France Télévisions

Coordinates: 48°50′20″N 2°16′17″E / 48.83889°N 2.27139°E / 48.83889; 2.27139

France Télévisions SA (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃s televizjɔ̃]) (stylised as francetélévisions) is the French public national 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 (formerly France Régions 3), later joined by the legally independent channels France 5 (formerly La Cinquième), France Ô (formerly RFO Sat), and France 4 (formerly Festival).

France Télévisions is currently funded by the revenue from television licence fees and commercial advertising. The new law on public broadcasting will phase out commercial advertising on the public television channels (at first in the evening, then gradually throughout the day).

France Télévisions is a supporter of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) initiative (a consortium of broadcasting and Internet industry companies including SES, OpenTV and Institut für Rundfunktechnik) that is promoting and establishing an open European standard for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of broadcast TV and broadband multimedia applications with a single user interface, and has selected HbbTV for its interactive news, sports and weather service, and plans to add catch-up TV and social media sharing capability.

France 2

France 2 (pronounced: [fʁɑ̃s dø]) is a French public national television channel. It is part of the state-owned France Télévisions group, along with France 3, France 4, France 5 and France Ô. France Télévisions also participates in ARTE, EuroNews, several cable/satellite thematic channels, and Mediamétrie.

Since 03:20 CET on 7 April 2008, all France 2 programming has been broadcast in 16:9 widescreen format over the analog SECAM air frequencies and the French DVB-T multiplex frequencies (known as Television Numerique Terrestre). An HD version of France 2 has been broadcasting via DVB-S Service CanalSat since 1 July 2008 and on DVB-T since 30 October 2008.

History

Originally under the ownership of the RTF, the channel went on the air for the first time on 21 December 1963 as RTF Télévision 2. Within a year, ORTF was rebranded as La Deuxième Chaîne (The Second Channel). Originally, the network was broadcast on 625-line transmitters only in preparation for the discontinuation of 819-line black & white transmissions and the introduction of color. The switch to color occurred at 14:15 CET on 1 October 1967, using the SECAM system. La Deuxième Chaîne became the first color television channel in France – TF1 would not commence color broadcasting on 625-lines until several years later. Such technology later allowed the network to air programming in NICAM stereo (compatible with SECAM).