ABSTRACT
French reality-based television crime shows are a recent phenomenon, having first appeared only in the mid-1990s. In 1990 the details of a new crime show series proposed by one of the major television channels created such consternation among TV regulators and the judiciary that it was canceled even before the first program could be shown. Public concern in the 1980s and 1990s over the failings of the police and the legal system provided the audience for reality crime shows in the increasingly commercialized French television industry. Creating and maintaining quality French television is a way of supporting French culture at home and abroad. This wider political and cultural significance of everyday French television explains at least in part some of the furor created by reality shows such as "Temoin N°. 1" whose "low cultural value" is seen by some to undermine France's claims to cultural superiority.
