France 24 – the news from France
Posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 9:33pm. #
So, the biggest French political news this year: France has a new president.
A quick flick through at 10.15pm tonight…
Sky News had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
Euronews had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
CNN had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
Al Jazeera had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
BBC Parliament was taking TF1 with live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech (while BBC News 24 simulcasts BBC One’s national news)
…and France 24, the international news service from France, had a pre-recorded sports report, a promo telling us it concentrates on news from France, followed by… a package from New Delhi in India.
And the prize for most non-existent live coverage of the French election goes, surprisingly, to its own news channel.
Well, and Fox News. But then, you’d expect that.
Ian Deeley
Ben
Having just come back from a week in Nice, the presidential election was carried to as great an extent as you’d expect.
A few observations:
The two and a half hour plus live debate on Wednesday was carried on two of the main networks – TF1 and France 2. Canal+ was showing Milan v Man Utd, and M6 was showing… the French version of Pop Idol. Also, a good third of radio stations on FM were also carrying the debate (I was also pleased to note that atmospheric conditions meant that I could hear both Five Live and Virgin on the Cote d’Azur on AM).
Canal+ changed their on-screen DOG (irritating channel logo in top right hand corner) from “CANAL+” to “VOTEZ+” which I thought was quite smart.
I was genuinely shocked to walk past a bar on the Promenade des Anglais which had chosen to rebroadcast on their plasma screens… Fox News. Who says the French don’t have a sense of humour?
Perhaps they’d be better off just rebroadcasting the somewhat better LC1 rather than spending millions on France 24.