For several weeks, there was doubt about the future of the sea magazine, Thalassa. France 3 decided to "dust off" its program schedule for the start of the 2016 school year to renew the channel's audience, and attract younger viewers. Finally, the program created in 1975 by Georges Pernoud, which has become a real institution of the channel would not be removed.
Thalassa will go from a weekly to a monthly format. While the program has just celebrated its 40th anniversary, its broadcasting will be strongly reduced. Currently broadcast three times a month - on Fridays - it will be broadcast only once a month. The program on the sea will be broadcast alternately with other programs, newly created, such as the World of Jamy or The Messenger or even entertainment programs.
Thalassa will therefore be less broadcast, but more event-driven, as Dana Hastier, director of programs of the channel, told Télérama. The show continues to attract its 2 million daily viewers since September, average audience of the channel, explains Georges Pernoud, creator of the show and host since the beginning. Moreover, several subjects are currently in preparation for future issues of Thalassa as the Poles and the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, said the head of France 3.
A petition to save Thalassa
With the transition to a monthly magazine of the sea, the audiovisual and maritime community has put online a petition to the director of programs of France 3 Dana Hastier, the President of France Television Delphine Ernotte, and the Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay. For them, this change of broadcasting is the beginning of the end for the famous show.
"This change of program proves once again how much the maritime world does not occupy the place it deserves in the French culture. Yet there is a real maritime community in France, among which merchant sailors, shipowners, yachtsmen, port actors [âeuros¦] and those passionate about the sea and travel, consider the program a television landmark, a real weekly appointment, not only appreciated, but above all a cultural reference." reads the website.
