The public television channels France 4 and France Ô were supposed to stop broadcasting on Sunday, August 9, but were given a slight grace period.

The future of France 4 and France Ô seemed clear-cut: the two channels were due to go off the air for good on August 9, on the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games. But the Covid-19 pandemic went through it. The Olympics, which were to be broadcast on all the channels of the France Télévisions group, have been postponed, and this has turned the calendar upside down. The new Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, took matters into her own hands.

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According to Le Parisien, France Ô, which is devoted to overseas territories, should eventually cease broadcasting at the end of August. France 4, the children’s channel, is now due to definitively close in the summer of 2021. This will give the channel a one-year reprieve unless there is a new turn of events.

This new calendar should relieve the employees of France Télévisions, who were still working as if nothing had happened, even preparing for the September restart season, without knowing when the final whistle would be blown. “As long as the government doesn’t issue a decree making the closure official, we will keep working,” said an executive of one of the two channels in Le Parisien.

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The decision to discontinue France Ô frees up both a number (19) and a DTT channel, which will have to be reallocated. The law provides for priority allocation of frequencies to channels broadcast in simple definition that wish to switch to high definition. Here, there are only two DTT channels broadcast in simple definition: LCI and France Info. The latter would like to switch to high definition and, as a public channel, should be given priority.

In 2018, the then Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, announced the closure of France 4 and France Ô to save money. But with the health crisis and lockdown, France 4, particularly, has proved its worth by offering educational programmes. “The service has been remarkable, with its youth programmes during the crisis, because not everyone has digital tools,” the current Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, agreed. It’s enough to give the channel a bit of breathing space.