Posted on 12/06/2006 12:23:46 PM PST by HAL9000
International information uninterrupted: France 24 is in service
PARIS - the first French chain of international information uninterrupted, France 24, started to emit. It ambitionne to compete with CNN, BBC World or Al-Jazira while putting forward a French glance on the world topicality.
The chain diffused its first images with 20h29 on the site www.france24.com. Two versions, one in French, the other in English, are proposed to the Net surfers, with similar contents, in particular of the newspapers every half-hour.
Twenty-four hours after this launching, France 24 will be diffused in television, will be relayed by the cable and the satellite in Europe, with the Close relation and the Middle East, in Africa, and in New York and Washington. According to its leaders, it will touch "potentially" 80 million hearths, that is to say 190 million televiewers.
France 24 is controlled with equal shares by the two more powerful French audio-visual groups, the public group France Televisions on the one hand, private group TF1 of the other.
President Jacques Chirac is at the origin of this new chain, whose buildings are located at Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the Parisian outskirts of the city. The leaders of France 24 insist on its independence. The British daily newspaper "The Guardian" titrated however on "the chain of Chirac".
France 24 will be diffused out of two channels, one in French and the other to 75% English and 25% French. On this last channel a four hours unhooking in Arabic from semi-2007, and a Spanish window are envisaged since 2009.
The chairman of France 24, the former owner of the advertising group Havas Alain de Pouzilhac, was given for priority target the "decision makers" of which, it underlines, the language of communication is English.
Having a public financing of 86 million euros for its first year of operation (a budget more than ten times lower than that of CNN), the chain wants to expose "a French glance on the world topicality".
It counts on a network of correspondents and freelance journalists established in the world, as on the partnerships signed with some French media specialized in foreign information (Agency France-Press, RFI). It will also draw from the image data bases availability of televisions. The chain will gather 170 journalists of about thirty nationalities.
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