Pacific Regional Satellite Television brewing

Despite delays in hooking up national television stations, French television overseas network RFO (Reseau France Outremer) hopes to go ahead with a Regional Satellite Television concept early this year.

Negotiations are continuing to win over national television stations, including Fiji Television and Papua New Guinea’s Em TV to the project.

The RST concept was introduced to the Pacific region in October, during the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) annual convention, which took place in Suva, Fiji.

It was furthered late November during New Caledonia’s Second University of Communication for Oceania in Noumea and Lifou island.

Since he took office last January as chair of RFO, Andre-Michel Besse has become a strong advocate of the concept and he predicted that a Pacific RST could start operating as soon as the first half of 2000.

But matters such as copyrights and the language to be used remain to be settled for the Pacific project.

Early December, RFO officially launched an RST network covering the Indian ocean, bringing together contributions in programmes from TV

stations of Mauritius and Madagascar.

Other programming from the Seychelles is to follow, the company said.

Technically, the programmes are being

relayed through a new satellite group of channels called RFO-Sat.

“At this stage, the core of these common programmes will mainly consist of news,”

Besse said from Paris.

The television is temporarily called “RFO-Sat-Indien.” Its programmes are provided by RFO’s television station in La Reunion Island (Tele-Reunion), Mauritius’s MBC and a small private channel from

Madagascar.

The project will also entail more regular exchanges of news and footage between those televisions.

“This RST is a sort of programmes free trade zone between televisions from the Southern hemisphere who wish to go beyond their frontiers to reach a larger audience, possibly their citizens residing overseas,” he added.

Paris-based RFO Director for International Relations, New Caledonian Walles Kotra, explained what he termed a “strategic” project for RFO, with the key idea being an attempt to reverse the current North-South flow of world programmes.

A similar project, this time for the Caribbean islands states, is to start operating in June, Besse said, with RFO already having struck deals with televisions of that region, including Cuba. ■

Television has taken hold in the Pacific