TF1

History

First years

The government operated the sole television channel in France for 28 years. It was created as Radiovision-PTT on 26 April 1935, making it among the oldest television stations in the world, and one of the very few prewar television stations to remain in existence to the present day.

The first public demonstration of a 30-line mechanical television took place on 14 April 1931. The image rendering was an improvement upon Baird's thanks to the development of the "moving light point" system and the use of a camera with Weiller mirror drums by the engineer René Barthélemy, head of the radio laboratory of the Compagnie des compteurs (CdC) of Montrouge. In charge of French broadcasting, the PTT administration carried out some rudimentary television experiments from December 1931 by broadcasting experimental 30 to 45 minute broadcasts at variable times from Monday to Saturday with Baird equipment from the medium wave transmitter of Radio PTT. The Barthélemy system was officially adopted in preference to that of Baird, due to the greater stability of the images, for the continuation of experimental transmissions in 1932.

The Minister of the PTT, Henri Queuille, then authorised the Compagnie des compteurs to continue its experiments using the PTT superior school transmitter located at 103 rue de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement of Paris and assigned the company a rudimentary studio at number 93 of the same street. Barthélemy continued his experiments there with a new disc camera from Nipkow which offered much better shooting possibilities than with the previous system. The programs were broadcast in 30 lines on Tuesday and Friday at 5:00 pm by two transmitters, the images by the medium wave transmitter of the higher school of the PTT on the wavelength of 431 meters and the sound by the transmitter of the Compagnie des compteurs in Montrouge connected to the studio by a telephone line. These experimental broadcasts only reached a very limited public of amateurs of technical innovation who tinkered with receivers connected to a radio, thus constituting a radiovision receiver.

At the same time, the BBC Television Service had been broadcasting an experimental but regular television service since 22 August 1932, with broadcasts taking place Monday to Friday from 11.00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m., and at night on medium wave on 205 meters after BBC radio programmes closed down for the night. The new French Minister of the PTT of the Flandin Government, Georges Mandel, during a visit to the general manager of the British Broadcasting Corporation at the end of 1934, attended a live broadcast of the Epsom Derby on a televisor built by John Logie Baird.

Radiodiffusion nationale Télévision

Following successful trials of a "high-definition" 455-line electronic television system designed by Thomson-Houston which improved on the 405-line system originally designed by EMI-Marconi, Radio-PTT Vision renamed itself as Radiodiffusion nationale Télévision (RN Télévision) in July 1937. However, broadcasts using the Nipkow disk system continued alongside the new electronic system until 10 April 1938. In July 1938, a decree of the French PTT agency fixed the French terrestrial television standard as transmitting on 455 lines VHF (46 MHz, positive modulation, 25 frames per second), to be adopted throughout France within three years. The adoption of the electronic standard marked the end of mechanical television in France, and the advent of electronic television to obtain much better image quality.

While the BBC Television Service was able to broadcast the arrival of the President of the French Republic Albert Lebrun in London for his official visit on 21 March 1939, RN Télévision was otherwise unable to film a single image. The Minister of the PTT Alfred Jules-Julien thus promised on 31 March a bus equipped for remote reporting in the open air within two weeks, a new television studio and programs broadcast in the evening after dinner.

The administrative system of public broadcasting was modified by a decree of 29 July 1939 signed by the President of the Council Édouard Daladier, making French Broadcasting, and therefore the television service attached to it, a State monopoly which ceased to depend on the Ministry of PTT to pass under the administration of the National French Radio, newly created for this purpose, endowed with an autonomous budget and placed directly under the authority of the President of the council.

World War II

The rue de Grenelle studio closed permanently on July 31st, 1939. Radiodiffusion nationale Télévision then only broadcast films, documentaries and news via its Grammont telecine and identified itself with the callsign Télé-Cinéma Radiodiffusion nationale. When France entered World War II on 3 September 1939, military authorities ordered the cessation of broadcasts and took control of the Eiffel Tower transmitter. The French hardly noticed it because there were no more than 300 receiving stations throughout the territory, which were also watched in a few rare public places. A few broadcasts were still broadcast episodically for transmitter maintenance purposes, but these were not advertised in the press so that the Germans could not use the transmitter signal to locate and bombard Paris. On 6 June 1940, technicians from RN Télévision sabotaged the transmitter to make it unusable by the Germans who were at the gates of Paris.

The German occupying forces initially took no interest in the Eiffel Tower transmitter until an order in May 1941, aimed at reducing transmission sites in the occupied zone in order to recover raw materials, and thus recover certain elements of the French 455-line transmitter of interest to Telefunken lead to discussions on the rehabilitation and use of this transmitter for television. Opposed to this dismantling, Kurt Hinzmann, German television pioneer and former director of the programs of Berlin's Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow television station, who succeeded in convincing the German authorities to continue the broadcast of the programs of the station during the war by proposing its use to entertain and distract the war wounded in hospitals, took up this idea to apply it to the French capital and thus save the Parisian transmitter. He recommended putting the Eiffel Tower transmitter back into service to broadcast a television channel intended to entertain the German soldiers hospitalized in the Kriegslazarette in Paris. In addition, this television channel would open up the French market to the German electrical industry by adopting the German 441-line broadcasting standard developed by Telefunken. Finally, from a military point of view, the repair of this transmitter could allow it to be used as a jammer for enemy planes.

By order of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to the Ministry of PTT on 20 May 1942, the work to restore the transmitter in the Eiffel Tower to service was entrusted to the Compagnie des comptes de Montrouge and the German firm Telefunken, following a collaboration agreement between the two companies to jointly build the technical infrastructure of this new television channel. The equipment of the Compagnie des Compteurs being considered uninteresting, Telefunken supplied the new television transmitter to the German standard of 441 lines, recovered from the Reichspost in Germany, and which was installed by technicians from Berlin.

RTF Télévision

Radiodiffusion française was renamed as Radiodiffusion-télévision française (RTF) on 9 February 1949, and thus began the growth of television as an accepted mass medium in France. RTF was also the first channel in the world to air footage of a Pope, on 17 April 1949, with a film sent from the Vatican of Pope Pius XII talking about the potential of television. On 29 May 1949, the first news programme aired on RTF TV, and on 30 July 1949 a television licence fee was introduced. Residents living outside Paris could view RTF TV for the first time in February 1952 when Télé Lille (now known as France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais), a regional broadcaster operating since 10 April 1950, was co-opted into the RTF TV network and became RTF's first relay outside Paris. Still as of 1954, RTF's terrestrial network consisted of only three stations reaching 90,000 television sets, while West Germany had set up nine stations by year-end 1953. Its programming was also seen to be stale, with an excessive amount of old movies (120 per year), "stale" newsreels, poor lighting, lack of sport and star performers. Famed French singer of the time Maurice Chevalier actually made his first television appearance in the United Kingdom, as opposed to France. RTF television services were also extended to French Algeria in 1956, which later became TV1 Algeria upon Algerian independence in 1962.

ORTF era

Following the creation of RTF Télévision 2 (now France 2) in 1964, the first channel was renamed as Première chaîne de la RTF (First Channel of the RTF). With the creation of the ORTF on 25 July 1964, the channel was renamed again to Première chaîne de l'ORTF (First Channel of the ORTF). This period marked the introduction of commercial advertising on 1 October 1968. On 8 January 1969, the ORTF created a subsidiary company called Régie française de publicité (RFP) to handle all advertising on the ORTF channels. The RFP held a monopoly on French TV advertising until the launch of privately owned TV channels in France in the 1980s, and was eventually liquidated in 1993.

TF1 era

TF1, which originally stood for Télévision française 1 (French Television 1), was created on 1 January 1975 when law 74-696 of 7 August 1974, splitting the ORTF into seven separate organisations, came into effect. The name TF1 was a recommendation of the European Broadcasting Union, who demanded the television unit of the former ORTF rebranded as Télévision Française, with the channels being renamed TF1, TF2 and TF3. However, the fact that the three channels were to be independent caused TF1 to become the only channel to use the proposed Télévision Française name. The rebranding to the new name came into effect on 6 January 1975. TF1 adopted a multicoloured logo and cel-animated idents created by Catherine Chaillet, and from 1976 until 1985, analogue computer-generated idents produced using the Scanimate system were also used, created by the American company Robert Abel and Associates with background music composed by Vladimir Cosma. The 1975 TF1 logo was later modified in 1984 and again in 1987.

Colour television was first introduced to TF1 on 1 September 1975 when FR3 (now France 3) agreed to supply some of its colour programming to TF1, and the conversion to colour on TF1 was completed in 1977, though the old 819-line analogue network remained entirely black-and-white until it was decommissioned in 1983. Since TF1's privatisation in April 1987, the abbreviation is no longer expanded, so as to avoid confusion with the current public television broadcaster France Télévisions.

From 1984 to 1986, the French television landscape evolved significantly with the launch of three private television channels: Canal+, La Cinq and TV6. In March 1986, the Chirac government decided to privatize one of the three public channels. Although initial reports had suggested Antenne 2 (now France 2), on 14 May the government announced that TF1 was selected. The channel was therefore more apt to confront with competition, but still considered left-leaning by the right-wing majority. In April 1987, the construction conglomerate Bouygues won the resulting auction for the sale of TF1. On 16 April, its president, Francis Bouygues, presented a check of three billion francs to the government, completing the privatisation of TF1.

TF1's current logo was unveiled on 2 February 1990. It launched a news network, La Chaîne Info (LCI), in 1994.

The channel was available in Italy alongside LCI on digital terrestrial television from 2004 to December 2006 on Dfree multiplex. In 2005, TF1 launched TF1 Vision, a video on demand service.

Programmes

General

Le 13H and Le 20H (main news programmes)

Bonjour ! La Matinale TF1

Qui veut gagner des millions?

Ninja Warrior

The Voice

Koh-Lanta

Star Academy

Demain Nous Appartient (Tomorrow is Ours) and Ici Tout Commence

Section de Recherches

Mask Singer

Danse avec les stars (Strictly Come Dancing)

Vendredi tout est permis (VTEP)

Secret Story (full shows, seasons 1-8 & 12 ; Live shows only, S9 ; Inaugural show only, S10-11 & 13-14)

Abby Hatcher

Astro Boy Reboot (upcoming)

Kikoumba: Crown Down

Marcus Level

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir

Paw Patrol (Paw Patrol, La pat'patrouille)

Rubble & Crew

Super Wings

The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs)

Sports

FIFA

FIFA World Cup

Finals (selected matches (including all France team matches (if qualified)), co-licensed with beIN Sports)

Qualifiers (up to five France matches only (other France matches live on M6), other matches not involving France team live on TFX, TMC, W9 and L'Equipe)

FIFA Women's World Cup (selected matches at the finals tournament only, co-licensed with Canal+)

UEFA

Men's

UEFA European Championship

Finals (selected matches, shared with M6 and co-licensed with beIN Sports)

Qualifiers (four first pick France matches only, in September 2019 aired a second pick (four second pick and one first pick live on M6), other matches not involving France live on TFX, TMC, W9, and L'Equipe)

UEFA Nations League (France away matches only in 2018–19 (home matches live on M6), other matches not involving France live on TFX-TMC-W9 (including Finals) and L'Equipe (group stage only))

UEFA Champions League (final only, returned again in 2019–20 until 2023–24, licensed from RMC Sport (2020 and 2021) and Canal+-beIN Sports (2022 until 2024))

Women's

UEFA European Championship (selected matches at the finals tournament only, co-licensed with Canal+)

France national football team (selected Nations League, qualifiers, and friendlies, other matches live on M6, in 2019 one friendly match live on TMC

Criticism

Some commentators accuse TF1 of being an excessively populist, commercialised channel. There is a clear emphasis on "light" entertainment programmes over more serious content, and the channel's success is sometimes seen as being founded on the ménagères de moins de 50 ans (housewives under 50) audience segment. A large proportion of the schedule consists of gameshows, sensational documentaries and dubbed versions of TV series. The channel's news service is perceived as consisting of more celebrity news and human-interest stories than its public-sector competitors.

On 16 April 2009, the employee responsible for the "Web innovation" department was fired for criticizing the HADOPI law in a private email (on 19 February) sent to a Member of Parliament. The management of TF1 was notified about the e-mail by the Ministry for Culture and Communication, whose Minister Christine Albanel is also one of the authors of the HADOPI law.

In 2004, Patrick Le Lay, CEO of TF1 made the following statement about the channel's aims:

There are many ways to speak about TV, but in a business perspective, let's be realistic: at the basis, TF1's job is helping Coca-Cola, for example, to sell its product. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Nothing is more difficult than obtaining this availability. This is where permanent change is located. We must always look out for popular programs, follow trends, surf on tendencies, in a context in which information is speeding up, getting manifold and trivialized.

Critics of TF1 also contend that its news coverage is slanted towards supporting right-wing politicians – they were in particular accused of supporting Édouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential elections, and of overstating crime during the 2002 electoral campaign to tilt the balance in favour of former French president Jacques Chirac, who campaigned on a law and order platform.

Key figures within TF1 are close friends to some of the most powerful politicians in France, and the relationship between Bouygues and the public-sector contracting system often raises suspicions. Immigration and violence are arguably conflated in the channel's news programmes. In addition, it is occasionally alleged that news reports from TF1 tend to ignore issues yielding a bad light on their parent group (Bouygues), while stressing the problems of competitors (such as Vinci SA).