Electron Libre
I come from a worker family. When I was a kid, in France, I had the possibility each friday night, to see a program about travels around the world, then, without my parents, Apostrophes, a magazine about litterature, then the Ciné Club where I discovered movies from Buñuel, Bergmann, Satyajit Ray etc. And other good stuff like the history programs of Alain Decaux from the French Academy or the modern versions of the intellectual salons from Le Siècle des Lumières, like Droit de Réponse or Le Cercle de Minuit. Well, there was the possibility to get cultivated, to elevate yourself, to touch culture in any aspects.
They have destroyed EVERYTHING! This program is THE ultimate example of this destruction. The documentaries are narrated by an incredibly silly and utterly infantile voice with many, many inaccuracies. It is, what we call in French "le nivellement par le bas". The public television in France has been polluted since the 80's by a concept called "audimat" (meaning "the measuring of the audience by numbers of spectators") which does not allow any good programs to last (example, the excellent history program "L'Ombre d'un Doute"). It is almost only entertainment, lavish TV series and other stupidities. The public radio, which was until now, protected from this downfall, has been touched as well lately with more and more advertising, less and less objectivity in information and not least, less substance. Soon, will only remain France Culture. Hopefully, there is the European Channel Arte and, I hope too, that some Frenchmen have access to the excellent BBC. But, unfortunately, most of frenchmen have lost contact with good public television and it is something that makes a lot of damages in the country. More than people think... It is a very serious issue...
