France 24

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France 24
Launched 2006-12-06
Owned by Groupe TF1 and
France Télévisions
Country France
Language French, English, Arabic
Formerly called Chaîne Française d'Information Internationale (before July 2006)
Sister channel(s) TF1:
TF1
LCI
Eurosport
TF6
France Télévisions:
France 2
France 3
France 4
France 5
France Ô
Website www.france24.com
Availability
Satellite
HotBird 7A
Sky Digital Channel 517
Sky Italia Channel 538 (French)
TV Vlaanderen Digitaal Channel 55 (English)
Channel 56 (French)
Cable
KDG Channel 836(French), 849(English) - only in upgraded networks
UPC Romania Channel 143
Alice Home TV Channel 538 (French)
Channel 590 (English)
MC Cable
Internet Television
Yalp.alice.it English French
The current news ident
The current news ident
News presenter, Francois Picard
News presenter, Francois Picard

France 24 (pronounced France Vingt-Quatre [fʁɑ̃s vɛ̃'katʁ]) on all three editions) is an international news and current affairs television channel. It started broadcasting on 6 December 2006.

Funded by the French government and based in Paris, the channel officially gives a French perspective on world news. Currently it offers variants in English and Arabic in addition to French.

It is run by a partnership between Groupe TF1 and France Télévisions (including France 2 and France 3), with some programmes sourced from Agence France-Presse, Radio France Internationale, TV5MONDE, Arte, EuroNews, and La Chaîne parlementaire. It is funded by France with an annual budget of approximately €80 million, and is based in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on 8 January 2008 that he was in favour of reducing France 24's programming to French only.[1]

Contents

[edit] Programming

France 24 is broadcast on three channels, one in French, an other one in English, and the last one in Arabic from 4pm to 8pm (the rest of the time being in French or English depending on where you live).[2] Spanish programming will be added in the course of 2009. German and Mandarin might be added by 2012. [3]

France 24's programming is divided more or less equally between news coverage and news magazines or special reports.

Along with 220 journalists of its own, France 24 can call on the resources of the two main French broadcasters (Groupe TF1 and France Télévisions) as well as partners such as AFP. The CEO of France 24 is Alain de Pouzilhac, and its journalist staff includes former ITN presenter Mark Owen.

[edit] The Talk of Paris

The Talk of Paris is a program containing an interview with important European politicians. The program invites viewers and other politicians to send in video-questions.(in a partnership with French-based video sharing website Dailymotion) Another segment is a profile of the guest. The show is broadcast every Friday.

[edit] History

[edit] Channel inception

The media's perception was that the channel was a brainchild of former president Jacques Chirac, famous for defending the position of the French language in the world, specifically versus the English domination in this media category.[4]

[edit] Long-term goals

France 24 intends to give a different view of the news than the Anglophone BBC World and CNN International. France 24 wants to put more emphasis on debate, dialogue and the role of cultural difference. It will also be competing with the recently launched Al Jazeera English and Russia Today news channels. The future Arabic and Spanish programming will compete with Al Jazeera's and Russia Today's Arabic channels and South America's teleSUR.

The French government has allocated around €100 million for the project. The European Commission gave the green light to France 24 in June, saying it did not breach European Union state aid rules.

[edit] Availability

France 24 is available by satellite to most of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as by cable and antenna to New York and Washington, DC. The French, English and Arabic channels are all available live on the France 24 website, broadcast en direct in Windows Media format. On 1 April 2007, the Irish terrestrial channel TG4 began carrying retransmissions of France 24 overnight. Previously, it had retransmitted EuroNews.

In 2007 France 24 started a VoD service on Virgin Media, allowing customers to access weekly news updates and programmes to watch when they choose.[citation needed]

[edit] Technology

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France 24 turned to Avid for the installation of its own broadcast systems, as well as installations from other IT or traditional video suppliers such as Thomson/GVG, Cisco, Harris, HP, and IBM under a US$9.1 million contract that was awarded in May 2006. The project was the first of its kind for Avid, as it challenged the company to meet tight deadlines, overcome corporate cultural and language differences, and sit at the center of designing, coordinating, and implementing all technical resources.

France 24 achieves its news-production goals using a completely file-based workflow, pulling in content from partners TF1 (a private French television network) and France Télévisions (the French public national television broadcaster) as needed. Content from the Web can also be easily brought into this unique production environment. With all of the content and story elements available from their desktops, journalists can easily reformat content for distribution via cable or satellite television, the Internet, or mobile phones. The journalist environment includes Avid iNEWS newsroom management systems as well as Avid NewsCutter editing systems, which enable users to create voice-over and voice-over-plus-sound on segments without tying up edit suites. The iNEWS systems can also handle subscription newswire feeds and make them available to journalists’ desktops or even laptops, enabling these stories to be incorporated into the station’s own news stories. At the same time, Avid NewsCutter XP and Deko systems are used by editors and graphic artists for comprehensive creative editing and news graphics.

The 1,000-square meter (3,280-square foot) newsroom also uses an Avid Interplay production management solution to tie together the workflow, including Avid ISIS shared-storage systems and Avid AirSpeed systems; the newsroom’s Avid Thunder servers and the Omneon Spectrum Media server handle on-air playback. The combination of Avid Unity ISIS and Avid Interplay systems ensures real-time media access and media management throughout the newsroom for fast, efficient story creation.

An Avid DekoCast edge-graphics system handles master control and channel branding as the same news bulletins are broadcast on three streams simultaneously in French, English, and Arabic by news presenters at opposite ends of the newsroom. Five studios are also on hand (three are located in the newsrooms) while 100-square meter (328-square foot) and 30-square meter (nearly 100-square foot) studios are used for talk shows and magazine programs.

[edit] References

  1. ^ La chaîne France 24 dans l'incertitude, Le Monde
  2. ^ France 24, "[1]"
  3. ^ [Inisde France 24]
  4. ^ France launches News Channel, BBC News

[edit] External links

[edit] Launch coverage

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