As a French graduate (albeit some years ago), I was really looking forward to a ‘compare and contrast’ session this evening, as the Presidential election result was revealed at 7pm ‘heure de Londres’. State-backed TV5 was naturally taking a live feed from state channel France 2; but hooray, BBC Parliament said in its listings that it was to take TF1‘s coverage. Which it did… for about two minutes. Then suddenly, moments before the clock struck vingt heures, someone flicked a switch, and they too took France 2. Pourquoi?
This sort of ‘educational’ coverage is something the Beeb should be doing more of; especially where they can do deals with fellow state broadcasters (although in this case, TF1 is private). Instead, we ended up with two channels running exactly the same coverage. Quel dommage.