LAISSEZ-FAIRE TV: WILL MITTERRAND DELIVER?

The Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand has announced it will break the traditional government monopoly on television by allowing two commercial channels on the air in a few months. But there is some confusion about just how revolutionary the new policy will be in terms of broadening access to the nation’s airwaves.

Since the days of the late President Charles de Gaulle, television and its news have been regarded here as a kind of private preserve of the political forces in power. As a result, many critics insist that French TV, especially its news coverage, is far inferior to that of other European countries that allow private television to compete with government television.

Secretary of Communications Georges Fillioud announced this week that the Mitterrand Cabinet has approved a two-phase program for private television. First, the Cabinet member said, two national channels “of a commercial character” will be created in a few months, probably before the end of the year. One will be a video music channel appealing to young people; the other, he said, a national channel of general interest.

In the second phase, Fillioud said, the government plans to license perhaps 40 local TV stations throughout the country. This, however, presumably depends on the launch of a special communications satellite, slated about a year from now. The government has elaborate plans for the satellite to beam programs to receptors that would relay them by fiber-optic cables to French homes.

The government’s latest announcement amounted to a request for outsiders to make their proposals for the two new television channels. It was not clear how much independence the new general channel would have in its presentation of news.

The government has been under a good deal of pressure to come forth with some proposal for private television before next year’s legislative elections. Noting this, Alain Madelin, an opposition deputy, described the new government program as “a pre-electoral patchwork, a trickery.”

For years, critics have accused the mostly conservative governments of France of interfering with the three government-owned channels to ensure that news programming did not harm the government. In fact the Socialists, in their last presidential and legislative campaigns in 1981, promised to break the government monopoly if they were voted into power.

But after the election of Mitterrand, the government has been slow to do away with the monopoly and, like its predecessors, has been accused of interfering in the news coverage. A supposedly independent Television Authority was created in 1982 to oversee the government channels, but this hasn’t quieted the criticism.

In an incident embarrassing to the government, Christine Ockrent, France’s most popular news anchor and highly regarded for her objectivity and professionalism, resigned from the channel known as Antenne 2 when a close friend of Mitterrand was appointed as its director general.

At about the same time, another government channel, TF1, was widely criticized for starting a new program that featured Premier Laurent Fabius every month.

Besides the three government-owned channels, there is a pay-TV channel that offers mostly movies and sports events. It is 42%-owned by Havas, the government-controlled advertising agency, and has 365,000 subscribers.