France Télévisions announced on Wednesday that it has launched "Outre-mer La 1ère", a digital portal entirely dedicated to the Overseas Territories, which should in particular help to compensate for the possible closure this summer of the overseas channel France Ô. This new digital platform, which was to be installed at the end of March, had its implementation postponed due to the Covid-19 crisis. Mainly focused on information, it will offer content hitherto dispersed on the various branches of the group, relying in particular on the network of channels and radios "La 1ère" (ex-RFO), the overseas branch of France Televisions .
It will be built around a news feed, taking the form of a permanent direct "contributory and interactive", because the public will be able to send images, testify, react or ask questions. And there will be files and multi-format subjects, as well as documentaries, podcasts and radio programs, fictions and video shows. "Overseas the 1st" will be "a real window on all Overseas", argued the president of France Televisions, Delphine Ernotte, cited in a press kit.
Allow diasporas to stay in touch with their homeland
The portal will also ensure "territorial continuity", and is intended in particular for overseas audiences as well as "all diasporas who want to keep a link with their territory of origin," explained for her part the director of Sylvie Gengoul's overseas department, in an interview with the Journal de la Île de la Réunion .
Its launch precedes by a few months the potential closure of France Ô, planned so far on August 9 at the same time as that of France 4, another DTT channel, by decision of the government and as part of a savings plan of the public audiovisual group. But, in view of the role played by the public service during the health crisis, the Ministry of Culture no longer excludes a continuation of the two channels and has been studying the question with France Télévisions for several weeks.
A "visibility pact"
This portal is part of the strong commitments made by the public group in July 2019 in a "visibility pact", which aimed, in the perspective of France Ô's judgment, to "sustainably guarantee the presence of overseas in the center of offer of the public audio-visual ", by a reinforcement of the overseas programs on the whole of the national chains of the group and the quantified objectives. Symbolically, the Overseas La 1ère logo includes the number one and 9 points, representing the overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, Mayotte, New Caledonia, Polynesia, Réunion, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna). It also uses the yellow color already assigned to France Ô and the La 1ère network.