The French government has confirmed that the public broadcasting channel dedicated to the country's overseas territories, France Ô, is to close later this month. The channel, which itself replaced RFO Sat, was created in 2005 by public broadcaster France Télévisions with the aim of showcasing programmes and culture from France's far-flung overseas territories in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific to the rest of the country. It was also seen as providing an important link between the populations in those overseas lands and the people living in Metropolitan France, including former overseas residents.
But France Ô's share of the overall television audience has withered away in recent years and despite Emmanuel Macron's 2017 election campaign promise to save the “indispensable” channel, the French president has now agreed to wield the axe.
Unlike the also struggling youth channel France 4 – which is deemed to have shown its educative worth during the lockdown and has been reprieved for a year – the new culture minister Roselyne Bachelot confirmed the demise of the overseas channel in a statement on August 4th. In it the minister said France Ô would cease broadcasting on August 23rd this year. She also referred to a “visibility pact” which is aimed at maintaining a visible presence for the overseas territories both on mainstream broadcasting channels and online once France Ô has gone.
Roselyne Bachelot's statement came just two days after a protest held by elected representatives and leading figures from France's overseas territories in front of the gates of the Ministry of Culture on Rue de Valois in Paris. One of those present was Member of Parliament Maud Petit, from the centrist MoDem party which is an ally of President Macron's ruling La République en Marche party. When contacted by Mediapart Petit, who was brought up in Martinique in the Caribbean and who is a member of the National Assembly's Overseas Delegation, could not hide her bitterness at the news.
“The closure of France Ô is truly symbolic,” she said. “The Overseas [territories] had their specific channel just as they have a specific ministry. I and other Parliamentarians such as Maina Sage [French Polynesia] and George Pau-Langevin wanted to work within a Parliamentary remit to save France Ô but we were not permitted to do so.”
Maud Petit continued: “Our remit was restricted and the Parliamentary group on the visibility of the Overseas [Territories] could only operate within the perspective of the channel's closure. Like many I regret France Ô's lack of consistency and it lost a lot of viewers. The fact remains, however, that it was an essential channel.”
Petit may have been the only MP to attend the demonstration at the Ministry of Culture but she is by no means the only politician upset over the axing of the channel, whose demise is part of an ongoing reform of public broadcasting. In a joint statement three MPs from the French Caribbean, Hélène Vainqueur-Christophe, Victoire Jasmin and Victorin Lurel, criticised what they called a “shameful” act.
The trio accepted that the channel needed improvement and that a “redefinition” of its remit would have been “appropriate”. But they said: “ … Its removal is completely unacceptable. A genuine public broadcasting channel has today been sacrificed on the altar of rigid dogma and unjustified budgetary nitpicking.” In essence the MPs' arguments for keeping the channel are political, in the broadest sense of the term. They said they were devastated by the end of a public service which was “essential to the influence and visibility of our cultures, our artists and our territories”.
Opponents of the closure are not convinced by the so-called “visibility pact for the Overseas [territories]” which has been proposed by the Ministry of Culture and highlighted by the government as justification for the reform. It was signed in 2019 and provides for “an 'Overseas reflex' in the overall output” provided by France Télévisions. This in turn is supposed to lead to “more [overseas] presence in the main national news programmes, the use of national editorial teams” and the setting up of an “Overseas programme unit” that will work across different sections. Other features of the pact are intended to be a “daily magazine [show] dedicated to the Overseas [territories], a regular news slot on France 3, a dedicated national digital portal [and] the regular broadcast of overseas documentaries”.
The government argues that because France Ô's viewing figures have been so low – below 1% of the audience share for several years according to viewing figures monitor body Médiamétrie - closing it and giving wider exposure to the overseas territories across the public broadcaster's network will help bring the regions' stories and personalities out from the “ghetto”.
In fact, the digital portal has already been set up. It brings together news and information from France Télévisions's existing network of local television stations in the overseas territories. They are branded under the name La Première and are broadly equivalent to the mainland regional stations on the broadcaster's France 3 channel.
Some overseas territories content producers are relatively upbeat about the new portal and the promise that documentaries will be broadcast online. “I'm inclined to be positive about it: digital platforms work elsewhere,” said Nina Barnier, a director who is well known for documentaries in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and French Guiana. “There will still be some Overseas visibility because they'll be dedicated documentary slots on France 2 and France 3. The question that remains is about the control of the platform and its funding. If we want to get out of the current situation we have to place the Overseas territories within the world's geopolitics, at an international level. To highlight the major issues and not remain inward-looking.”
Enlargement : Illustration 1
But not everyone Mediapart spoke to shared this optimistic approach, though many wanted to remain anonymous for fear of upsetting a potential source of funding. “They used to give us a derisory sum to go and make a film at the other end of the world, that's the reality,” said one disillusioned director from the French Caribbean. “What's more, France Ô was often the reason put forward by the 'big' channels to reject 'Negro' issues. We would suggest something on the social protest movements in the Caribbean or lots of other very important things and France 2 would reply: 'Ah, no, that's not for us, go and see France Ô.' We'll have to do without it now, but the most serious thing is that instead of ending ghettoisation it in fact risks making us invisible again.”
The government's decision to close France Ô comes at a time of social and cultural tumult in France's Overseas territories. In the French Caribbean and on La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where the memory of slavery is still very strong, the issue of pulling down and replacing statues from the slave trade era has caused a particular stir. France Ô will no longer be able to report on that. The issue arises as to who else can fill the gap, given than press outlets in all the major French Overseas territories are struggling financially at the moment.
“I bet that in a few years the same analysis will be made that led to the creation of France Ô and a new channel will be created,” said MP Maud Petit. Like many observers she sees the closure of France Ô as primarily a political act rather than a financial one. Indeed, that has in effect been implicitly acknowledged. For none of the around thirty employees at the channel will lose their jobs and will instead by taken on by other channels within France Télévisions.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter