PIERRE VERDY / AFP
Depardieu, Denisot… What the first minutes of Canal+ airtime looked like, exactly 40 years ago
TELEVISION – Nothing predicted such success. Canal+, the first pay channel in France, celebrates its 40th anniversary this Monday, November 4. For this anniversary, the group revealed archives from the first minutes of airtime on Sunday November 4, 1984.
“It’s 8 a.m., November 4, opening of Canal+” : it is the voice of André Rousselet, founder of Canal+ and former chief of staff to François Mitterrand, who gave birth to the channel.
Michel Denisot, already in the host costume
As you can see in the sequence belowAndré Rousselet continues in a deep voice tinged with emotion: “ The president of Canal+, on behalf of the entire team, welcomes those who are in front of their television sets and welcomes them by asking them to be present in the coming minutes.”
For the first unencrypted broadcast, called 7/9Michel Denisot is already wearing the presenter’s costume. Sitting on the armrest of a blue sofa, the man who will become the most central figure in the chain is already very comfortable, as you can see in the video below.
To the left of the famous host, the actor Gérard Depardieu, accused by several women of sexual assaultis the first guest. The one who is also ” godfather “ from Canal+ is a long-time friend of Denisot, the two having grown up together in Châteauroux.
The Ace of Aces, the first film broadcast
Asked about the birth of channel 4 and competition with the seventh art, Depardieu believes that Canal+ and “ cinema is part of the same family”. The first film broadcast on the afternoon of November 4, 1984 will be The Ace of Aces with Jean-Paul Belmondo.
During this first day on air, stars will parade on the Canal+ set. Among them, “ Johnny Hallyday, Dalida, Gloria Gaynor or even Catherine Deneuve »reports The Parisian. And Jack Lang, the Minister of Culture and Communication under Mitterand, will also make an appearance.
Despite the good humor displayed by its creators, the arrival of Canal+ was not immediately a success story. On the viewer side, the subscription costs 120 francs per month (or almost 40 euros at the time if we take into account inflation), an amount which was initially off-putting. Nicknamed “ Mitterrand’s TV”, the media predicted, them, a short life for this channel, which competed with the three public channels of the time (TF1, Antenne 2 and France Régions 3). Forty years later, the future proved them wrong.
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