Canal plus, like a country air…

Monsieur Nostalgie remembers the launch of Canal Plus, 40 years ago to the day. Originally, channel 4 was not the channel later criticized as too “Parisian”, he reveals.

Historians argue about the tipping point. From when, the “Canal spirit” instilled by Alain De Greef, head researcher of the PAF, fell like a cheese soufflé. One day, he stopped making people laugh. He even began to really annoy with his media impunity and his moralizing insolence. He has become an arbiter of good taste and a barometer of one-sided freedom of expression. From the house of all daring to the great globalized gloubi-boulga. It all seems so far away, today, irreverence and sneering have had their day, and only amuse a few old-fashioned people with calf bands.

One November 4, 1984…

Our country has gone through an identity crisis and a total loss of its bearings in forty years. France has turned its back on second degree. Segmented humor has become a new barracks of thought. It is community and fragmented. We no longer laugh together but against someone. If the “Canal spirit” has been diluted in a falsely emancipatory globalization, we will not forget its beginnings, in November 1984. We were ten years old when the first pay channel was launched, which invented the decoder and home porn, subscription football and new cinema releases on your sofa. In the countryside, a parallel network of decoders tinkered with soldering irons in garages flourished and the film banned for under 18s on Saturday evenings motivated the ingenuity of horny adolescents. From the sieve to the cathodic spasms, the excitement was only hanging by an antenna wire. For the first time, we had access to live American basketball and boxing matches. And the free-to-air programs will have been the best flagship product for spending 120 francs per month. Don't think that Canal was Parisian and elitist; on the contrary, in its origin, it was provincial and popular. After a few marketing adjustments, sales managers understood that the chain's salvation would come through the departments and sub-prefectures, and not the CSP++ as we learned about in high school economics classes. It was the middle classes who adopted it and adhered to its schoolboy project.

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History Secrets

Today I reveal to you a truth long hidden by memory smears. Canal Plus was created by Berrichons. Without Berry, there would be no Mademoiselle Agnès, Didier L'émbrouille, Bonaldi's lame gadgets or Sophie Favier's Maxi-Tête. At the helm of this historic canal, we find the finest men from the Center of France, Cher and Indre, Michel Denisot as a loyal Castelroussin gentleman, not yet boss of the “Berrichonne” accompanied by Gérard Depardieu, godfather of the event which, for the occasion, came to promote Right bank, left bank by Philippe Labro, released on October 31, a few days before the 4^th chain. Without forgetting, the tutelary presence of Philippe Gildas who does not come from nowhere. The journalist always felt Breton but spent his entire childhood in Bourges, in the shadow of Saint-Etienne Cathedral. And what can we finally say about André Rousselet, the big boss of Canal Plus, Mitterrand's taxi driver, who had old ties with Indre, was he not sub-prefect in Issoudun in 1953? Simone Veil, whose husband was interning at the Châteauroux prefecture, recounted their escapade among the region's antique dealers when senior officials were not burdened by an excessive workload and eruptive urban riots. Our colleagues from The New Republic reported the words of Simone, in 2016 who enjoyed this sweet lethargy: “ Funny time when senior officials of the Republic enjoyed free time! ».

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So, even if we are sometimes harsh with the fashionable and liberated excesses of a channel which wanted to be a prescriber and spiritual guide for an entire generation, the first decade of its existence takes us back to the time of Chevignon down jackets and Liberto jeans, of the Top 50 at 6:45 p.m. and Jean-Claude Bouttier introducing us to the noble art. A time when Marc Toesca announced to a stunned France that Peter and Sloane and Cookie Dingler were ahead of Scorpions and Stevie Wonder in the 45 rpm rankings is not totally bad, and this enchanted parenthesis where Sardou sang the two schools and Isabelle was drowning in her pull marine takes us back to limbo. On this anniversary, I want to spare a thought and shed a tear for Martine Mauléon who died in 2003, who was already speaking to us about the employment crisis and trying to “re-industrialize” our countryside.