The new logo will replace that of France 3 on Tuesday, November 5 during regional broadcasts, while the antenna's inter-union called a strike on Monday to protest against the implementation of this brand seen as a new step towards the merger.
“Soon, your radio station will change its name,” can we hear since this Monday, November 4 on the airwaves of France Bleu. Formalized already a year ago, the bringing together of the public audiovisual brands France Bleu and France 3 under the common name “Ici” is coming to fruition a little more this month. On the radio, for example, we announce that“in 2025, France Bleu Paris becomes Ici Paris Ile-de-France”, while on TV, from this Tuesday, November 5, the Ici logo will replace that of France 3 during regional programs. This change will be visible from 6:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., during the Ici 19/20 news and during regional broadcasts at the weekend and in the second part of the evening. National broadcasts will still keep the current logo for a while. “France 3 still exists”, thus indicated Philippe Martinetti, the deputy director of antennas and programs responsible for France Télévisions' local offering, during a press briefing on Wednesday October 30. “But we are pushing the cursor a little further” on the regionalization of its offer with the Ici label.
However, the deployment of this new brand is far from satisfying everyone. The employees of France 3 were thus called by the inter-union CFDT-CGT-FO-SNJ-SUD to a twenty-four hour strike starting Monday midnight to contest this initiative. “This project can be read as a first step towards a merger of the France 3 and France Bleu networks,” she supports in her notice, denouncing “a loss of identity” et “great socio-economic insecurity” In “a context of heavy transformation” public broadcasting and “of blur” on its financing. Besides “the abandonment of the project to erase France 3”, the unions are demanding “the assurance of the maintenance of their employment contract in France Télévisions” or even “stopping publication on the site francebleu.fr [rebaptisé Ici, ndlr] of articles written by journalists from France 3 ». The social and economic committee of the regional network also adopted “a resolution to challenge the development in court” of the Ici brand, owned by Radio France, according to the unions.
45 million euros in savings
The first connections between France Bleu and France 3 date from 2018. “France 3 and France Bleu must combine their respective strengths”, already announced the Minister of Culture at the time, Françoise Nyssen. The following year, the first filmed morning shows arrived: 37 of the 44 France Bleu morning shows are now visible on television on France 3, and two more are expected in 2025. And, ultimately , public radio-television premises grouped in the same buildings? This is the fear of employees, who clearly perceive this merger of the two entities as a merger “from below” of public broadcasting, failing to succeed, for the moment, in carrying out a merger “from above”. A rapprochement which was pushed in 2023 by the establishment of a variable share in the public audiovisual budget for the years to come, intended to carry out transformation projects, including this construction site for a media proximity. An envelope which ultimately no longer seems relevant in recent weeks in the face of the saving measures decided by the government, and while public broadcasting has seen 45 million euros cut from its 2025 budget – we still do not know the how this cut will be distributed between the different entities – during the government's latest announcements to find five billion additional savings.
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