Marc Tessier, CEO of the state-owned group France Televisions, says that Cll, the French international TV channel called for by President Jacques Chirac, will be “a voice speaking for France, but not France’s official voice. We must avoid the image of operating under orders from above” and said that the public-private partnership between France Televisions and TF1 would work. He explained that the idea from the outset had been of a 50-50 association, with the state providing all the financing. This was, in his opinion, “the only possible type of partnership”. “If things went wrong, the state would be the arbiter, since it provides the financing.”
M. Tessier said also that French news agency AFP would be a major source, and that he had “no objections” to RFI [Radio France Internationale], which participated in France Televisions’s original project, being also “associated with the network”.