French Media - THE PRESS
The French press boasts a wealth of national and regional dailies and a thriving magazine sector, but closer inspection reveals complex trends which are different for each sector.
Daily Newspapers
Out of a total of 3,080 titles, 11 are national dailies (with over 2 million copies sold per day) and 63 regional dailies (over 6 million copies sold per day).
In 1945, there were 26 national daily newspapers (4.6 million copies sold daily) and 153 regional dailies (7.5 million copies sold per day). It emerges from these figures that France has lost half of its daily newspapers since the enf of the Second World War.
The reasons for this loss were the advent of first radio and then television. But economic causes such as modernisation of printing works, rises in cost prices, falling revenues from advertising and the drift of ownership towards the big newspaper companies also played an important part.
These figures place France at the bottom of the scale in Europe. French daily newspapers are amongst the least bought and least read in the region.
National Dailies
The national dailies edited in Paris and sold all over France are the worst affected by this decline: their turnover shows a fall of 2.9%.
Only four newspapers, of which one (L'Equipe) is exclusively a sports newspaper, sell more than 300,000 copies; in the 60,000 - 115,000 bracket there are two newspapers with a financial slant (Les Echos and La Tribune) and one turf paper (Paris-Turf).
L'Humanité is the only newspaper linked to a political party (the French Communist Party) and La Croix gives a special place to the views of the Church of France.
READERSHIP*
Le Parisien 458,051
L'Equipe 384,003
Le Monde 367,787
Le Figaro 364,584
France-Soir 170,014
Libération 160,654
Paris-Turf 113,852
Les Echos 105,50?
La Croix 91,552
La Tribune 72,125
L'Humanité 58,245
* (number of copies sold per day)
Regional Daily Newspapers
These are in better health: their turnover shows a rise of 1.9%. Twelve regional dailies sell more than 150,000 copies each.
Ouest-France has the highest readership of all French daily papers, at 761,828 copies.
The relative success of regional dailies is probably due to the fact that they concentrate on local and regional news which is more down-to-earth and closer to people's own concerns. They are in better touch with their readers and have been able to adapt to modernisation more quickly.
READERSHIP
Ouest-France 761,828
Sud-Ouest 340,702
La Voix du Nord 328,430
Le Dauphiné Libéré 261,530
La Nouvelle République
du Centre-Ouest 255,049
Nice-Matin 235,650
L'Est-Républicain 219,232
La Montagne 219,157
La Dépêche du Midi 202,190
Le Télégramme de Brest 189,401
Le Républicain Lorrain 173,477
Le Midi Libre 160,060
Magazines
France has a lively and flourishing magazine sector. There are magazines of every type, which adapt well to shifts in taste and mentality and provide an extremely varied range of titles.
These include weekly, monthly and quarterly magazines and range in subject from general news magazines such as L'Express, Le Nouvel Observateur or Le Point to specialist magazines in areas like computing, history, medicine and science.
The areas in which there is the greatest choice of titles are sports magazines (about 60 titles), women's magazines (25), magazines for young people (25) and radio and television journals (15, with the largest readership of all press titles).
Hobbies and interests magazines are increasingly popular, with titles devoted to houses and gardens, shooting and fishing, cycling, sailing, classical music, jazz, travel and tourism and so on. There is a magazine for everyone, depending on his or her tastes and interests.
Magazines disappear and others start up all the time, giving a very different picture from the daily newspaper sector. Whilst the French press is vulnerable on the one hand and flourishing on the other, it is difficult to make predictions about its future.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
