TV Network to Display French Values

A French international TV network starting up in 2006 will be a vehicle for transmitting France's values and world vision to other parts of the globe, President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday.

 

Where to start? For my French constituency, I would hate to flat out laugh about this, but come on...Is it possible for the French to be "first in the global battle of images?" Let's see, CNN is an established, PRIVATELY-held news organization, that has existed for over 25 years. CNN International is seen in over 185 million homes and has been on the air for over 20 years.

 

The BBC is a public company. The company has existed since the inter-war era and has built a reputation of responsible journalism, with (as far as I can tell) few allegations of governmental interference - even if the Board of Governors is appointed by the Queen herself. BBC World, while linked to the BBC, is a commercially funded adventure that has existed for nearly 15 years and in Nov. 2004 could be seen in 256 million homes.

 

CFII (Chaine Française d'Information Internationale - the French International News Network) which would seem to want to have a website of cfii.com or .fr, is located at ciitv.com. Who knows why, I'm sure there's a good reason. CFII is starting with the objective to be a French propaganda force against BBCw and CCNi. Chirac said that it will "carry the values of France and its vision of the world everywhere on the globe." The French government is planning to invest nearly a half a billion USD in this channel from now until 2010. Excuse me for being cynical, but come on, this is plain and simple propaganda. The government is going to insist that their $500 million buys them a lot of good coverage. Lastly, if you decide to go to the CFII website, the latest news is dated...hold your breath, 2 March 2005. This is their breaking news. For €20, I will write a couple of articles that are current. Sorry, this bodes really poorly for the French. They just announced that this channel is going live on 1 January - in 1 month. People are bound to...ummm, research? this channel, and they come to the breaking news page that has breaking news from eight months ago! Come on Jacques, try a least a little bit!

 

What I don't particularly understand is this: Euronews already exists, since 1992 this pan-European channel has been broadcasting live to clients in seven languages. I understand that the French want "their" competitor for the Anglo-American force of international news broadcasting. But, would it not be more practical to invest in this existing structure. Euronews reaches 118 countries worldwide. On top of this, Euronews is based in Lyon, France. They have a infantile structure that could serve the interest of the Europeans as a whole, without the French propaganda slant. Your 1/2 billion dollars could buy a lot of stuff for Euronews.

 

Don't get me wrong. I am not against competition for the American/British point of view on things. Obviously, CNNi has an American bias - Ted Turner puts a lot of money into it. The BBC has a marked British/Former-British colony slant to it, but is more reputable around the world. I do not see CNNi as being a mouth-piece for George Bush. Anyone that knows Turner, knows that the last person he is inclined to prop up is Dubya. If the French could do this in a subtle way - I mean, come on, why start a channel with the express written objective to spew governmental crap - it may have worked. But with 20 hours of French coverage and 4 hours of English coverage off the bat, to be followed by Arabic and Spanish broadcasts in the mid-term, all trying to convince the world why France is still relevant: I don't see people eating this up.

 

French is the 18th native-language in the world (67 million) and 9th overall (130 million speakers, native and second). English is third spoken as a mother tongue (380 million) and second overall (500 million to 1 billion). It is the most taught second language in the world. A large percentage of the world knows a little English (even if we use the very low number of 1 billion, this is about 15% of the world's population - assuming 6.5 billion people). For French this number stands around 2.3%). I am willing to extrapolate these figures to say that the percentage of the world's population with access to satellite television ('cause that's what this is all about) has an even higher percentage of English-language knowledge and on the same token a higher percentage of French language knowledge. In any case, there is a huge difference between 2.5% and 15%. With only 16% of the programming going towards this 15% of the world population, I find it hard to believe that this channel is going to have any significant success outside of France, Quebec and certain parts of Africa - on top of this there may be problems with domestic French distribution (but really does France need another channel that is supported by the government and TF1? they all are already) and Canadian distribution. The people who will be the happiest will obviously be French expats, but how many of them are they (around 2 million).

 

I do love however, the lip service that CNN pays to CFII: "We wish them well in their new venture and stand ready to help." (i.e. Our PR people told us we had to say something!)