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French TV silenced by one-day strike

Staffers protesting plan to end TV advertising

By DAVID HAYHURST

Broadcast workers march Wednesday in Paris to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to ban advertising from public TV channels.

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News and current-affairs shows run by pubcaster France Televisions were either canceled or severely curtailed Wednesday as a result of the largest one-day strike in the French TV and radio sector since 1974.

Six unions representing 11,000 staffers at France Televisions and its shared affils France 24 and TV5 Monde networks plus about 4,000 employees at public radio stations walked out in protest over government plans to ban advertising from public TV channels -- worth an estimated $1.16 billion a year -- by Jan. 1. President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to make up the funding shortfall.

Several hundred protesters marched through central Paris to the National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon.

Industryites also fear that France Televisions' regional station, France 3, may be privatized despite assurances to the contrary. Sarkozy's proposal to merge news channel France 24, multinational network TV5 Monde and Radio France Intl. into an entity similar to the BBC World Service -- to be called France Monde -- has also run into opposition from broadcasters in Switzerland, Belgium and Quebec -- co-sponsors of TV5 -- and from French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner.