France 24 has first night nerves

Right, who's going to lay into the technical problems on opening night of France 24 then (as many did when AJE started)?

Maybe it was the weather that gave me a 'technical fault' blue screen of death on Sky Channel 515 with less than 25 minutes to launch. Now, after dipping back in at 2000 for the news, (pics come from the very start, I Sky +'ed it) there was 8 minutes of news, a ridiculously long weather forcecast (with its own credits - impressive) and then - mind the gap - black screen - oh, let's re-run the test film again. Although the give away that the channel was live was the ticker across the bottom. Have to say, though, that the picture quality was pretty ropey when you compare it to AJE.



Ok, the moan over. The lovely Francois Picard kicked things off standing up behind the desk. I think it's far too early to comment much on the news agenda, because it's been an odd day and the agenda has to settle to see any slants, but it didn't seem very different from the stuff I was seeing all day.



Indeed, commenting on both the Livinenko story and the north London tornado. Lots of references to things that were going on in France just to satisfy the remit.

So first night nerves out of the way, France is the latest to have its 'Al Jazeera', that is, a rolling news channel which isn't dominated by the US narrative. Seeing a different opinion is always a good thing, but I just hope all these japes into international news (Russia, AJE just the latest in the line) have longevity.