Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française
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L'Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF; ) was the national agency charged, between 1964 and 1975, with providing public radio and television in France. All programming, and especially news broadcasts, were under strict control of the national government.


History


Background

In 1945, the provisional French government established a public monopoly on broadcasting with the formation of Radiodiffusion Française (RDF). This nationalisation of all private radio stations marked the beginning of a new era of state-controlled broadcasting in France. As part of its mandate, the RDF also established a 441-line television station known as ''Télévision française''. This station made use of the frequencies previously utilised by the
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
-operated ''Fernsehsender Paris''. In 1949, the RDF underwent a name change to
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF; ''French Radio and Television Broadcasting'') was the French national public broadcaster television organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "''Radiodiffusion Française''" ...
(RTF) in order to reflect the organisation's growing focus on television broadcasting. By the end of the year, the RTF had begun transmitting television signals using the new 819-line system, which represented a significant advancement in the technical capabilities of the medium. This development allowed for the transmission of high-quality television signals and paved the way for the widespread adoption of television in France.


ORTF era

In 1964, the RTF was itself reformed and renamed into the ORTF. The ORTF aimed to modernise the public broadcasting service in order to better satisfy the needs of the French public in terms of information, culture, education, and entertainment. Despite this goal of modernisation and an expressed commitment to meeting the diverse needs of the public, the ORTF continued to operate under a monopoly. From the beginning, the public broadcaster experienced fierce competition from the "peripheral stations": French-speaking stations aimed at the French public but transmitting on
longwave In radio, longwave, long wave or long-wave, and commonly abbreviated LW, refers to parts of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave broadcasting band. The term is historic, dating from the e ...
from neighbouring countries, such as
Radio Monte Carlo Radio Monte Carlo (RMC) is the name of radio stations owned and managed by several different entities: * RMC (France) is a French-speaking station, broadcasting in France and Monaco owned by NextRadioTV. **RMC Sport, a French bouquet of paid T ...
(RMC) from
Monaco Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...
,
Radio Luxembourg Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...
(later RTL) from
Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
, and
Europe 1 Europe 1, formerly known as Europe n° 1, is a privately owned radio station created in 1955. Owned and operated by Lagardère Active, a subsidiary of the Lagardère Group, it is one of the leading radio broadcasting stations in France and its pro ...
from Germany (exceptionally, in 1974, RMC was allowed to set up a transmitter on French territory). In October 1967,
colour television Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...
was introduced on the
625-line 625-lines is a standard-definition television resolution used mainly in the context of analog systems. It was first demonstrated by Mark Iosifovich Krivosheev in 1948. Analog broadcast television standards The following International Telecommunic ...
second channel. In 1968,
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was introduced on both television channels, although the 'redevance audiovisuelle' (Broadcasting licence fee) remained in place. ORTF employees participated in the May 1968 strikes. In 1970, during a press conference,
Georges Pompidou Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou ( , ; 5 July 19112 April 1974) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1969 until his death in 1974. He previously was Prime Minister of France of President Charles de Gaulle from 1962 to 196 ...
initiated a will to modernise, affirming that information provided to the ORTF must be free from any outside influence, independent in nature and impartial in its presentation, while stressing that it remains "the voice of France whether we like it or not. " A third television channel started broadcasting in December 1972.


Dissolution

The
election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
of
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (, , ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981. After serving as Minister of Finance under prime ...
in 1974 prompted yet another reform. The new liberal administration considered the ORTF to be a relic of Gaullist rule. Furthermore, the ORTF's annual budget had grown to an unsustainable 2.4 billion
francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...
per year (approximately €2 billion in 2022), indicative of the organization's overly centralised structure. As a result, on December 31, 1974, law 74-696 (dated August 7, 1974) was implemented, splitting the ORTF into seven successor institutions: * Télévision Française 1 (TF1) *Antenne 2 (now
France 2 France 2 () is a French public national television channel. It is part of the state-owned France Télévisions group, along with France 3, France 4 and France 5. France Télévisions also participates in Arte and Euronews. Since 3:20 CET on 7 ...
) *France Régions 3 (FR3) (now
France 3 France 3 () is a French free-to-air public television channel and part of the France Télévisions group, which also includes France 2, France 4, France 5 and France Info. It is made up of a network of regional television services providing ...
) *SFP - Société Française de Production (programme production) * INA - Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (archives) * TDF - Télédiffusion de France (transmission) *
Radio France Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster. Stations Radio France offers seven national networks: *France Inter — Radio France's "generalist" station, featuring entertaining and informative talk mixed with a wide variety of ...
- (Société Radio-France) French national and international radio The changes however did not go into effect until January 6, 1975. Despite the dissolution of the ORTF, the public broadcasting monopoly continued to exist until 1981. Today only INA and Radio France exist in their original form from 1975. Both TDF and TF1 were privatised in 1987. The operations of Antenne 2 and FR3 were re-merged in the early 1990s, into a single entity known today as
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 ...
, which still remains under public ownership. SFP was privatised in 2001, and is now a part of Euro Média France.


Logo

The design of the ORTF logo was mostly influenced by the "three ellipses" symbol of its predecessor, with the addition of the letter "O" to create a fourth ellipse. The logo evokes both the concept of
radio waves Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz (GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (short ...
and an image of an
electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
, symbolising the
Atomic Age The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the ''Trinity'' test in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reaction ...
. The ORTF logo prominently appeared during the startup and closedown sequences of their television channels.


Services

When it was dissolved in 1975, the ORTF operated 3 national radio networks, 10 regional radio stations, and 3 television channels 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 operated an additional 8 radio stations and 7 television stations in the
overseas territories A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or an ...
.


Metropolitan France


National radio

*
France Inter France Inter () is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, li ...
*
France Culture France Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster. Stations Radio France offers seven national networks: * France Inter — Radio France's " generalist" sta ...
*
France Musique France Musique is a French national public radio channel owned and operated by Radio France. It is devoted to the broadcasting of music, both live and recorded, with particular emphasis on European classical music, classical music and jazz. Hist ...


Regional radio

* Paris * Marseille * Reims * Lorraine * Bordeaux * Lyon * Côte d'Azur * Lille * Toulous * Loire-Atlantique


National television

* 1re chaîne de l'ORTF (819-line VHF, monochrome only) * 2e chaîne de l'ORTF / 2e chaîne couleur (625-line UHF, colour available from October 1, 1967) * 3e chaîne couleur de l'ORTF (625-line UHF, colour available from launch)


Regional television

The ORTF also operated 11 regional television services that provided programming for all three channels: * Lille *
Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
* Marseille Provence * Lyon * Toulouse-Pyrénées * Bordeaux Aquitaine * Bretagne Loire-Océan * Paris Normandie Centre * Lorraine Champagne * Limognes-Centre-Ouest * Bourgogne Franche-Comté


Overseas Territories


Radio

* Radio Saint-Denis * Radio Saint-Pierre et Miquelon * Radio Guadeloupe * Radio Nouméa * Radio Martinique * Radio Tahiti * Radio Guyane * Radio Comores


Television

* Télé Martinique * Télé Guadeloupe * Télé Réunion * Télé Tahiti * Télé Nouméa * Télé Guyane * Télé Saint-Pierre et Miquelon The overseas stations were given to FR3 as part of the dissolution, and today form part of the La Première network.


Membership of the European Broadcasting Union

In 1950 the ORTF's predecessor, RTF, had been one of 23 founding broadcasting organisations of the
European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; french: Union européenne de radio-télévision, links=no, UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations whose countries are within the European Broadcasting Area or who ar ...
(EBU). Upon the break-up of the ORTF in 1974, French membership of the EBU was transferred to the transmission company TDF, while TF1 became a second French active member. A2, FR3, and SRF became supplementary active members before eventually becoming full members in 1982. In 1983 the French public broadcasters' membership was transferred to a joint organisation, the Organisme français de radiodiffusion et de télévision (OFRT). Nine years later, the OFRT was succeeded by the Groupement des Radiodiffuseurs Français de l’UER (GRF) which currently holds one of the French memberships of the EBU, alongside Europe 1. TF1 left the EBU in 2018. Private TV channel
Canal+ Canal+ (Canal Plus, , meaning 'Channel Plus'; sometimes abbreviated C+ or Canal) is a French premium television channel launched in 1984. It is 100% owned by the Groupe Canal+, which in turn is owned by Vivendi. The channel broadcasts several ki ...
served as an additional member between 1984 and 2018.


See also

*
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF; ''French Radio and Television Broadcasting'') was the French national public broadcaster television organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "''Radiodiffusion Française''" ...
, the predecessor organisation *
Musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...
, which the ORTF continued to develop * ''
Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel The (, ''lit.'' ''Superior Audiovisual Council''), abbreviated CSA, was a French institution created in 1989 whose role was to regulate the various electronic media in France, such as radio and television. The creation of the was a measure foun ...
'', modern-day regulating authorities * Groupe TF1, a sucessor organisation *
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 ...
, a successor organisation *
Orchestre National de France The Orchestre national de France (ONF; literal translation, ''National Orchestra of France'') is a French symphony orchestra based in Paris, founded in 1934. Placed under the administration of the French national radio (named Radio France sinc ...
, a symphony orchestra once under the administration of the ORTF


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Office de Radiodiffusion Television Francaise History of telecommunications in France Public broadcasting in France Radio in France State media Television channels and stations established in 1964 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1975 Television in France Radio stations established in 1964 Radio stations disestablished in 1975 Defunct mass media in France