France to get its own worldwide news channel

There was already TV5, a worldwide French-speaking channel combining the best of all the major French-speaking channels from France, Belgium, Switzerlan and Quebec. Channels include news, films, documentaries and cultural programmes. Now, France is aiming at an exclusively worldwide news channel, in the line with CNN, and will be called French International News Network (CFII).

BBC News : French channel set for 2006 start

The new network will be owned by commercial network TF1 and the state-funded company France Televisions.

The government has given initial funding of 30m euros (??23m) for this year, and allocated another 65m euros (??44m) for next year.

The European Commission gave the green light to CFII in June, saying it did not breach EU state aid rules.

Employing around 240 staff, it will produce programmes initially beamed to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

CFII will broadcast news around the clock in French, with a four-hour slot of programmes in English. There are plans to add programmes in Arabic and Spanish in due course.

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I have been watching France 24 for a few weeks now (it started broadcasting on 6 December 2006), and I have to say it is quite good. I have almost stopped watching BBC World and CNN since then. There are two versions of the channel : the French version, and the English version, presented mostly by native French speakers with perfect Engish. The only way to know some of them are native French speakers is when they pronounce French names, or when you seem them presenting the French version as well. We could just deplore that some fielf reporters don't quite have the required level of English. Hopefully this will get better with time.

Apparently (from the website) there is also an Arabic version, but oddly enough we do not get it in Brussel - despite the dozen of other Arabic-speaking channels like Al Jazeera.