France goes head-to-head with CNN and the BBC from Wednesday with the launch of its state-funded 24/7 news channel, part of President Jacques Chirac’s efforts to make his country’s voice heard.
France 24 will broadcast two channels, one in French and the other mostly in English.
“Our mission is to cover worldwide news with French eyes,” CEO Alain de Pouzilhac told AP Television News. He said the channel will emphasize in-depth reporting and debate, culture and “l’art de vivre”  the art of living.
Fireproof your ride. And now Philippe will mime the weather!
Programming on the French and English channels will be virtually identical, with 10-minute news bulletins every half-hour, and a selection of reports, talk shows and news magazines filling between-bulletin gaps.
France 24 will likely face stiff competition in a crowded all-news market that includes CNN, BBC World and Al-Jazeera, which made its English-language debut last month.
France 24 executives say the channel’s French touch will make it stand out.
“Opinion leaders said they were very skeptical about international news because we have only one vision of the world,” said Pouzilhac, adding that Al-Jazeera in English now represents a second editorial line in cable news. “France 24 will be the third way.”
France 24 executives say the channel’s French touch will make it stand out? Naturellement!
On the plus side, if this flies, perhaps there will be a France 68 and France 69.
From the May 1976 issue of National Lampoon:
French
Racial Characteristics: Sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like other people’s feet. They take filthy pictures of each other with cheap cameras, wash nothing but their cunts, fight with their feet, and perform sex acts with their faces. Utter cowards who force their own children to drink wine, they gibber like baboons even when you try to speak to them in their own wimpy language.
A French TV channel? So smell-a-vision has finally been perfected?
It’s actually pretty sinple: all they have to do is surrender at the top of the hour.
Ohhh… 24-hour a day narcissism!
It’s like living with the Clintons.
Parlez voose Frankcase?
Oy, Oy!
Mercy buckups, madamwawzall.
Frogvision, the view for the end of western civilization.
Classic Dan
Yeah, the slanted, reflexively anti-American “news” market is saturated already.