Télé de Grandeur - How France fouled it up

A detailed review of television in France. Since the mid-1980s, the French have suddenly thrown open the airwaves to commercial enterprise and advertisers, on a scale and with a speed to make Britain and Germany look timid.

Tl de Grandeur: How France fouled it up

William Phillips

What happens when a developed country, whose television has been artificially rationed for many years, suddenly opts for diversity? Since the mid-1980s the French have thrown the airwaves open to commercial enterprise and advertisers on a scale and with a speed to make Britain and Germany look timid. France now has six general-interest TV networks, four of them privately owned and all selling airtime. This rush for abundance has brought more painful consequences than rewards.

Once it was easy to tell France's and Germany's television apart: in Germany it...

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