Les Grosses Têtes
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Les Grosses Têtes ("the Brains" in English) is a daily French radio program on the RTL French radio network, created by Jean Farran and Roger Krecher on April 1, 1977. The host is Philippe Bouvard.
Presently broadcast from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in France (4:00 - 6:00 p.m. in Belgium), this show has several regular segments. The first fourth of the show is hard-hitting news, then the next fourth deals with cultural issues. Then, for the next 30 minutes the host takes phone calls from listeners. Finally, guests are interviewed and joked about (these jokes are called gauloises on the show). Questions sent by the auditors, the most famous being Mme Leprieur, are asked to the guests.
A TV version was broadcasted on TF1 from 1992 to 1997. On March 27, 1996, Philippe Bouvard, Vincent Perrot and the president of TF1 Patrick Le Lay were fined for having provoked racial hatred by telling a riddle comparing Muslim women to robbers.
In 2000, station managers thought that they could do without the services of their aging best host (animateur de référence) and replaced him with Christophe Dechavanne. The rapid loss of listeners (8 months) showed that the program's success was due as much to its formula as to the audience's attachment to the hosts.
