France Analysis

The politics behind the bitter dispute at Radio France

Several of France's favourite radio stations, listened to by a quarter of the country's population, have been disrupted by an almost three-week-long strike at Radio France, with many popular programmes taken off the air. The dispute centres on a plan of spending cuts and the shedding of more than 300 jobs, and has become the longest in the history of the public broadcaster, which runs flagship stations France Inter, France Info, France Culture, and France Musique. That prompted culture minister Fleur Pellerin to order management to resume talks with staff, but these ended in stalemate over the Easter weekend. While Radio France, which is 90% state-funded, faces a 21.3 million-euro deficit in 2015, and with the future of one of its two acclaimed orchestras under threat, its boss was forced to apologise for lavish spending on his office and consultants. Meanwhile, France's national audit court has advised that Radio France should save money by merging its four main editorial teams into just one. In this opinion article, Mediapart's Hubert Huertas, a former journalist with France Culture who was also head of the French national journalists' union (SNJ) branch at Radio France, gives his scathing analysis of how a budgetary issue has been turned into a political crisis.

Hubert Huertas

This article is freely available.

It's a simple formula. First of all, accuse your dog of being rabid – in this case, a rabid spender. Therefore put it on a diet. Too bad if, in fact, the French state first signed an 'aims and means' contract in 2010 that made provision for an increase in funding until 2015, then decided in 2012 to go back on its signature in order to reduce its financing. And tough luck, too, if the cost of the renovation work on Radio France's broadcasting centre in Paris, the Maison de la Radio, ran out of control. Radio France's 2015 budget will thus be 20 million euros short.

Next, take note of the anger that these successive financial restraints, followed by a redundancy plan, have provoked in the workforce. Add to this the revelations about the spending on consultants and a new office by the alleged prodigy, the youthful chief executive of Radio France Mathieu Gallet, and you conclude from all this that the dog really is rabid.

Finally, you move seamlessly from what is a purely budgetary problem – caused by the state taking its eye off the ball and mistakes by successive managements – and throw the baby out with the bathwater as you settle scores with stations listened to each day by a quarter of all French people. Farewell spoken-word station France Inter, news station France Info, France Culture and France Musique.

This is what lies behind the recommendations made by France's official spending watchdog the Cour des Comptes in a report published on Wednesday April 1st. To go by what the government says, Radio France is staring into the abyss. The right-wing opposition party the UMP has now got in on the act and is following in the Cour des Comptes' footsteps by urging that the flagship stations' four separate editorial teams be merged into one, and that the broadcaster's two orchestras should be fused. To listen to them all you would think the situation is urgent. And that the sums of money being gobbled up by this bottomless pit must be terrifying.

Illustration 1
© Reuters

So what, then, is the scale of this tragedy? Radio France, which controls around 50 national and local stations, plus two world-renowned orchestras, will cost 650 million euros in 2015, mostly paid for out of the 'redevance audiovisuelle' or annual broadcasting licence fee. That represents about ten euros a year per French person, or 80 centimes a month. Those are the sums at stake behind all this fuss!

As for the budget deficit used to justify the public outcry, that is around 20 million euros this year, and will be the first deficit in the Radio France group's entire history. Twenty million! This amounts to an economic atrocity to judge by the emotion it has stirred up. Yet it is considerably less than the estimated 55 million euro annual cost for French football club Paris Saint-Germain of employing just one footballer, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Of course Radio France's money is public money, and PSG's is private, but even so! Is the national treasure that is France Inter, France Info, France Culture and France Musique – plus two symphony orchestras – valued less in this country than a football striker?

It is therefore hard to believe that the political-economic melodrama that is being played out in front of the nation's gaze is being fuelled by such modest causes. You have to look elsewhere to find out what is really at stake and, oddly, the Cour des Comptes has just revealed what is behind it.

Accusations of excessive spending at Radio France are nothing new. As far back as 1986, the parliamentary election manifesto of the French Right already contained plans to close down the public broadcaster and its stations. At that time the local stations that had been rolled out since 1981 were accused of costing too much and of having lower listening figures than privately-owned stations. It is true that journalists were paid to do the news, and presenters to entertain and inform, and that that had a cost. It is true; but 30 years later, what other networks exist? And who can be unaware that Radio France's network of 44 local stations, the Réseau Bleu, is either close to, or has even overtaken, the privately-owned RMC Info in terms of audience?

As for the national stations, who can seriously doubt that France Inter offers radio with a difference, that France Info has been imitated everywhere, and proves its usefulness every day, or that France Culture occupies an irreplaceable niche? Who can claim that these stations are not different from each other? Yet, in the name of a relatively small financial crisis (a deficit of 20 million euros represents 3% of the budget), the ultra-liberal dogma is wheeled out: different or not, Radio France's stations are supposedly identical and cost a lot of money because they are public stations. And as they are identical, they need to be merged!

To remove, cut and downsize has become an obsession and one that has long been doing the rounds of the 'Maison Ronde', as the circular Maison de la Radio is often called. What is new about the Cour des Comptes report is simply that it takes the issue to a level that no one had dared express before. No longer would some services - sport or politics perhaps - be merged, but all the editorial teams. There would no longer be three or four voices, able to convey three or four different messages, but instead that old dream from the days of President Georges Pompidou, that of the “The voice of France”.

According to this view, the solution is not to root out waste (it exists), to reduce abuses (they exist, on the margins), to renegotiate excessive workplace benefits (if they exist), or to appoint competent managers, but instead to get rid of the stations! Officially Inter, Info, Culture and Musique would not disappear under these proposals, as only the editorial teams would be involved. What a fib! How would these proposed changes work in practice on the stations when it comes to the strategically important morning shows? At France Inter the morning show Le 7-9 is exclusively presented and prepared by its editorial team alone. So it would disappear. Same thing with France Info. And at France Culture the editorial team provides half of the airtime output. So away with all the others, to be replaced by a single voice. 

The ultimate objective of this episode is therefore not economic but political in nature. It is about reducing the share of public broadcasting in radio, even though public service radio has, throughout its long history, always been able to provide something different. Today, also, with the development of the internet, Radio France has managed to get it right. For example, France Culture's website has one of the highest rates of podcast downloads of any in France.

It is moreover symptomatic, in this domain as in so many others, that the Cour des Comptes, whose role is first and foremost to watch over how spending is carried out, today expects to dictate its policy to politicians in the name of “spending” alone. Just imagine the same Cour des Comptes in the 1960s, urging the government to stop the Concorde programme for financial reasons. President Charles de Gaulle would have thundered (as he did in 1966 when talking about the performance of the markets): “France's policies are not decided on the floor of the Stock Exchange!”

Times have changed. Today the Cour des Comptes recommends that the state reduces its size, in all domains. Well, almost all … Each year the 735 magistrates of the Cour des Comptes cost the country 214 million euros.

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  • The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter