France Ô will disappear Sunday August 23 at midnight from the screens, as the government decided two years ago, in view of the small audience of this public channel with a unique profile, both a television showcase abroad 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), La France Ô saw its closure confirmed by the Ministry of Culture, the fateful date having only been postponed from August 9 to 23.
The channel therefore lives its last moments. She announced on Thursday special programming on his last day on the air. The CSA ratified the closure and, from 1is In September, the TNT frequency allocated to France Ô will be recycled to broadcast the continuous news channel Franceinfo in high definition in mainland France.
It will therefore be the end of a fifteen-year adventure, 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 satellite , he must wait until 2010 to gain access to DTT on a national scale, a guarantee of greater notoriety. Unfortunately, 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 the overseas departments and territories in metropolitan France, is often considered confused and the channel has regularly found itself in the hot seat because of its low audience: 0.8% in mainland France. 2016 then 0.6% in 2017.
Despite everything, the fifty or so employees (who will be reclassified within France Télévisions) were supported. 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. Over 100,000 viewers too signed the “Save France Ô” petition. The collective behind this movement calls for demonstrations on Sunday afternoon from 2:30 p.m. in front of the Ministry of Culture.
For two years, parliamentarians from overseas, whether majority or opposed, have continued to emphasize its unique role in the French audiovisual landscape. “France Ô had an intimate but assiduous audience, there was this showcase abroad, and this opportunity to promote television news 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 Hexagon – overseas connection », the Martinican deputy MoDem Maud Petit regretted, elected in Val-de-Marne, on the occasion of the closure of the chain in early August.
A particular date
“It is clear that outside of France Ô the visibility of the overseas territories on the whole audiovisual landscape is at best marginal, at worst non-existent”, also pleaded in a report Maurice Antiste, socialist senator from Martinique, and Jocelyne Guidez, centrist senator from Essonne. The government has sought to ward off these criticisms by asking France Télévisions to strengthen foreign content on its other channels. A new digital platform, called “Outre-mer la 1time », was also launched in June.
All of this is part of a “visibility pact” signed a year ago by France Télévisions, which aims to “Guaranteeing the long-term presence of overseas territories at the center of the public audiovisual offer”, 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.
