Media: Radio France buries France bleu which is replaced by ICI

The slip of the tongue is revealing. This morning on ICI Orléans, formerly France Bleu Orléans, the presenter invited listeners to find an interview on francebleu.fr before returning to a stifled laugh for ici.fr. The brand change was announced to listeners for two months on 44 local radio stations and plastered on advertising posters. “A communications operation which cost nearly 4 million euros while Radio France asks us on a daily basis to make savings in our operations”, denounces Lionel Thompson, secretary of the SNJ-CGT of Radio France.

So this change of name sounds like an empty pleonasm and a paradoxical injunction: “Here for local news”but without more financial means. “It’s a risky and unnecessary bet when the name France Bleu was well established in the minds of listeners and audiences were on the rise”estimates the employee representative. According to the latest figures from Médiamétrie, published in mid-November, France Bleu recorded an increase in audience, with 2.59 million daily listeners, or more than 87,000 in one year.

A project by Delphine Ernotte and Sibyle Veil

Effective since January 6, this brand change is the culmination of the project announced in October 2023 by the president of France Télévisions, Delphine Ernotte Cunci, and her counterpart at Radio France, Sibyle Veil, namely the long-term union of France 3 and France Bleu under the Ici brand. On the France 3 channel at regional newspaper time, the ICI logo has already been displayed on the screen since November 2024. But beyond the rapprochement between the television channel and the radio stations “This change of identity is not innocent, it hides the project of rapprochement that successive governments and the senatorial right absolutely want to impose.” Put on hold after the dissolution of the National Assembly, the merger project of public audiovisual companies carried by Rachida Dati, reappointed Minister of Culture, remains well at the top of her pile of files.

In addition to the gap between the discourse on savings and the expenses made to make this change, Lionel Thompson is already seeing a consequence on the well-being of employees: “On the application or on the website it has become impossible to identify which editorial team is at the origin of the article, all production is put under the ICI logo. Invisibilised in this way, the work of journalists is demotivating and demeaning for them. Especially since the duplicates between the productions of the TV and radio editorial teams are already a mess. » With this rapprochement, it is also the overload of work already noted and denounced by a research firm which risks getting worse for journalists dedicated to producing for different media.