why France Bleu becomes “Here”

Since this morning, the 44 regional stations of Radio France have changed their names. Céline Pigalle, the director of the network, explains the reasons for this upheaval.

“We did not sufficiently address what populations were experiencing throughout French territory.“, explains the director of France Bleu, Céline Pigalle, while this Monday, January 6, the 44 Locals of France Bleu and France 3 Regions are joining forces and becoming a single entity: ICI.

“We are joining forces with the France 3 Regions to be visible with a powerful brand“, she underlines, in a world of hypercompetition in the media. ICI gives new life, new momentum. “We need to accept perhaps even more the fact of being local stations, she explains, the subject is to say that the local, the proximity, it is not old-fashioned, it is not folkloric, it is not outdated, on the contrary it is something very modern and which responds to a certain number of concerns of the time.“

Even if technically a merger between the editorial staff is not “not on the agenda“. But what about the listeners who don’t necessarily like us to change their habits? Céline Pigalle wants to be reassuring: “We did a lot of work to bring them with us on this adventure.“, through dialogue, direct exchanges with them. It turns out that the idea of ​​this major change was “perfectly accepted“, according to her. No upheavals in the programs either, we will focus on local news, music with good humor, “that’s the program“. “Basically, she continues, today we are in a very technological universe, we are in a world where we know absolutely everything about what is happening very far from home and from time to time, be well anchored in our territory , know what’s happening at the end of your street, have all the service information, have everything that can help you in your daily life, that’s what our local radio stations do“.

Céline Pigalle is also the deputy editorial director in charge of information and proximity at Radio France and the question of the merger between Franceinfo radio and television is often brought up again. A dynamic equivalent to that of ICI which results in the broadcast of joint programs. “It’s not impossible“that this dynamic intensifies with the development of additional programs.”Here too, it makes sense that radio and television work hand in hand, she concludes, the main thing is that today they produce the site which is the first news site in France“.