Origins

Before 1914, France participated in the development of wireless (telegraphy and telephony) with other industrial nations. World War I stimulated the use of large transmitters: after the one on the Eiffel Tower in Paris (1905) came another at La Doua in Lyon (1914), then one at La Croix d'Hins (1920, meant originally for the use of the U.S. expeditionary force) and one at Sainte-Assise (1922). The war also created thousands of radio specialists, trained in the armed forces, who returned to civilian life in 1919. Furthermore, the war accelerated the formation in 1918 of the Compagnie genera le de TSF (CSF), which was one of the four largest broadcast companies in the world (with Marconi in England, Telefunken in Germany, and Radio Corporation of America [RCA] in the United States).

The Mixed System (1922-40)

Considering French capabilities and interests, it is odd that France did not experience the same radio boom as Britain, Germany, or the U.S. However, the educational establishment, the Catholic Church, the press, and most intellectuals had trouble accepting the competition that "vulgar" radio entertainment might represent for other vehicles of culture and information. Successive governments and Parliament were incapable of giving radio a stable status. Left-wing political parties, with their minds on the traditional telegraph monopoly, wanted radio to be exclusively entrusted to the Ministry of Post, Telephone, and Telegraph (PTT). Right-wing groups reacted rather favorably to the creation of private commercial stations.

After a few experiments in 1921, regular radio transmissions began in February 1922 from the Eiffel Tower station, which the army had handed over to the Post Office. In November 1922 the Radiola station was inaugurated by the CSF, and a third station was created in January 1923 by the Ecole Superieure (Graduate School) of the PTT. Beginning in 1924, stations appeared in the provinces. After much debate and incoherent legislation, the law of 19 March 1928 established a mixed, highly regionalized radio system.

By 1932 the 13 authorized commercial stations (financed by advertising) had a total transmitting power of 160 kilowatts, whereas the 11 government-operated transmitters had a combined power of 92 kilowatts. In 1938, after an important modernizing effort aided in 1934 by the establishment of an annual fee to be paid by owners of sets (compensated by the abandonment of advertising), the 16 public stations, of which 3 were in Paris (in 1939, the Poste National had its transmitter power raised to 900 kilowatts, making it the strongest in the world), competed against 11 commercial stations, 4 of them in Paris and each associated with a national daily newspaper.

The number of radio receivers increased comparatively slowly: from 600,000 in 1928 to 1.5 million in 1934, 4.7 million in 1938, and 5.2 million in 1940, for a population of 40 million inhabitants. Penetration was about a third less than in Germany or Great Britain. The audience for private stations, whose programs were more popular, was almost equal to that of the PTT network.

The growing European political crisis led the government to increase its control over radio news, and the same newscast was provided on all "public" stations and, from February 1939, on all private stations as well. Just two months before the declaration of war, the management of radio broadcasting was withdrawn from the Post Office and transferred to the office of the Prime Minister. Programs aimed at foreign audiences, especially German and Italian, were increased early in 1938, as were those aimed at French colonies in Africa and Asia.

The Era of Monopoly (1940-81)

From September 1939 to June 1940, radio was mobilized to support the French war effort and the country's morale.

German Occupation (1940-44)

After the armistice of June 1940, the north and west of France were occupied by the Germans, who unified the radio network around Radio Paris as a tool of propaganda in favor of total collaboration with Nazism. In the south, the Vichy regime nationalized radio, and the Radiodiffusion Nationale erved the conservative "national revolution" under Marshall Petain. After the invasion of the southern zone (November 1942), the autonomy of the Vichy radio was gradually diminished. In spite of the prohibition on listening to foreign radios, many French could hear Radio Sottens in French-speaking Switzerland, the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) French Service (Radio Londres), and later the Voice of America, Radio Moscow, or Radio Brazzaville (in the Congo, controlled by General de Gaulle's Free French), and after 1943 Radio Alger in French North Africa. This sad period was crucial for the prestige of radio in France-it continued speaking with different voices. The considerable importance nowadays of radio newscasts for the information of the French, as compared to the printed press or even television, is partly the result of habits formed in those days, when newspapers had lost all credibility.

The Fourth Republic (1944-58)

At the time of liberation, radio remained nationalized and, contrary to the situation between the two world war , basically centralized. The Radiodiffusion Nationale (renamed Radiotelevision Nationale in 1949) was a public administration that produced three national services on short and medium waves and one service directed to French colonies. The few regional programs did not occupy much space in the schedule. Government control of news programs was very strong, but cultural programs and variety shows often attained remarkable quality. Commercial advertising was banned. Financing came from the annual receiver fee and government subsidies. The number of sets increased rapidly, from 5 million in 1945 to 10.7 million by 1958, by which time practically all households were equipped--even before transistor sets made it possible for a household to own several sets-and there were over 25 million by 1981.

The originality of the French radio landscape was largely due to competing "peripheral" stations, which aired programs made in France and aimed at a French audience but broadcast from transmitters located just beyond the national borders. Thus Radio Luxembourg (1933), Radio Monte-Carlo (1943), and in 1955 Europe 1 from the Saar in Germany all provided the popular sound of U.S. commercial radio, plus newscasts and political columns with content and tone that were far more free than those of the governmentrun Radio-Television Francaise (RTF). Europe 1 especially managed to innovate successfully by using a conversational and informal style quite different from the more formal and stuffy government radio speakers. The success of radio was also maintained by the late and slow development of television, which in 1958 still operated on only one channel to fewer than 1 million receivers.

The Fifth Republic (Until 1981)

During the administrations of. General de Gaulle (1958-69), Georges Pompidou (1969-73), and Giscard d'Estaing (1973-81), the status of the RTF (the ORTF after 1964 with the addition of the word "Office") was modified several times, but the principle of a public monopoly was not questioned even as more management autonomy was granted. Television expanded to three channels and added color, and radio diversified its programs-without, on the whole, giving up their national character. The huge Maison de la Radio (House of Radio) in Paris, inaugurated in 1963, symbolized the centralization of the French broadcasting system, even though by 1980 there were also 34 provincial production centers. In 1959 the annual radio fee was combined with that of television, and it was terminated entirely in 1978, yet radio was not authorized to carry advertising, as television was from 1968.

Although French radio had programs for overseas territories and foreign audiences (which never had the appeal of those of the BBC or the Voice of America), the three national radio programs were dominant: France Inter, France Culture, and France Musique. In 1974 these were gathered under the name Radio France. FM, which made possible the multiplication of local stations, had already been used in Germany to counter the penury of long- and medium-wave frequencies. It could upset the French model of a few AM stations broadcasting at high power. The first French FM station, France Inter Paris (FIP), was created as a local outlet for the Paris region in 1971. Its music, news, and traffic advice format was directed heavily at car radio listeners. Over the next few years, that format spread to the whole country with regional programming.

But it became clear that FM could be used for "illegal" broadcasts: in Italy, beginning in 1973, "free radios," run by radical college students, environmentalists, and labor unions, flouted the broadcasting monopoly of the Radio Audizione Italiana; in 1978 the government had to increase the punishments for such pirates. Faced with the threat of "free radio," Radio France undertook to provide some of the desired programming when in 1980 it started several experimental FM stations, two national-aimed at youth (Radio 7) and older people (Radio Bleue)-and three decentralized outlets: one regional, one at the level of one of the 95 French "departements," and one truly local. They hoped that by applying a policy of multiplying stations, they could keep FM frequencies for the public service.

In spite of its efforts, however, Radio France was gradually losing market shares to the peripheral stations, whose entertainment programs were more popular and whose often caustic news programs sounded less conformist than those of the public service. The situation was all the more paradoxical because it demonstrated how ill-adapted the government "monopoly" was and, mainly, because the French government owned a majority share in the capital of Radio Luxembourg and controlled Europe I and Radio Monte-Carlo via SOFIRAD, a company whose capital was owned by the government.

Return to a Mixed System (Since 1981)

The victory of both the Socialist Party and François Mitterrand in the 1981 elections caused a revolution in the radio world (and in television after 1984).

The Mitterrand Revolution

The promises of the social-democratic candidate to allow local "free" FM stations access to the airwaves generated hundreds of them over the next few months. Belatedly, the laws of 9 November 1981 and 29 July 1982 tried to introduce order into the mess. Licenses to broadcast would only be granted to independent stations linked to an association and with a range not greater than 50 kilometers; for their financing, they could only use volunteer work, subscriptions of association members, and government subsidies; and they could not be funded by any local government. In other words, there were to be no municipal radios and no profit-oriented radios. Licenses were delivered by the Haute Autorite de I'Audiovisuel ( or HAA, which, after several transformations, became in 1989 the Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel [CSA]), which is in charge of seeing that laws are respected by all private and public broadcasting companies. That independent body, partly inspired by the American Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was at last to cut the cord that had since the origins of radio linked the French audiovisual system to the government.

The system of association radios was very soon to prove economically inapplicable. In 1985 the HAA had delivered some 1,800 licenses for the whole country. The law of 1 April 1984 authorized stations to set up as commercial companies and use advertising to finance themselves-and also to join into networks, provided that they kept part of their schedule devoted to local programs. The next year, a decree authorized peripheral radios to enter the FM band and thus to build national networks.

After 1985 the revolution in audiovisual communication was spreading to television, but it seemed to have ended for radio: no new institutional reform was going to wreak havoc on that scene. The regulatory body, by gradually settling the many conflicts; managed to more or less stabilize the movement and made it possible to prepare a relatively easy passage into the 21st century and the digital era. In 1995 the CSA set up 16 regional technical bureaus, the better to assume its functions in the provinces. A law (1 February 1994) raised from 25 to 49 percent the share that a given company could own of a station and allowed several networks to gather local station affiliates, provided their cumulative potential audience did not exceed 150 million (the equivalent of three national networks).

To resist the invasion of the airwaves by U.S. audiovisual products, the French government and European Union authorities have promulgated regulations to guarantee a "cultural exception" to the principle of free circulation of goods. Laws of 18 January 1992 and 1 February 1994, applying the European guidelines on "Television without Borders" (30 October 1989 and 1 February 1994), have set a quota of 60 percent European products, including 40 percent French work on all radio and television stations. The CSA finds it very difficult to enforce the quotas, especially regarding pop music.

Modern French Radio

France now enjoys a radio system that is diverse, efficient, dynamic, and modern. It uses both microwave and satellite relays (which are increasing). It is initiating digital audio broadcasting. Most (85 percent) of the French regularly listen to radio; the morning audience for news is particularly high, whereas elsewhere in Europe people turn more often to home-delivered newspapers. The various services of Radio France generally attract a quarter of the French radio audience. Radio France owns two subsidiaries: Radio France Outremer, which serves some 2 million inhabitants scattered over the French territories of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, and Radio France Internationale, which provides one service in French plus programs in 18 other languages using a variety of transmitters.

Radio France operates six national services: France-Inter (general interest), France Culture (considered too elitist by some), France Musique, Radio Bleue (for senior citizens), Le Mouv' (for youth), and France-Info (the first all-news station in Europe, begun in 1987 and attracting a large audience). Its 38 regional stations, which cover half the country, are now associated with the France Bleu network. The FIP services still operate in 76 cities. Radio France funds two orchestras and two choirs, produces some 500,000 hours of programming per year, and employs over 3,000 people, including 450 journalists.

Private-sector radio attracts about 70 percent of the audience. It is highly diversified, with some 1,600 stations that often serve several towns on different frequencies. Each of the old "peripheral" stations continues to supply a national general interest schedule, but each is now associated with two or three groups of local private radios and plays a role similar to that of U.S. networks. Radio Luxembourg (called RTL since 1954) is now linked to a vast pan-European holding company, RTL-UFA. Europe I is now associated with the Lagardere (aviation, armament, and publishing) conglomerate. Radio Monte-Carlo is associated with the NRJ network, which now enjoys third place in the French radio hierarchy, behind RTL and Radio France. These networks have extended abroad, where they cooperate with private commercial stations in Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The large national networks of local private radios, which have adopted the American music and news format, include 700 stations in all. Then there are some 300 commercial stations that are still independent, sometimes grouped into small regional networks, which thanks to more original programming intend to remain largely local and stay close to their listeners or to serve some religion. Lastly, some 500 fiercely independent "association stations" survive, partly thanks to government subsidies: their audience varies from one place to another and is rather small (2 to 3 percent) but is still a sign of militant protest. The audience of foreign stations is very small.