For news channels, the development of digital technology opens up new and very promising prospects, but sometimes also worrying ones. How should pan-African news channels organize themselves to take advantage of its beneficial effects? How can they turn threats into opportunities? How must they reinvent themselves to achieve this?
For news channels and the media in general, digital technology is an unparalleled marketing tool, capable of disseminating information to the widest possible audience and promoting a brand around the world without limits or borders. But it also poses a real financial threat: advertising revenue is increasingly shifting to digital, but is not shared by the major global platforms, and readers no longer have any reason to pay for information that can be found almost instantly and free of charge everywhere else. As we have seen in recent news, digital technology can also become a perverse tool for spreading fake news and manipulating public opinion.
It is in this new context that the audiovisual landscape of French-speaking Africa, long dominated in terms of news by the monopoly of national public channels, is striving to develop.
Residents of French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa now have a choice of around twenty news channels, each very different from the others but all focused on the same goal.
As Paul AMAR explains in the interview he gave us, "from politics to culture, economics, and even sports, a news channel must be able to cover all possible fields, deliver authentic information, independent of any economic or political powers, and do so immediately, because a news channel must be responsive. " However, these journalistic truths are sometimes neglected due to a lack of sufficient resources.
The economic models in question
From an investor's perspective, news channels are often seen as an unparalleled tool for influence.
In many cases, funding is provided either by public institutions or by patrons or long-term investors, allowing for development without concern for immediate return on investment.
"Even though advertisers are showing growing interest in Africa, these remain local markets that are difficult to develop and for which there are still no real measurement
tools." – François Chignac
Nevertheless, the issue of advertising revenue quickly arises: it is a crucial factor that determines the long-term viability of the economic model. François CHIGNAC, director of Africanews, shares the Afro-realists' vision of the continent's future. He highlights the persistent difficulty, even today, of effectively covering all African advertising markets. France 24 faces a completely different problem. Marc SAIKALI explains: "France 24 is the only international public television channel. As such, France 24 defends the values upheld by France: freedom, gender equality, universalism, secularism, and diversity, which is also one of our values, as reflected in the presence of more than 35 different nationalities on the air." Advertising considerations take a back seat, with almost all of the funding provided by the French state.