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Surfing the French Radio Waves Part 1 Posted by on Jan 19, 2011 in Culture, Vocabulary

Vous allez en prendre plein les oreilles ! (You’ll have an earful!)

Comme toujours (As always) the French Blog never shies away from providing you with original and sure-to-work tips in order to learn and improve your own level of français !

One of those suggested tips describe in detail how to “Meet your French “partenaire de conversation″ via the FRENCH BLOG and Skype!

French magazine LePoint unveils the new TOP 10 of French radios (by audience)

Regardless of how fluent your français is, a great and sure-to-work way of improving your French listening skills is by turing the French radio on. The good news is, as far as French radio stations are concerned, ce n’est pas ça qui manque(they don’t come in short supply)!

Oui, d’accord, mais laquelle dois-tu choisir ? (Yes, ok, but which one should you choose)?

To help you out make up your mind, here’s a little aperçu global (global outline) of the TOP 10 radios that were able to conquer millions of pairs d’oreilles françaises et francophones (French and Francopohone pairs of ears), briefly describing their parcours (trails) and their émissions (shows), and some of the main French media figures -or voices, actually- standing behind them.

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D’abord (First), RTL, or “Radio Télévision Luxembourg“, (Cliquez ici—Click here) the station that was able to fulfill its devise (motto)1re radio de France(“1st radio of France”) throughout the past ten years. It belongs to le géant multinational (the multinational giant) Bertelsmann, which is mainly détenue par(owned by) the famous German Mohn family. The private national TV channel M6, for example,is also partially owned by the Bertelsmann Group.

With a siège (headquarters) broadcasting nearby les Champs-Élysées (rue Bayard), this station de radio boasts des émissions (shows) that were able to conquer a large audience, such as the one animated by French humorist Laurent Gerra, or his much older “pote(buddy), Philippe Bouvard, who is widely famous to French people for his now “classic” show called “Les Grosses Têtes(literally “the Big Heads”), which was also a very successful TV show in the 1990s.

RTL’s Philippe Bouvard, a French audiovisual icon, “toujours copié, jamais égalé” (“always copied, never matched”), talking to a young student who aspires to become a radio host as well

In addition, RTL has two “little sisters”, mainly devoted to music:

Fun Radio (Cliquez ici—Click here), which can be heard all the way in Slovakia as an FM radio station, features French DJs such as David Guetta and David Vandetta (who, incidentally, sued and lost last year to his nickname imitateur (copycat) Mickaël Vendetta!), and “fun” shows such as “Manu à la radio!, hosted, as the title says, by Manu, who “cut his teeth” under the aegis of his older “mentor” Arthur. If you remember from a recent post here on the French Blog, Arthur was also accused of being an abashed imitateur and plagieur (see “Le “Roi Arthur”: Roi fainéant de la Télé!“, meaning “King Arthur: A Do-Nothing King of TV!”) In a true “Enfant de la Télé“, Manu, ça ne s’invente pas (you can’t make that stuff up) started his career under the patronage of Arthur in the appropriately named show “Arthur et les pirates! 🙂

RTL2 (Cliquez ici—Click here): Its two slogans are “Ce n’est pas de la radio, c’est de la musique(“It’s not radio, it’s music”) and “Le son Pop-Rock” (“the sound Pop-Rock.”) RTL2 broadcasts shows such as Le Grand Morning“, with the fresh hostess of the French version ofcuisine reality competition show”Top Chef”, Agathe Lecaron, on RTL-TVI (yes, how convenient), as well as “Pop-Rock Station“, presented by Francis Zégut.

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A suivre (To be continued)

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