Television
Initially recruited to present the programmes of the new national television network RTF in 1949, Catherine Langeais was probably the most popular lady presenter (speakerine) of French television, from the end of the 1950s through the 1970s. It was she who welcomed BBC viewers in the first international on-line television broadcast, the Franco-British week of July 1952, thanks to the new conversion standard which was to allow, a year later, the international broadcast of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and later the inauguration of the Eurovision song contest.
In parallel with introducing programmes, Catherine Langeais took part in diverse light entertainment programmes in the years 1950-1960, such as "C'est arrivé à 36 chandelles" and "La séquence du spectateur" (later renamed "La séquence du téléspectateur"), as well as the cookery programme "Art et magie de la cuisine" with the chef Raymond Oliver.
A chronic illness, which she concealed for a long time, made the job difficult but did not prevent her from working until 1955. Patiently, although ill, she continued with her programmes ("A vous de juger", "La séquence du téléspectateur", and some children's programmes). On Sunday 5 January 1975, she emotionally closed the broadcasts of the first channel (ORTF), which was replaced the next day with the new public company Télévision Française 1 (TF1) in which she did no more than the voice-overs of the "La séquence du téléspectateur", while her husband Pierre Sabbagh was director of programmes for the second channel.
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials ... despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.”
—Peter Ustinov (b. 1921)