France Info

France Info is French 24-hour news television network owned by France TV.

It shares its name with a global news service which gathers the TV channel itself, the radio channel France Info and the website www.francetvinfo.fr. France Info simulcasts France 24 from 00:00 - 06:00.

History[]

In 2001, when France's digital terrestrial television was only a project, the government of Lionel Jospin asked the president of France Télévisions to think about a project for a wider range of public channels broadcast on DTT , So that the public service will have a prominent place in this project. The power in place perceives in TNT, the technical revolution that it had been waiting for a long time to develop and rebalance the audience and the visibility of public television in difficulty since the privatization of TF1 and the arrival of M6 in 1987. France Télévisions Proposes the creation of three new channels: France 1, a channel for continuous information, France 4, a channel devoted entirely to regions, and France 6, a channel offering a selection of France 2 and France 3 programs re-broadcast at off-shoots.

In the meantime, the government is shifting and the new prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, is revising the proposals downwards, in a context of budgetary rigor. Public service television therefore has four channels on TNT in addition to France 2 and France 3, but three of them will be operated by existing channels: France 5 as a permanent channel, broadcast 24/7, Arte ( Which does not depend on France Télévisions) also aired 24/24 and La Chaîne Parlementaire whose branches of the National Assembly and the Senate will share the channel. France Télévisions thus has only one channel "bonus" to offer a channel complementary to its existing antennas. It is finally the channel renamed Festival to France 4 that the group chooses to appear on the TNT, thus abandoning the idea of a continuous news channel.

This new media is on the initiative of the president of France Télévisions in place since August 2015, Delphine Ernotte, without eliciting the support of some journalists of the group. The project is evoked as soon as the president of the group takes office in 2015. Competitive groups such as NextRadioTV (owner of BFM TV) do not welcome the arrival of a new public media , Fearing a loss of audience of their own structure, this being in addition to the passage of LCI on free DTT in April 2016. Germain Dagognet had the task of coordinating the project.

After months of discussions, between 2015 and 2016, the news channel is announced on 11 July 2016 for a launch on 1 September. As the proposed offer is multiple, so-called global, it was first to launch the site and the application on August 24, the first radio broadcasts and the first blank newspapers on August 29, webcasting On 31 August, and finally the official television launch on 1 September. It takes a week to deploy the entire project. All media are invested, with the exception of writing.

In order to be ready for the broadcasts, rehearsals took place from 22 July. Staff were reorganized in record time10. This created fatigue, excitement among employees, stimulated by this new joint venture between several entities of the public service. The changes were so rapid, that the delivery of the new chain took place in pain. An opposition was also born on the part of the radio, which accuses the television part of working in an emergency, without taking care to check its information12. 59 radio journalists signed a motion to that effect.