What will Ouest France TV, the new TNT channel, look like?
A newcomer to DTT, the OFTV channel, from the Ouest-France press group, intends to offer programs rooted in the regions and give a voice to those who bring them to life. It is scheduled to be broadcast on September 1, 2025.
On OFTV, the camera will be focused on “people you don’t usually see on television.” This is in any case the promise of Edouard Reis Carona, the director of the Audiovisual division of West France, parent company of the new channel based in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) and a regional daily newspaper distributed every day to 602,830 copies in 2023. But who will be the target of this newcomer on DTT? According to Maud Lévrier, head of the Transformation, digital and distribution division, OFTV intends to target “primarily young adults, aged 25 to 49, who live outside city centres, and offer them an alternative offering to that of existing channels, edited from Paris and which give them insufficient voice and poorly reflect their reality”.
To support this decentralized editorial choice, the management of West France explained on July 16, during his hearing before Arcom, that he had commissioned a study from the Ifop polling institute. This opinion poll showed that “two thirds of French people were not satisfied with the space given to the regions” on national channels, and that “less than half” of them considered that the latter “were close to the concerns of the inhabitants of the territories.”
Another argument put forward by OFTV before the audiovisual policeman: its legal and economic singularity in the French television landscape. “Our model is different from that of other channels because West France depends on a non-profit association under the 1901 law, says Edouard Reis Carona. In fact, our project is aimed at the public, not at the remuneration of shareholders who hold the capital.”
Launch on September 1, 2025
So, what will we be able to watch on the Breton newspaper channel? When presenting its project, the press group said it wanted to offer “live, magazine, documentaries, news, entertainment, fiction, cinema and sport”. All available on its website, TNT, satellite, in mainland France and overseas. An ambitious program that requires extensive internal preparation for the company, which has 1,600 employees, including 700 journalists. Due to recruitment needs – 58 job creations -, technical developments in the media and work on its television set, the channel is not aiming for a launch until September 1, 2025.
By then, some programs have already been announced. The real talk, is announced as a daily studio show at the “crossroads of information and entertainment” according to Edouard Reis Carona. From Monday to Friday, Viewers will have an appointment with four television and social media personalities, and the latter will receive guests who are in the news (comedians, actors, singers, writers, etc.).
A news bulletin on regional news
Another highlight promised by the channel: three documentary and magazine evenings per week. The first, Sailors and landlubbers, our everyday heroes, will highlight the lives and commitment of those who bring our oceans and countryside to life. The second, the magazine Real life will deal with subjects that “concern the French” and will address topics related to health, purchasing power, addictions, the world of work, the environment, etc. Finally, every Friday evening, the show Manon Bril rings the bells, “will dust off history and heritage.” The historian, famous on social networks, has accumulated more than a million subscribers with her popular history videos.
If he embarks on the television adventure, West France remains a daily news program and the channel also intends to offer a daily news program. From the commune to the worldits daily national television news program promises to break with the Parisian tropism of certain current television news programs by relying on “its territorial network with the regional daily press.”
Other ideas on the table: a media education show called Media Weekvisible every weekend, as well as the broadcast of women’s and men’s sports rarely broadcast on television. At the same time, West France wants to continue to diversify with the launch of a radio station. A vast program for this regional media which now hopes to find its audience on the airwaves and the small screen of the French.
