Canal France International

Canal France International

Mr. Webber from Jayapura, thank you for your letter to the
Editor published in The Jakarta Post on November 21, 1994, about
the "newly found satellite treasure," Canal France International
(CFI).

Be sure that you are not the only viewer of CFI to wish that
the programs could be dubbed or subtitled in a language they
could understand, which of course does not necessarily mean
French or English, as international as those languages appear to
be.

But let's be honest and admit that broadcasting some programs
in English would certainly increase the number of viewers of the
channel.

Actually, some programs already are in English, like the
France 2 daily news bulletin at 4:26 GMT, the AITV daily news
items at 10:00 GMT and the magazine French Focus every Friday at
4:00 GMT. We have also just started broadcasting some sports
events with English commentary. I do agree, we can do
better...but we are working on it.

A bit of history first. CFI was created in 1989 to feed
programs to televisions in French speaking Africa. Because of the
general demand for an alternative to the usual powerful
blockbuster US networks, CFI quickly spread to other areas and is
now available all around the world, mostly in French, because it
takes time and a lot of money to dub and broadcast foreign
language versions of programs coming mainly from French TV
channels and production houses. But some day soon, we will get
there.

In 1995, specific funding should be available to develop daily
Asian "windows" with programs mainly in English and to produce
international news bulletins.

As for programs in Indonesian, it will have to wait a little
longer, when we start broadcasting in digital compression which
will then enable CFI to run different signals concurrently for
specific target audiences. But it can happen.

As you see, we may be chauvinistic and proud of our country
(and why not after all!), but we are nevertheless thinking of you
and of all of people who do not speak French (yet !!), simply
because we want you to make the most of our treasured CFI and
give you an opportunity to savor the alternative voice of a
television with a difference.

And by the way, CFI publishes a monthly (bilingual!) program
you may wish to subscribe to. If so, just call on us, and I do
wish you a great time with CFI. The channel may not be all in an
language you can understand (what a challenge!), but it will
remain free and, for sure, it will never get encrypted.

ALAIN MONTEIL

Cultural Attache

French Embassy

Jakarta