ABSTRACT
The development of television in France has been similar to that of many of its Western European neighbours: it first began with a single public service channel, financed and regulated by the state, and has expanded rapidly to become a dual system of both public and private channels on a number of technological supports (terrestrial transmission, satellite and cable), offering programmes twenty-four hours a day (the expansion of terrestrial channels in France can be seen in Figure 6.1).1What is specific to each of the European countries which have followed this path is the way in which reform was introduced and the extent to which the public sector has been preserved: in France change has been highly controversial and politicised, characterised by a large number of successive reforms, and the shift from the public sector to the private, with its concomitant shift from the public service ethos to commercially motivated programming, has been radical.
