reading from paper scripts and there was no headline sequence with two fixed shots.

Should've put this here but on the 9th December, Ludo and Zouzous, the kids' brands of France Télévisions will be merging into one brand new service for kids aged 3 to 12 called Okoo. It'll launch for TV on France 3, France 4 and France 5 first on the 9th as well as online and on smart devices from the 12th.




Liking the colourful eyes branding they went with. Very kid-friendly and it kinds reminds me of Cartoonito actually.

Okoo is in part a replacement for the linear France 4 channel which is closing sometime in the Spring. France Ô is also closing with programmes spread across the remaining channels. Will be interesting to see if any of the overseas programming ends up on France 2, but I can see 5 taking a lot of the schedule.

What I'm hoping for is that Franceinfo will take France 4's HD slot on TNT as it currently broadcasts in SD on TNT both on terrestrial and satellite for FTA viewers. HD is currently behind the paywall.

Well, what about the "young adults" side of France 4? I'm guessing France.TV Slash will replace that

I do hope that once they move these programmes to online, they aren't going to deliberately decrease the quality and quanity of programming unlike BBC Three's sort of shift to social media consumption. But again, that's Slash's job, not France 4's.

I wonder if Tropiques Criminels is France 2's way of ticking the 'outer-mer' box? It's yet another crime drama which the French love which is filmed in Martinique.