Power cut stops Radio France broadcasts

Radio France bosses have ordered an inquiry into why a power cut halted broadcasts, including those of RFI, on Saturday night.

O Pelletant/RFI

“I’m furious,” Radio France director-general Jean-Luc Hees declared Sunday, commenting that there should never be a break in public service radio broadcasts.

Emergency generators failed to kick in when the power cut hit Paris’s Maison de la Radio, which houses national radio broadcasters and Radio France Internationale.

Broadcasts were cut for periods of between half and hour and several hours and disruption to websites, including RFI in English, continued Sunday.

The outage follows work on the power supply, which led to very short interruptions to broadcasts, on Thursday. Hees believes that Saturday night’s disruption must be connected to that.

RFI does not broadcast in English overnight at the weekend so radio programmes were not affected. But we were still unable to attach sound elements to our website and apologise for the problem.