Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s axed French TV license is a lesson for BBC campaigners

Credit: Getty images

President Macron has finally found a policy he is capable of getting through the disputatious National Assembly, with a little help from Marine Le Pen and the rump centrist Républicains. He is abolishing the €138 (£116) redevance audiovisuelle, the rough equivalent of the TV licence. It was sold as a measure to tackle the cost of living crisis and passed despite the predictable squeals of the left and the French media elites which see the redevance as their special honey pot.

The redevance generates a colossal €3.2 billion (£2.7 billion) annually and its suppression will gain approving hurrahs from those who yearn for a similar liquidation of the British TV licence. But there’s less to this reform than meets the eye. It will likely not save French taxpayers a sou. And it increases the already malign influence of French politicians over the media.

The redevance might be dead but the taxpayers will continue to pay. The budget of the swollen French state television and radio apparatus will henceforth be financed through VAT, which merely makes the subsidy less visible. The elite Parisian leftist groupthink that characterises all of French state broadcasting will not change. Politicians will be listened to more attentively than ever because they will decide the future level of subsidies. It’s incidentally improbable that the state broadcasting monolith will be able to do much to arrest a trend of falling, ageing audiences. The young are abandoning state TV and radio for their mobiles.

These subsidies have produced a moribund media landscape favouring incumbency and conformity over dissidence and innovation

French tastes are not as highbrow as might be imagined in the commissariats of culture. ‘Les Experts’ (Crime Scene Investigation), an American import, has been wildly popular in France. France Télévisions meanwhile pursues a policy of kowtowing to politicians and fighting for its own survival against a tide of indifference for its often unremarkable offerings.

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Jonathan Miller
Written by
Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller, who lives near Montpellier, is the author of ‘France, a Nation on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ (Gibson Square). His Twitter handle is: @lefoudubaron

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