Television news · 1972-1975
24 heures sur la Une
(24 Hours on Channel One)
From September 1972 to the end of the ORTF I anchored the first channel's news: Pompidou's death, Giscard's election, and the day the ORTF letters were taken down.
On 11 September 1972, Jacqueline Baudrier's newsroom moved, lock, stock and barrel, to the first channel. "24 heures sur la Deux" became "24 heures sur la Une". Three bulletins a day, at 1 pm, 7.45 pm and late evening, made in the rue Cognacq-Jay studios. We kept our set but lost our colour: Channel One was still broadcasting in black and white.
We were a rotating team: Léon Zitrone, André Sabas, Jean-Pierre Berthet, Jean-François Robinet, Bernard Volker, Claude Guillaumin and me. I started mostly at lunchtime. By 1974 I was one of the regular faces of the evening. France had only three channels then, and the news reached almost every home.
The great moments
November 1972: I was the programme's special correspondent in Africa with President Georges Pompidou, who gave me an eight-minute interview in Lomé. October 1973: the Yom Kippur war. On 2 April 1974 it fell to me to announce the President's death on air. On the 4th I anchored the bulletin devoted to the succession; on the 6th, the one covering the memorial service at Notre-Dame. Then came the campaign. On 10 May, the evening of the first televised debate between Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand, moderated by Jacqueline Baudrier and Alain Duhamel, I was the one reading the news.
The end of the ORTF
The law of 7 August 1974 broke the ORTF up into seven companies. On 4 January 1975, the corporation's last day but one, I anchored both the lunchtime and the evening news. At lunchtime, over pictures of workmen unbolting the sign from the Maison de la Radio, I explained to viewers what was about to change, and showed them a brand-new logo: TF1. Two days later I was working there.
Key facts
- More than 130 complete bulletins that I anchored can be watched on the INA website, from 14 September 1972 to 4 January 1975.
- Three bulletins a day: 1 pm, 7.45 pm and late evening.
- Among the studio directors of my bulletins: Jean Royer, Pierre Lambert, Solange Peter, Marcel Fages.
- In February 1974 a report on the ORTF exhibition shows me at the desk while children play at reading the news.