December 2012
France Televisions’ All-out Deployment of the Internet
Tetsuro Nitta
As we are entering the age of full-digitalization of television, public service broadcasters of the world are faced with the modernization of their missions and roles. How is France, which completed the digital switchover at the end of November 2011, addressing this issue? Analyzing from France Televisions’ mid-to-long-term business plan, the “agreement on targets and resources for 2011-2015,” we can envision the public broadcaster’s transforming from a broadcaster to a multi-media entity. The agreement on targets and resources is a system in which the public broadcaster and the government discuss to agree on the broadcaster’s business plan and the national coffers guarantee its funding. As the integration of broadcasting and telecommunications progresses and the digital, multimedia age has begun, the media space is ever spreading and expanding. Against this background, France Televisions defines its mission as “to connect people and create social bonds.” To complete the mission, it explains, it is necessary to deliver public broadcaster’s pluralistic information and diverse cultures to all generations and social classes including young people who are said to become less and less interested in television, and to do so it is necessary to provide public service broadcaster’s audiovisual contents to all media platforms including personal computers and mobile terminals. To achieve this, the nation regards France Televisions as the driving force of digital, multimedia development, and meanwhile the government guarantees the revenue sources, which well indicates the direction of the French-style public service broadcasting. France Televisions is striving to fulfill the universal service with all-deployment of the Internet, backed by the national government.