La bonne vieille télé de France

Another posting about France looking backwards thanks to loads of state money, but the cause is a good one. 

Starting today, if you want to see what May 1968 was really like or watch what France was doing the day you were born, just click on www.ina.fr  (or read this from The Times)

The Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, the state archive of French broadcasting since the 1950s, has opened its vast library to the internet and it's mainly free. With its excellent search engine you can delve back to find chats with Edith Piaf, watch the young Brigitte Bardot in action, de Gaulle's press conferences, the original Magic Roundabout, young Johnny Hallyday or that 1983 moment when Serge Gainsbourg burnt a 500-franc note on prime time. Or you can enter your date of birth and just watch the news for that day.

The INA offers free streaming as well as video-on-demand, of which about 20 percent require a small fee for access. For copyright reasons, the programmes available come from the public service television that held a monopoly until 1986 and continues on several channels, but the INA is hoping to make the commercial stuff available soon. A total of 10,000 hours of television and radio are on-line now and this is due to rise eventually to 300,000 hours. The INA holds the world's biggest sound and video archive, starting with 1920s cinema newsreels to a complete collection of all material broadcast to air or cable in recent decades. Emmanuel Hoog, the INA President, enthused about his ground-breaking project in Libération today. "You can spend entire afternoons on the site," he said. The INA expects huge demand, driven by nostalgia for childhood telly. 

How does the INA manage to become the world's biggest open videotheque, a unique treasure trove as Hoog puts it ? State funds of course. The Government has recently raised its budget and the share that it takes from the television licence fee paid by all French viewing households. Putting the archives on-line has cost 700,000 euros over the past year. 

Update: The site has been jammed with demand today after the launch fanfare in the media. Benjamin Gauzi, editorial director of the INA site, tells us that in two hours they received three million requests. The most common searches were for the day-of-birth news, for Yannick Noah, the tennis champion-turned pop singer, and for Serge Gainsbourg, the late balladeer of the 60s and 70s generation. 

Comments

[D.S.E. (St Jean de Luz)]

Mr Bremner : If I were to be very naughty, or even a touch cynical - might I suggest this gallic passion for nostalgia forms a major part of the backdrop to our current online debate? After all, when there is so little to look forward to, might one gain solace from dwelling on times past ?

Some objective commentators would say, this backward looking government should spend tax payer's hard earned money on the future, otherwise, what is left of the economy will probably go the same way as dear Brigitte Bardot's visage :-)

[Robert Marchenoir]

DSE: irritating but true.

[Sarah Hague]

Whoopy doo! We'll be able to relive all those nauseating shows from Saturday evenings. Perfect for chronic insomniacs.

[Sandrine]

I think the INA had a briliant idea. People are really nostalgic in France. I have a good memory of the eighties and also the nineties which I would love to see again (just to remember that time).

I don't think it's really a big deal if you look at what happened in the past, of course you shouldn't do that all the time...

[Victor Tan]

Who says the government only looks backwards? It was reported on Tuesday, 25 April in The Financial Times that President Jacques Chirac is seeking to shore up his political legacy by launching a €1.7bn Franco-German "grands projets", including a new search engine, Quaero, ..."the only immediate German participation in the search engine is from universities that will be financed using French public money."

Have President Chirac and his advisers not heard of Google or Yahoo? Do they not know how ginormous these search engines are? How on earth do they expect to compete with these behemoths? Quaero will certainly go the way of minitel.Point.

Why embark on a new project that does not stand a chance to survive, let alone succeed? Surely this is another example of a president who is applying valuable scarce public resources to enshrine himself for posterity. It would costs a lot less money for him to have numerous images of him cast in bronze or carved in marble like Saddam Hussein or Kim Il-Sung, positioned all over Paris and other cities. Surely, for the well-being of the French people, it is time to put this president to grass.

[Peter Athey]

Charles Bremner: could you please become an initiator and public benefactor and break with the standard subterfuge of saying 'State', or 'Government' money, and, instead, drive home the fact that it all comes from funds levied on the Tax Payers. As DSE has already said, this is Tax-payer's hard earned money that is being doled out to the greater glory of the person disbursing it.

When journalists use allusions, metaphores, figures of speech, similis, analogies, hyperbole, apophases and any other form or style of vocabulary that softens the hard facts about the origins of the money, then it only gives a licence to whichever 'benevolent Chancellors of the pursestrings' is in power to do more of the same for ever and a day.

Frequently they do spend taxpayers' money to the greater benefit of the taxpayers themselves, but by repeatedly ramming home the origin of this money, you will help to raise awareness and, perhaps, in the long-term, reign in unwarranted waste.

It has to start somewhere. Why not in your columns?

[D.S.E. (St Jean de Luz)]

Victor Tan : Always enjoy reading your posts; I do think your suggestion of Chiracian statuary, while lacking in 'despot originality', would nevertheless provide a good repository for pigeon effluent, thus helping to keep our streets clean !

Having seen the old boy in latex quite a bit on the TV (remember Super Menteur ?), bronze could be a solution.. . with the added benefit of being 'recyclable' after his reign comes to an end... unlike latex. Twenty years from now they might all be melted down and recast to make twice as many Sarkozys.

Seriously : it is clear to me why Jacques needs yet another search engine... esculent delinquency seems to be a particular short-coming of J.C., he has probably grown tired of his account at Fauchon and seeks a little more epicurian variety. I could easily see Bernadette putting the internet shopping idea forward "Jacqui mon cher, why don't we put some more of le poor tax payers Euros to good use ? Let's ave a bit more of les truffes noir and foie gras, along with some of those delicious organic choux- fleurs " It brings a whole new meaning to that familiar refrain of la poste via the Elysée intercom " Monsieur le President, j'avez un 'coli' pour vous" :-)

[Frank Schnittger]

If globalisation is evil you must also oppose the global search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. China has already insisted on Localised versions where Tiananmen Square is shown full of flowers rather than tanks.

Presumably Quaero will return only data from French sources in the French language? Any searches in English will be responded to by a haughty - no worthwhile data - or referred to the French language equivalent or perhaps even responded to by a denial of service attack causing the requesting user's computer to crash?

All data will be vetted by a special knowledge police bureaucracy and filtered through a database containing all of Frances regulations. That should solve the pesky problem of searches returning millions of results.

American cultural hegemony must be resisted by promoting French cultural purity.

[Robert Marchenoir]

All right gentlemen, let us not overdo it. Free-market good, French-bashing bad.

What is wrong with INA digitizing and opening up its archives? Isn't the overwhelming success of their website on its first day something to rejoice about, rather than the opposite?

May I point out that the BBC has just announced a very similar move? It plans to make all its programmes since 1937 available online, most of them for free. Thanks to the compulsory licence, the BBC, like INA, is financed out of public funds.

And what is wrong with Quaero? I would not be so pessimistic as saying that it is doomed from the start. Who can predict such an outcome today?

Google is a wonderful tool, Microsoft is an awesome compnay, but many Americans critics, not suspect of statism, have voiced concerns about their monopolistic tendencies, and rightly so.

How come they are not lambasted for crypto-marxism?

One thing we can regret about Quaero is that it did not happen sooner. When the Très Grande Bibliothèque project was conceived in Paris, the idea was of a digital, online library. Unfortunately, it turned out as a brick-and-mortar one.

One cannot, at the same time, criticize France because it refuses change and competition, and blast it when, finally, it tries to catch up with the modern, knowledge-based economy.

As for the state-driven side of the venture, give me a break. Name the countries keenest on free-market ideas. United States? Great Britain? China? All of them, at some point, use the full might of the state to further their economic interests.

Pure competition is a myth. It does not exist, and we should not pretend it to be the Holy Grail.

[Marcus Ferrar]

Sounds a great project. I tried searching "déportation de juifs" and the INA replied it received "no timely response from the upstream server." A failing memory?

[D.S.E. (St Jean de Luz)]

Robert Marchenoir : fair points, to a point. However, 'French bashing' no. I hope you don't think my joke about Chirac is anti French, after all, this elderly gentleman makes France a laughing stock and he needs to go. Secondly, the search engine remarks from Mr Tan are perfectly valid - though I do agree with your reference to 'monopolistic tendencies' with Microsoft & Google. We live in the real world and it is unlikely that French tax payers money is well spent on some kind of alternative system for surfing the net. Why not spend that valuable 1.7 billion Euros of tax payers money on spreading ADSL access throughout an antiquated system and thereby liberating more French citizens ?

I don't know what you feel about much of France's current internet technology, but would like to hear. I certainly have first hand experience of Wanadoo with my business and quite simply it is the most appalling ISP I have ever encountered, largely due to being part of France Telecom - the world's worst company bar none. I might add, F.T. is a real monopoly and has retarded the technological progress that so many in France desire.

I am English and I would be perfectly happy for you to constructively criticize my country. It has many faults and flaws, this kind of criticism is perfectly reasonable and makes for a healthy democracy. Having read a number of your previous posts I know you are fair minded and think you also appreciate the British capacity for self criticism. As to my comments about the INA project, I simply repeat my earlier remarks and do respectfully suggest France is living too much on past glories - and though my earlier reference is tongue in cheek, the sentiment holds true. Sometimes one has to overemphasize one's point in France to make any kind of impact.

In conclusion : I accept that Britain is pursuing similar archival projects, fortunately, the U.K. has already faced up to many of the harsh realities now confronting France. By using a little acid wit and a touch of gentle sarcasm, serious and unpalatable truths might be conveyed to some who would otherwise see nothing wrong with the gallic status quo.

For what it is worth, you seem to be the most objective Frenchman on Mr Bremner's excellent blog, and should be applauded for such a fair minded and balanced point of view :-)

[Victor Tan]

D.S.E., you are quite right about Robert Marchenoir. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris recently over a long lunch. A most articulate and decent chap.

[colin grayson]

were you really educated in france robert?
as DSE says you are by far the most objective of the french contributors who post here?have you lived elsewhere and had your blinkers removed ?

to charles bremner....I know your position is that of paris correspondant of the times , not the french ;but the 80/20 rule applies in france as elsewhere ; 80 % of the population are not parisians [ennes].

so next time you are here in la lozere feel free to come visit [ kettle always on ]......I am sure that some of my french friends and neighbours will be happy to discuss what occupies THEIR minds , you may well be surprised !!

[Andreas Uhlig]

D.S.E. : I agree, FT and Wanadoo do not offer very attractive solutions but there are alternatives in France. Just recently the OECD has reported that France has the least expensive triple play ADSL service in he whole OECD area. For only 30 Euro per month you can get ADSL 2, nearly 100 TV channels, the telephone abo and free calls in France and to more than a dozen foreign countries in Europe, North America and Asia (however not always of the best quality). All via your existing telephone line. That's not bad. Most telephone companies in other countries struggle without coming close.
Robert Marchenoir : What is wrong with Quaero? Well, while Google and Yahoo have been built with private money, Quaero will need lots of taxpayers' money. That is, what's wrong. If we are lucky we might get a brilliant system in technical terms but for a huge amount of public money dished out generously by heavily indebted states. Remember Minitel, remember Concorde.

[henri o'quin]

Marcus Ferrar: I tried "deportation des juifs" on INA.FR, and found 17 results. So I think you should try harder before criticising France systematically.
DSE: France has been rated recently as the champion of the world for internet matters, with 80% of computers being equipped with ADSL. It is also the country with the fastest broadband, going up to 100 megabites, whereas it is difficult to go up 2 megs in Britain.
I am not for crying "cocorico" systematically, but you should refrain yourself from writing comments without verifying your informations.

[D.S.E. (St Jean de Luz)]

Henri O'Quin : I am afraid you are completely incorrect and it is you who seems to be misinformed. When it comes to computer technology, claims made by so many in France do not stand up to close scrutiny.

You are clearly quite a sensitive fellow, and one who makes assumptions based on fanciful reports and marketing hype alone. For the record : France Telecom are the principal suppliers of internet communications for the vast majority of citizens in the republique... very sadly.
I can give you chapter and verse as to why this truly appalling dinosaur of a company has held back France - though perhaps you work for them ?
I have made no mention of 'speed' and incidentally, the '100 megabites' to which you refer cannot be utilised by 99.9% of the population, so what is your point ?

Do you have direct experience of using both British and French internet technology ? - if you do, you would not be making such wild claims. I have and do use both, I can tell you that 'promising' services is something at which French ISP's and telecommunications companies are very good at, unfortunately they cannot deliver.
If consumer protection existed in France, the courts would be full of those internet and computer companies who offer services they cannot provide. I have been and remain a victim of France Telecom, they are an effective monopoly who indiscriminately treat their customers as if they were sub-human.

In addition, and to add weight to my argument, France Telecom use so called 'partner' companies to carry out installations and maintenance. These 'partner' companies are not vetted sufficiently, they can and do irreparable damage to businesses throughout France. Because of the great shortage of skilled computer technicians in France, F.T. are seemingly prepared to team up with any 'cowboy' who rings their doorbell. Because F.T. is still essentially a state run enterprise, full of 'job for life' employees, they are able to abuse their customers with impunity. The inadequacies of the French judicial system - i.e. 'civil law' etc... whereby each and every piece of prejudice must be proven, mean that justice is never brought to bear. It is a very poor state of affairs Monsieur O'Quin.

So before you patronisingly recommend that 'I verify my information', I respectfully suggest you follow your own advice. My business and livelyhood in France depend on good internet connections and telecommunications, these so called French computer technicians have made my life hell, and I am not alone. The last computer technician France Telecom sent to my home, after destroying my hard drive and back ups, offered to throw himseld out of my office window. I declined his offer as I felt his efforts might be wasted (we were only on the second floor). As a final piece of anecdotal evidence I will quote the director general of France Telecom Cable, speaking directly to me about the computer services to which I have referred - "I am not proud of the service we offer, but we are doing our best"...follow that if you can !

Finally: before you trot out the line - 'I should try other ISP's and technicians', this is a poor suggestion - F.T. are very good at making life difficult for all other competitors in the market place. They are uncooperative in the extreme and the time one spends waiting for work to be carried out is simply atrocious.

P.S. you say "80% of all computers in France having ADSL" - in the interests of all who read this blog - how many computers are there in French homes ? If we don't know the answer to this question, your statistic is meaningless.

[Robert Marchenoir]

DSE, I am happy to learn that your criticizing is not done from a French-bashing perspective... Thank you -- and Victor too -- for your kind comments. To Colin, yes, I was educated in France... and I do not feel I needed to have any blinkers removed (implanted at birth upon all French people, perhaps, as opposed to the rest of the world's population?).

I would like to elaborate on the issue of the dividing line between state and private sector. (Beware -- long post.)

Although I regularly practice, all over the French blogosphere, DSE's overemphasizing of the necessity to inject a hefty dose of deregulation and free trade into the French system -- free trade being really an obscene word in French -- I do think that turning the market into a religion is as foolish as the equivalent attitude with state intervention.

Let us take the telecom market as an example.

Around the fifties and sixties, telephone was a public service in France -- as in many countries around the world, mind you -- and it was appalling. Stand-up comedians earned their fame by making jokes about how long it took to be awarded a phone line, and how ridiculously difficult it was to call the neighbour next door.

Then, around the seventies, the French phone system -- still provided by the government -- became one of the most advanced in the world. Certainly more advanced than the American one. All exchanges had been converted to digital technology, at the time when, in rural America, you might still pick up the phone, hear your neighbours chatting, and have to hang up till they had finished, because this was a party line.

Similarly, the Minitel was a state-conceived and provided technology, and, sorry Andreas, it was a roaring success. It enabled anybody with a phone line to look up a phone number or find the address of a business by browsing an electronic database, long before the Internet. I am not sure you could do that at the time anywhere else in the world. It was free, very easy to use and completely devoid of software bugs. Actually, it was easier to look up a number with the Minitel than it is now, with the full might of the Internet.

It certainly beats the preposterous, recently privatized system, by which tens of companies attempt to provide a similar service by phone, wasting huge amounts of advertising money in order to sell essentially the same thing, taking shortcuts in the quality of the database in order to lower costs, and being able to "compete" only by devising cuter slogans and fiendishly complex price structures, whose aim is to confuse the consumer and make price comparison all but impossible. (Same system in Britain, by the way.) And we know for sure that among all those new businesses, only a few will survive, in, say, two to three years. I am all for creative destruction, but it seems to me that the destructive side of the equation here far outweighs the creative side.

With Minitel, you could also access -- for a fee -- thousands of information providers, businesses touting their wares, government organizations interacting with the citizens (think e-administration), meeting services and the like. That was Internet before the Internet.

It gave birth to a lively private-sector industry, since part of the connecting fee was channeled to the information provider. It helped create jobs, put businesses on the learning curve of online database management, and made the population receptive to e-commerce and the Internet that was to come.

Minitel is now dead. I put my own terminal in the dustbin, regretfully, only a few months ago, such was the perfection of that hardware, software and service system. This is certainly not a reason to poke fun at it. Technologies are transient. They are meant to be superseded by other, better technologies.

Let us turn to quality of service now. Free-market theory would have you think that government, being a monopoly, stinks in that respect, whereas the private sector shines. Well, while you certainly are induced to think so when interacting with some post office employees in France, this is not always true.

Back in the old days, the French public phone system was famous for occasionally overcharging customers. Unfortunately, you could not tell, because your calls were not listed on the bill. The only way to know was to ask the phone company to check whether there had been a mistake. They would grudgingly investigate and come back with an answer, the nature of which you can easily guess.

Then, a miracle happened, and they gave you the possibility to ask for a meter to be installed at your home, enabling you to check your consumption along the way. For a monthly fee, of course. I had one installed, was satisfied that I was not being overcharged, then cancelled the service and the fee -- or so I thought. Years afterwards, I discovered that the fee had not been cancelled. It was difficult to know, because that particular sum of money was not itemized on the bill, but hidden within the basic subscription fee. So I asked for a refund.

I was duly answered that according to article such and such of the law governing the PTT, they did not have to refund more than a limited amount, and that I could get stuffed -- yes, I am making up that last bit.

So here we are with a glaring example of the public service stealing money from you, trying hard to go unnoticed, and throwing the law at you when you dare to complain.

Surely the virtue of the market prevents private businesses from engaging into funny dealings such as this? Think again. One or two decades later, the phone service was opened to competition, and brand-new companies with unknown names tried to lure the public into using their services with rock-bottom prices. I picked up one of those, until it billed me for some calls to Burundi. My complaint was met with an -- ahem -- "investigation", whose result was -- what else? -- that their billing was correct.

Only this time, there was the funny twist of "We asked France Télécom, and they told us that you really called Burundi" -- since this private company was buying phone time from France Télécom -- "So why don't you discuss the matter directly with them if you are not happy with our answer, and you still owe us that money anyway". Nice chaps. I'd rather go with the "article such and such of the PTT code", anytime.

Now for the present state of Internet access in France. Other commentators have explained that the broadband offer on the market here is one of the most advanced and cheapest in the world, so I will not go into that. The figures are all over the place.

Regarding Wanadoo, I am sorry to hear about your troubles, DSE. My analysis is the following. All consumer-oriented Internet service providers in France have chosen advanced technology and low prices over good service. What ISP you chose is broadly irrelevant, as long as your connection works. And it works for most people, most of the time, with all ISPs. Except for some customers. Is that 1%? 2%? 5%? Whatever the actual figure, the business model is obviously the following: these 5% of suckers are a pain in the ass and would cost horrible amounts of money if we were to service them properly. So we deliberately chose to ignore their howls of outrage (until some official body forces us to do so -- hey, that's the soothing hand of the state for you...), and concentrate instead on winning new customers through agressive advertising, ground-breaking technology, very low prices -- and fine print which somewhat belies the advertised prices, and make quitting us costly.

This follows the contemporary trend in many markets, at least in France, where the underlying assumption is that it is all right to lie to the consumer and steal him once he is hooked, regardless of promises, contracts or plain common decency. This happens all the time. And the consensus is that the sucker is the naïve customer, not the offending private business.

Internet access is a commodity market. Problems arising with connection are often compatibility problems, pertaining to the mix of hardware and software you use, over which the ISP has no control. These are often horribly complex to solve. Take Microsoft software. Much more expensive than Internet access. And though, what sort of personalized assistance can you expect from Microsoft if you need it? Absolutely zilch.

Another set of problems arises from the fact that to ISPs, in some cases, France Télécom is a provider as well as a competitor. When opening or moving Internet lines for other ISPs, it seems that France Télécom makes full use of that privileged position -- as any private company would.

So we have a mixed situation, in which France Télécom is no longer a public company, has successfully adopted the marketing methods of the private sector, while retaining some of the privileges of its former monopoly, but is being forced to adapt its offerings by ruthless, innovative competitors.

As a result, the consumer has the best of both worlds. He can chose a 100% private ISP such as Free, benefit from cutting-edge technology, lower prices -- but he must be prepared to a degree of trouble if something goes wrong. Or he can go with Wanadoo, pay slightly more, maybe accept a few months' delay in adopting the newer technologies, still accept that annoying trouble may occur in a very limited amount of cases, but rejoice in the fact that support, although still unsatisfactory, will be easier to come by, and that he will be able to discuss problems with a real human being, face to face, in a Wanadoo brick-and-mortar shop.

I personally stick to Wanadoo and to non-cutting-edge technologies, to be on the safe side. If you go to ADSL forums, you will see that there are much less complaints about them than about all other ISPs

When I thought that an Internet access problem I had arose from the physical telephone line in my home, I was able to summon a France Telecom technician, who replaced part of it for a ridiculously low price. A non-Wanadoo ISP would not even have given me the option of sending someone.

The third option, for a business, is to go with a business-only ISP such as Easynet. But be prepared to pay the price.

Good luck. And do not forget we still need the state and the public sector, up to a point.

[D.S.E. (St Jean de Luz)]

Robert Marchenoir: Much of interest in your response and I would like to come back to you. I am away from my desk for two days but will hope to post upon my return - this is a subject near to my heart.

In the meantime, I think a career on French television beckons for you, especially with such a broad range of information on many topics. I might volunteer to be your agent - how about it ? We could then make a lot of Euros and rise above the petty bureaucracy :-)

[Robert Marchenoir]

DSE: I am open to any serious suggestions about business partnerships... Beating the bureaucracy is a losing battle, but making euros might be slightly more feasible, even here.