France Ô will disappear Sunday 23 August at midnight from the screens, as the government decided two years ago, in view of the low audiences of this public channel with a unique profile, both overseas television showcase and a concentrate of diversity.
Unlike France 4, a channel intended in particular for children, who benefited in July from a one-year suspension (until summer 2021), France Ô has seen its closure confirmed by the Ministry of Culture, the fateful date having only been postponed from August 9 to 23.
The channel is therefore living its last moments. She announced on Thursday special programming for his last day on the air. “Tonight at midnight, a page turns, we return the antenna but it is not the end”, could we read, Sunday at the end of the day, on the Twitter account of the chain, which sent a farewell message to its viewers.
Together, we will continue to meet around overseas themes on the Overseas Portal,… https://t.co/GEG7mnyQKl
– FranceOtv (@France Ô)
The CSA endorsed the closure and, from 1is September, the TNT frequency allocated to France Ô will be recycled to broadcast the continuous news channel Franceinfo in high definition in metropolitan France. It will therefore be the end of an adventure of fifteen years, even twenty-two if we include its predecessor: France Ô was launched in 2005, replacing RFO Sat, born in 1998. Initially confined to cable and on satellite, it must wait until 2010 to gain access to DTT on a national scale, a guarantee of greater notoriety. Alas, the channel has always struggled to find its audience.
Sunday demonstration
Its specifications, which give it the dual mission of promoting cultural diversity and being a television showcase for overseas territories in mainland France, is often considered confused and the channel has regularly found itself in the spotlight because of of its low audiences: 0.8% in 2016 then 0.6% in 2017.
Despite everything, the fifty or so employees (who will be reclassified within France Télévisions) received support. Monday, July 27, one hundred and twenty-five personalities, including Audrey Pulvar, Lilian Thuram and Erik Orsenna, had launched a call in Release to save the chain. More than 100,000 viewers also signed the petition “Save France Ô”. The collective behind this movement calls for a demonstration on Sunday afternoon from 2:30 p.m. in front of the Ministry of Culture.
For the past two years, overseas parliamentarians, whether in the majority or in the opposition, have continued to point out its unique role within the French audiovisual landscape. “France Ô had an intimate but assiduous audience, there was this showcase to the overseas, and this opportunity to enhance television newspapers and documentaries” produced in these territories, assures Agence France-Presse (AFP) Olivier Serva, LRM deputy from Guadeloupe, who chairs the overseas delegation of the National Assembly. And to recall that the president, Emmanuel Macron, before his election, had undertaken to maintain France Ô.
“I deeply regret [cette décision]. I maintain that France Ô is necessary for the Hexagone – overseas link ”, the Martinican deputy MoDem Maud Petit was sorry, elected in Val-de-Marne, on the occasion of the closure of the chain, at the beginning of August.
A particular date
“It is clear that outside of France Ô the visibility of overseas over the entire audiovisual landscape is marginal at best, at worst non-existent”, also pleaded in a report Maurice Antiste, socialist senator from Martinique, and Jocelyne Guidez, centrist senator from Essonne. The government sought to ward off these criticisms by asking France Télévisions to beef up overseas content on its other channels. A new digital platform, called “Outre-mer la 1time », was also launched in June.
Everything is part of a “visibility pact” signed a year ago by France Télévisions, which aims to “Sustainably guarantee the presence of overseas territories at the center of the public audiovisual supply”, with quantified objectives set in stone. For Olivier Serva, the account is not there. “It sounds like a smart and interesting idea, but in practice it doesn’t work”, and, “For now, we don’t believe it”. On the contrary, France Télévisions ensures that this strategy is already producing undeniable results.
There remains the date chosen by the government to cut the signal from the channel, which struck some Ultramarins: it falls in the middle of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
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