With the end of France Ô, have the overseas territories lost their "visibility"?

Presented by Sonia Chironi, "INVESTIGATIÔNS" offered, every week on France Ô, documentaries selected for their relevance and topicality.

-

• After 15 years of existence, the France Ô channel bowed out on DTT on Sunday 23 August.

• Window on the Overseas and also dedicated to cultural diversity, it will be replaced in favor of more visibility on the France Télévisions network and the Outre-mer La 1ère portal.

• Documentaries, local news, original television series… The future of overseas representation worries former employees of the channel and part of the overseas community.

Has channel 19 ever existed on TNT?

After 15 years on the air, France Ô is in any case no longer slipped between channels 18 and 20 of TV.

For the first time in 28 years, a free channel officially went away on Tuesday, September 1.

Blame it on its low audiences (estimated at 0.3%) and a dual mission of representing diversity and overseas on the public service, which it has not fulfilled, according to France Televisions.

"This disappearance shows the disrespect towards the Ultramarins and their low consideration within the French media", laments JC, who answered our call on the disappearance of the channel.

"Why not remove all regional channels from France 3 in this case if it is a question of ratings?

“, He wonders, worried about the representation of overseas territories in the PAF.

France Ô made it possible "to apprehend French social and cultural diversity" and to work "for the openness of mind and the acceptance of the other", testifies for her part Lise, also disappointed by her disappearance.

For the Sauvons France Ô collective, mobilized for two years, the judgment of France Ô signals a rupture between the French in Hexagon and Overseas, as well as a betrayal on the part of President Emmanuel Macron who had promised during of his campaign that the channel would be preserved.

And the pill is even more bitter as to the date chosen for the end of its programs: August 23, international day for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition.

“We can then ask ourselves if we remove a channel that addresses populations, what do these represent in the eyes of those who have decided on its fate?

», Notes Olivier Pulvar, sociologist and lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Antilles-Guyane.

More visibility on national channels

Announced in 2018 as part of the audiovisual reform, the arrest of France Ô was initiated in July 2019 with the signing of an Overseas Visibility Pact on the historic channels of France Télévisions (France 2 , France 3) and Franceinfo.

The group had also started by broadcasting the programs "Les Témoins d'Outre-Mer" and "Riding Zone" on France 3 or the last Kassav'v concert in the second part of the evening (at 11:10 pm) on France 2. “We try to instill an overseas reflex in the group.

For a year, we have already increased their place in the news of all editions, which allows us to reach a wider audience.

We also broadcast each month dramas shot in overseas territories, ”underlines the group in the columns of Le

.

"We are happy to see more Overseas Territories on the France TV network, but visibility means talking about overseas territories on a daily basis, not an epiphenomenon", tempers Didier Givodan, SNJ delegate based in Malakoff.

Indeed, the criteria set out in the Visibility Pact, as well as the vagueness of the future of the programs and documentaries broadcast on the channel, do not reassure its former employees.

An “overseas program” is considered to be a program financed in part by an overseas antenna or even for which “a substantial part of its content is filmed in an overseas territory”.

Does an episode of

filmed in Guadeloupe become an overseas program?

Does a weather report dedicated to the overseas departments and communities fulfill the visibility mission advocated by France Télévisions?

Will all the territories: from the West Indies to the Pacific, via Réunion, Mayotte and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon be entitled to the same airtime?

For the sociologist Olivier Pulvar, another risk is that this “visibility pact” is implemented from the “same recipes that do not work” used for the “Diversity Charter” of France Télévisions.

“What is the record of diversity on screen?

We have a discourse on diversity, visibility, but in reality we do not question the concrete results on issues that are the same, ”he points out.

Refocus the mission on overseas territories

On the side of the Sauvons France Ô collective, the fight continues and will soon be politicized.

On August 23, during a Place du Royal demonstration in Paris, its members announced the presentation of a list of complaints to the Ministry of Culture.

"We are asking for a one-year reprieve like France 4, a 26-minute overseas newspaper on France 3 rather than the current six minutes devoted to us," explains Kant Lebeau, one of its spokespersons.

They also want an RNT frequency for radio (Radio Ô), broadcasts on overseas regions at prime time “because France Ô was the second broadcaster of documentaries after Arte”, broadcasts of events linked to the Overseas. sea ​​and real visibility for overseas artists.

The @sauvonsfrance_o collective regrets that the #FranceO channel was underfunded (€ 30 million budget) compared to # France4 and that the channel did not benefit from a suspension to reposition its programs and thus better correspond to its target pic.twitter.com/vMmCiA8juz

- Selene Agapé (@SeleneAgape) August 23, 2020

The France Ô collective is also demanding that the channel focus only on its mission of representing overseas territories and not on that of diversity, assigned in 2005 after the riots in the suburbs.

A mission that has scrambled the message to its target, who prefers the channels of the La 1ère network, which has a strong local presence.

“We wanted to make it a catch-all of diversity with a political vocation, but we didn't even know who we were talking to: the Ultramarins or the Metropolitan?

France Ô had the smallest budget of the group [30 million euros specify the unions, against more than 50 million for Franceinfo, launched in 2016, with an audience share of 0.7% in July].

It was endowed with the height of the ambitions that were given to it ”, agrees in this sense Sébastien Folin with the

.

The other voices from overseas

To partially offset the channel's closure, France Télévisions launched the “Outre-mer La 1ère” digital portal last June.

A new window likely to attract a new audience, which is turning away from so-called traditional television.

The overseas community is investing more and more in social networks and alternative media (such as podcasts) and independent to bring out its innovations and its problems on a national scale, as evidenced in Martinique by the demonstrations against chlordecone, an insecticide used until 1993 in the West Indies and endocrine disruptor, classified by the WHO as a possible carcinogen.

But for Majid Bensmail, CFDT union representative at France Télévisions, the loss of France Ô in favor of digital representation risks widening a generational divide and exclusion of the most vulnerable populations.

"How the elderly are going to look at the newspaper in their territory," he blurted bitterly.

"It will be difficult to immediately grasp the impact of the disappearance of France Ô, but it will add to the wounds that we do not always perceive in the populations of Overseas", estimates Olivier Pulvar.

Television

France Ô judgment: "This shows the low consideration of Ultramarins within the French media"

Web

Outre-mer La 1ère: France Télévisions' overseas digital portal is launched

• Overseas

• Television

• France Televisions

• Culture