The Bookseller.com

1st December 2008

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French lobby for Richard et Judy

28.05.08 Barbara Casassus

The French Publishers Association is lobbying France Television, the equivalent of the BBC, and the government to create a mass audience talk-show that would feature selected books.

The show would be modelled on Richard and Judy in the UK and Oprah Winfrey in the US, with the aim of promoting books more effectively than the nine to 13 TV book programmes do for the 5,000 titles they present a year. The show would be aired in the afternoons, be aimed at housewives and pensioners and have full Internet back-up.

"It is impossible to know what impact the current programmes have on book sales," said Hachette Livre communications director Ronald Blunden, who has put together a proposal for the communications strategy committee of the Syndicat National de l'Edition (SNE). This compares with an average of 500,000 to 2 million for each of the 10 quality general public paperback books a year featured by Oprah Winfrey and an average of 300,000 to 600,000 for those presented by Richard and Judy, he added.

The SNE called a press conference to announce its proposal, because Jean-François Copé,a leader of the ruling conservative UMP party, has declined to meet with officials before releasing a report at the end of the month on financing public television when advertising is scrapped.

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