France Ô () was a French

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the FTA Receiver, appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring ...

television channel featuring programming from the French overseas departments and collectivities in

Metropolitan France Metropolitan France (french: France métropolitaine or ''la Métropole''), also known as European France (french: Territoire européen de la France) is the area of France which is geographically in Europe. This collective name for the European ...

. It was part of the

France Télévisions France Télévisions (; stylized since 2018 as ) is the French national public television broadcaster. It is a state-owned company formed from the integration of the public television channels France 2 (formerly Antenne 2) and France 3 (former ...

group. Its overseas counterpart is

Outre-Mer 1ère ''Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea'' is a prose collection by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was the first major work by Longfellow and it was inspired by his travels in Europe as a young man. The term "outre-mer" is French fo ...

History

The channel was launched in 1998 as RFO Sat by

Jean-Marie Cavada Jean-Marie Cavada (born 24 February 1940 in Épinal, Vosges) is a French politician and former journalist and media executive who last served as a Member of the European Parliament for Ile de France from 2004 until 2019. Since 3 December 2011 he ...

, then-president of RFO, and initially broadcast for only 9 hours per day. It was re-branded as France Ô on 25 February 2005 after the reunification of RFO with

. The "O" stands for ''Outre-mer'' (overseas); the

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

, which is considered an accent in French grammar, was used to emphasize that the channel was open to diverse accents and dialects, as well as to ensure that the name was not read as ''France 0'' ("France zero"). The channel became available in overseas territories in November 2010, replacing the RFO-operated Tempo, and was launched in DTT nationally the same year.

Closure

In July 2018 the French government announced the closure of France Ô due to declining viewership. The ceasing of broadcast was scheduled for 9 August 2020, in time for the climax of the

2020 Summer Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the ...

, but was later pushed to 24 August due to scheduling issues caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, which resulted in the games being initially delayed to 2021. The last programme broadcast on the channel was a repeat of the concert ''L'Outre-mer fait son Olympia 2019.'' After this, the channel only broadcast a loop of commercials promoting a new France Télévisions portal for overseas territories, known as "Portail des Outre-mer La 1ère", in addition to other overseas-themed programs on other France Télévisions channels. Its signal was permanently cut off on 2 September.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:France O France Télévisions French-language television stations Television channels and stations established in 1998 1998 establishments in France Defunct French television channels Television channels and stations disestablished in 2020 2020 disestablishments in France

History

Closure

See also

References