Saturday, June 28, 2008

Subtracting the ads...

Controversial as always, it seems that President Sarkozy intends to press ahead with plans designed to remove advertising gradually from French public television. Similar to the UK, there is a television licence in France, the income from which goes part-way to funding the several public channels, but this is currently supplemented by advertising revenues. In order to make good the inevitable shortfall created by banning advertising, it seems the intention is to increase taxes on other media, including private television (whose advertising revenues are sure to increase) as well as internet and telecoms companies.

Of course, as there are so many vested interests at stake, there has been the inevitable uproar on all sides - and, apart from financial interests, there are those who believe that this will eventually lead to public television being pushed to the sidelines in France. Well, we will see, but if one makes a comparison with the UK's BBC, then perhaps one could see the potential for greater independence in programme making, editorial content, etc.

Here at 245 and Counting, sweltering in the South of France as temperatures hit 30°C and everyone heads for the Mediterranean, it is perfect timing to point out that you will usually find on this blog a few links to associates and affiliate advertisers, which can include hotel booking service, holiday rental accommodation, French house hunting services, commercial currency exchange, etc.

These limited links do make a small contribution to running the blog and hopefully do not prejudice our content - but then, of course, we are not able to do away with advertising and simply raise a few taxes here and there...



Photo: fito

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here at 245 and Counting, sweltering in the South of France as temperatures hit 30°C and everyone heads for the Mediterranean, it is perfect timing to point out that you will usually find on this blog a few links to associates and affiliate advertisers,