PRESIDENT NICOLAS Sarkozy's acolytes say a ban on advertising on public television heralds a "cultural revolution", a televisual "big bang" and the advent of a "French BBC".
Yet the partial suppression of advertising on five French government-owned television stations, which took effect last night, has mobilised the opposition and infuriated television journalists.
Journalists at France 3, the national network of regional channels, went on strike yesterday to protest against the reform, and their colleagues at France 2, the main public-owned national channel, will strike today.
From now until November 2011, advertising is banned on public television from 8pm until 6am. The main evening entertainment programmes will begin at 8.35pm, immediately after the evening news, instead of at 8.50, as before.
Daytime advertising will continue until 2011.
"They're getting rid of ads for parents at night and keeping it for the kids in the morning," noted Libération newspaper.
The privately owned TF1, France's leading broadcaster, which belongs to Martin Bouygues, one of Mr Sarkozy's closest friends, continues to show its main entertainment programme at 8.50pm. Analysts are unsure whether viewers will shun the 8.35 programmes on public television because they have grown accustomed to clearing the table and putting children to bed during the long advertising "tunnel".
Some 40 per cent of French people eat dinner while watching the 8pm news.
Mr Sarkozy announced the reform a year ago, saying it would "end the dictatorship of the ratings" on public television.
The most controversial aspect of the Audiovisual Law which will go to the Senate for debate today is the hiring and firing of the head of France Télévisions by Mr Sarkozy himself.
The government will reimburse some €450 million in lost advertising revenue to the public channels by levying a 1.5 per cent tax on the advertising earnings of private channels, and a small tax on mobile phone and internet operators.
Private channels will be allowed to broadcast up to nine minutes of advertising per hour, instead of the previous six.
An opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper on December 14th showed 70 per cent of the French public approve of the advertising ban.
Because an 80-hour socialist filibuster in the National Assembly prevented the law being passed in time, the president of France Télévisions unilaterally cut advertising.
Criticism centres on Mr Sarkozy's motives - the windfall profits it will create for his friend Mr Bouygues, and the suspicion that he wants to destroy public television, which he sees as a sinecure for left-wing journalists.
It is unlikely that Mr Sarkozy's professed ambition of creating a "French BBC" will be realised.
Like his predecessors, the French leader has named cronies and yes-men to key positions in public media.
When a journalist at Radio France recently interviewed the green deputy Noel Mamère, a vehement critic of Mr Sarkozy, two executives appointed by the president burst into the journalist's office demanding why he dared broadcast the interview.