Coverage of the performing arts and of literature was a regular feature of news and feature programmes from the outset of sound broadcasting in France. In 1922-3 René Sudre, one of the founding fathers of the Syndicat National des Journalistes (1918), did much with André Delacour, on the journal parlé of the Tour Eiffel radio station, to define the parameters of coverage of the literary world. From the mid-1930s radio began to become a mass medium; there were both public and private stations, but only the former broadcast cultural programmes. Light entertainment dominated the more successful private stations.
During the Occupation radio was the prime propaganda medium of Vichy France. Figures from the arts worked for, or were celebrated by, Vichy radio stations, whose star propagandist was Philippe Henriot, the minister of information; his editorials, broadcast four times a day, were praised by the journalist Maurice Martin du Gard for their oratorical, polemical, and literary skills. The minor propagandist, Jean Herold-Pacquis, worked for the German-controlled Radio-Paris and became celebrated for his catch-phrase ‘et l'Angleterre comme Carthage sera détruite’.
Periodically after 1945 the state reaffirmed its monopoly of broadcasting; only in 1981 were private radio stations again authorized to operate within France. Coverage of the arts and literature remained politically sensitive—especially before the development of television and of consumer society (and the reaction of May 1968 in the 1960s. In 1948 the director of the books and drama department of Rtf [see Television] lost his post after only II months: he had authorized a programme in which Genet mentioned Vian, and another in which Sartre offended ‘good taste’; the director, Fernand Pouey, was disavowed following his recording of a programme with Artaud which his superiors refused to broadcast.
State radio thereafter gave ample coverage to more mainstream intellectual figures. From 1949 RTF broadcast lengthy interviews and discussions intended to promote understanding of authors such as Gide, Breton, Carco, and Mauriac. Thus, late in life, Léautaud was ‘discovered’ by the listening public, following a series of interviews with Robert Mallet in 1950-1. While programmes devoted to more esoteric authors were occasionally broadcast on France-Culture, which catered for minority interests, the tradition of a mix of serious and lively coverage of the arts for a ‘mass’ or middle-brow public was maintained in cultural programmes on both radio and, later, television. Programmes of reviews and debates about books, theatre, and the cinema continued on public-service radio into the 1990s. Le Masque et la plume, for instance, began in 1954: it was the offspring of Michel Polac's Pour l'amour du théatre and François-Régis Bastide's Une idée pour une autre. Authors such as Camus and Breton replied to critics (Robert Kanters, Claude Mauriac, Morvan Lebesque, etc.) before a studio audience.
In the 1990s coverage of the arts, and of literature in particular, was no longer likely to occur in prime time, as had happened during the period when state broadcasters of RTF and ORTF (1964-74) were required to dispense culture to the nation. Coverage was increasingly personalized and geared to the brief attention-span of ‘three-minute culture’. Television replaced radio as the main broadcasting medium covering the arts. However, on radio news bulletins, as on television newscasts, the literary world was occasionally featured. Media coverage of the arts reflected the high profile adopted by cultural policy-makers and artistes, notably when Jack Lang headed the Ministry of Culture (1981-6, 1988-93).
— Michael Palmer
