The case for a European 24-hour news channel
When Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980, the world looked at it as a strange experiment, wondering how a 24-hour news channel could possibly work on the long run.
Ten years later, the first Gulf War of 1990 revealed that a 24-hour news channel was a powerful tool to convey a country’s perspective and values to the world as people were watching CNN International, the only TV channel covering the war live, with sometimes content directly provided by the US Army.
A few years before, in 1987, Prime Minister of France Jacques Chirac expressed the idea of a French-language 24-hour news channel following CNN’s model: Canal France International or CFI. Two decades after, this led to the creation of France 24. Unfortunately, France 24 is far from being the 24-hour public news channel that France was dreaming of in the late 80s. It’s not available on the TNT (what you get when you watch TV without Cable, TV over IP or Satellite in France) unless you’re in the region Île-de-France (a little less than 12 million inhabitants) and doesn’t have the financial resources of other private 24-hour news channel BFM TV and iTELE.
There is another private news channel in France which requires a paid subscription, LCI (La Chaîne Info) owned by TF1, the first TV channel of France. The channel is trying to get on the TNT so they can broadcast for free. These discussions are happening right now.
At the same time, the president of France Télévisions, a state-owned company, Delphine Ernotte is presenting to the French Senate a project to create another French news channel, possibly starting next year, in september 2016 — a few months before the French Presidential Elections.
If that happens, there will be up five to news channels in France: BFM TV, iTELE, France 24, LCI and the new France Télévisions news channel.
Why would French people need that many news channels?
We have the chance of being part of one of the greatest union of countries in the World, the European Union. Let’s use this chance to join each countries’ resources (in term of onsite journalists and talents but also money) to create and push a European Union 24-hour news channel in each country’s language.
We had Euronews but we no longer have it. It is now own by the Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris. This makes the case for a European news channel even stronger; as of today, we don’t have any TV news channel that serves the European Union’s interests.
The way I see, we would have one global stream, in English which would be the “International” stream of the channel (let’s call the channel “Europe News” for the sake of simplicity), therefore it would be “Europe News International”.
Then, each country would stream “Europe News International” in English but also, in the case of France, “Europe News France” in French, which would take most of the content of “Europe News International” but in French and with some content focused on the coverage of the French news (for example, if François Hollande talks, it might not be relevant for “Europe News International” but that’s something “Europe News France” would want to broadcast).
If we want to move the European Union forward, we need to put up more resources to convey values that we share as Europeans and a reinvigorated Euronews would be the way to achieve that. It would also give ways to countries who don’t have the resources to run a 24-hour news channel to share their voice and their culture.
A stronger European Union would be more beneficial to France’s influence than a fifth news channel financed by the French government. It is time that Europeans get the CNN they deserve.
Updated 1/12/2015 at 18h20: A friend told me Euronews is own by an Egyptian businessman, therefore, I changed my suggestions from putting more resources to Euronews to creating a brand new channel.
