French TV

I have to say that despite my criticism of seeing most of France Télévision's news output being stripped down to straight, single-headed generic bulletins (most notably on Franceinfo ), just like many of the comments in the BBC threads, it has been somewhat refreshing to see presenters reading straight-forward news bulletins. Although the distinction between journaliste and présentateur.trice is less clear cut than in the UK, it is clear that some of the familiar faces who might not have fronted experimental flashy formats easily wipe the floor in terms of newsreading, interviewing and storytelling than others who have more airtime/more important slots but hardly any flair when deprived of their particular formats. Some still manage to inject their personality/style and journalistic rigour into a bulletin stripped of its visual dynamism whereas others usually flanked by 'their shows' do not. Very interesting.

Despite previous announcements that it would be in September, some of the France 3 regional news and local programming have returned to normal (or at least close to normal) in several regions. Some regions are staying as grande région for selected programming or weekends. Most regional 12/13 s and 19/20 s are presented by the same presenter each day still.

Quite an interesting video from Réunion La 1ère, about the conversion of the France Télévisions channels (including each La 1ère channel) to HD in the overseas territories, which happened a few months ago.

Shows some of the kit they have to process the feeds from Paris (downlinked via Eutelsat 16°E satellite), with the feed labelled as Contrib_Indien on the display of some of the equipment in that clip.

Fascinating to see how each La 1ère station is responsible for distributing the other France Télévisions channels in their respective areas. They should be one station down when France 4 closes in August, unless it's been given a reprieve due to Covid-19.

Going back to audiences on French tv shows, On n'est pas couché , a Saturday night topical review show on France 2 returned with no studio audience in mid-May.

Game show Tout le monde veut prendre sa place since the end of May has returned to having a limited audience with the normal format of contestants.



In the F3 Hauts-de-France region, only the news is split between Nord Pas-de-Calais and Picardie normally, the non-news regional output is pan-regional.

I believe the plan is (or was) that once France 4 and France Ô close, there'll be enough room on the ROM1 digital terrestrial multiplexes in each overseas territory for the La 1ère channel to go HD. All channels on each one are currently MPEG4 SD.

I've always been interested in how the technological aspect of getting the French TV channels to the territories spread out across the globe works too.

Someone on an American-based forum kindly gave me a transponder dump of the France Télévisions satellite transponder on the Intelsat 34.5°W Caribbean beam, which feeds Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyane and presumably looks pretty much the same as the feed for Réunion and Mayotte on the 16°E South East Africa beam (it's the master feed of the channels from Paris, but also works as the feed used by any of the local satellite operators).

France 2, France 3, France 5, France Info and Arte are all in HD on that transponder, along with each La 1ère channel. The transponder also carries the network information (NIT and EIT EPG) for each respective territory's DVB-T TNT multiplex, audio feeds of the La 1ère radios and France Inter, and Radio France FM RDS data.

I guess the DVB-T network data gets passed through by the equipment at each local site to wherever the DVB-T multiplex is generated. I had assumed these would be completely satellite fed like in metropolitan France, which may have been the case when the feeds were SD. Now there's no SD versions of some channels on the satellite feed, downscaling and re-encoding must be taking place locally.

The France Inter radio transmitters in the territories have RDS with dynamic Radio Text (which comes from Paris via this satellite link). I saw this for myself when I went to Martinique/Guadeloupe/Saint Martin last year!

Today on Franceinfo the presenters were: Samuel Étienne, Louis Laforge, Sophie Le Saint, Djamel Mazi, Nathanaël de Rincquesen and Patricia Loison - all bar one used to present bulletins on France 2/3 but were replaced by (usually) younger journalists. I'm wondering if Franceinfo is starting to become a place of "placardisation" (as said in French) to an extent.

Also, it is reported that there will be big changes on BFMTV this coming September: Jean Jacques Bourdin is to quit the RMC morning show (although he'll still present the 8.30 interview) meaning that Apolline de Malherbe will take over and she is to be replaced by Jean Jacques Boursier. Bruce Toussaint is moving to 9am and is to be replaced by Maxime Switek from C à vous in what seems to be a very odd but calculated move.

There was an interview in Le Figaro a while ago suggesting the France 4 / Ô closure was being delayed, not sure if that's still the case. It was originally supposed to happen around the time of the Olympics? Perhaps temporarily because of the need for somewhere for the home schooling programmes…

FranceInfo presenters: Marianne Théoleyre has been in the studio at least a couple of times when Louis Laforge isn't there. Also I've seen the 10h bulletin repeated at 10h30 more than once.

France 4 may have a reprieve until the end of the year as Delphine Ernotte, who is the CEO of France Télévisions said that the educational programming may be extended until the end of the year.

If getting well-known names is their strategy, they are still struggling to cut through. Nearly four years in and with the biggest news story in a generation, audience figures sat at 0.6% in April and May. Compare this with 3.4% for BFM TV, 1.4% for CNEWS and 1.6% for LCI. All of the more established news channels registered significant increases compared with previous years whereas Franceinfo was up just 0.1%. This is despite morning show Telematin being replaced by a Franceinfo simulcast for two months, providing ample exposure. A new controller of the channel has been announced today (Laurent Guimier formerly of Franceinfo radio) who can hopefully give the channel some more steam and get it the audiences it deserves. I'm not sure however that they are sidelining all of their talent and automatically using Franceinfo as the wasteland, as most of those names have left F2/F3 and turned up on the channel a couple of years later.

I think Franceinfo will have to conform to more mainstream rolling news standards. One of the issues, especially is the padding and radio simulcasts that don't really do anything.

With the other channels, you can dip in and find news for the majority of the time, but you may end up with filler on Franceinfo from the INA, France 24 etc.

I still enjoy the 6h30:9h30 bulletin with Samuel and Johanna, but the rest of the day is hit and miss.

They do offer a similar amount of content though - the advert breaks on the other three can be colossal so the 10-20 minutes of "padding" is no worse than that. However, it does get repetitive. I'm sure they could make more of the regional content provided for France 3 to fill the gaps, particularly in the afternoon hours.

^Agree with these comments. I hope they go in the direction of iTélé pre-CNEWS, that was a channel that was onto something and almost all of their journalists are now in decent positions elsewhere on French TV - so it can't have been bad!

On a related note, iTélé in the 2011-2014 seasons' daytime editions were called L'édition permanente and I think had a very striking visual and music package which came into my head the other day but I cannot find a full length example of a bulletin, only a few second snippets. The visuals revamped and the studios changed, but the same music and direction of these editions made it quite gripping for what was essentially their most generic bulletins.