French news channel to challenge CNN, BBC

PARIS: A round-the-clock international news channel, France, is to launch in December will challenge the “Anglo-Saxon” views spread by market leaders BBC and CNN by relying on “French values”, the network’s chief said on Tuesday.

France 24, as the network is called, will start broadcasting in English and French on the Internet on December 6 and then via satellite two days later, its chairman and chief executive, Alain de Pouzilhac, told Le Figaro newspaper. Like its British and US rivals, it is homing in on “opinion leaders” around the world by dishing up a diet of news, features and discussion.

But those viewers, Pouzilhac claimed, have become increasingly “sceptical of the world vision offered by the Anglo-Saxons like BBC World and CNN International.” Instead, he asserted, they “are looking for contradictory opinions — which is what France 24 is proposing by relying on French values.” He did not define what those values were in the interview.

Financed to the tune of $100 million a year by the state and run as a joint operation between France’s top commercial and top public national TV networks, France 24 will start out as a minnow to the BBC or CNN. BBC World has 250 staff and an undisclosed budget. CNN’s US and international divisions employ 4,000 people and revenues of $860 million .