French Public Broadcaster Employees On Strike

PARIS, February 14:
Employees at France’s state-owned TV and radio broadcasters were on strike
today, protesting President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to remove advertising from
the nation’s public-broadcasting outlets.

Unions called for
employees at Radio France, RFI, France Télévisions and TV5 to stage the 24-hour
strike in opposition to Sarkozy’s proposals to overhaul the country’s
public-broadcasting sector. Among his measures is eliminating advertising on
France 2, France 3, France 4 and France 5 by January 1, 2009. Public
broadcasters would lose out on some 800 million euros in revenues per year,
according to reports. Sarkozy also wants the international news channel France
24 to be merged with TV5 Monde and Radio France Internationale.

As a result of the strike,
live shows and news bulletins were pulled from a host of radio and TV stations.
This is the first industrial action of its kind since 1974.

—By Mansha Daswani