France 24's Managing Editor Gregoire Deniau says it is "out of the question for [France 24] simply to be a channel that recycles news; we must also produce it." But the network has only 36 dedicated correspondents, and Deniau says he will rely on stringers and associates for two-thirds of the station's footage.
The network also will lose money from day one, a trend likely to last for years. Alain de Pouzilhac, the former CEO of advertising group Havas who is now France 24's president, says the station will book around $4 million in advertising revenue in 2007. (France 24 would not disclose the names of any of its initial advertisers.) Revenues should rise to $8 million or $9 million by fiscal year 2008, de Pouzilhac says, but that would still leave the station more than $100 million in the red annually.
As is often the case with grand French projects — think Concorde, or the new Quaero search engine research initiative — French taxpayers will get stuck with the bill. What’s more, the government’s backing for France 24 could weaken its journalistic integrity, making it more like Voice of America than CNN.
"We have to ask ourselves if [France 24] is truly going to be independent of the French government," says Renaud Montini, a French media lawyer who specializes in broadcast law. "Can we believe that France 24 will really be able to criticize the government the way the BBC has?"
Sebag was an early advocate of launching France 24 exclusively to a French-speaking market, focusing on the 27 Francophone countries in West Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East, where advertising would be easier to sell. Launching a France 24 channel in English when the network lacks satellite coverage in the U.S. is "going for prestige" rather than commercial viability, Sebag says. (In the U.S., the network will be distributed initially only to U.N.
headquarters in New York and via Comcast (CMCSA) digital cable in Washington D.C.)
France 24's management stresses a more important goal than mere commercial success: providing a "third way" in today's polarized global news environment. "France is seen as a rebel country," says de Pouzilhac, who commissioned a 12-country study to determine how journalists, politicians, and business leaders worldwide perceived France.
In any case, the pressure for France 24 to offer a distinct vision just got greater. Al Jazeera and the BBC recently débuted channels in English and Arabic, respectively, weakening France 24's appeal as an outside alternative in the markets serving people who speak those languages (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/23/06, "Al Jazeera Meets American Resistance").
CNN also has a strong presence in the region, counting four bureaus in Africa and five in the Middle East, supported by an Arabic-language Web site (arabic.cnn.com).
"If [France 24] succeeds, it will succeed on the merits of its journalism," says Jack Doppelt, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a visiting professor this year at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. "Maybe having another set of cameras and another set of journalists out there in the world will produce new images that can influence diplomats." That may be what France's leaders are hoping for, but their dream is a long way from becoming a viable business.
(BusinessWeekOnline)
Aujourd'hui, veille jour anniversaire (sic) des émeutes de banlieue
