franceinfo radio celebrates its 35th anniversary

Monday, June 1, 1987, 6:59 a.m. The first sound heard on franceinfo is these few musical notes, this sung jingle that marked a generation of listeners: “Every day on France Info, there is the info you need!” This is a sound code – in F major (B flat A C – C F G A B flat A F) – composed at the time by Gérard Calvi, who has continued to evolve, arranged and even remixed, before a new design by Jean-Michel Jarre, in 2016.

The frequency of 105.5 then issues in a few French cities only: Paris, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nantes, Le Mans, Mulhouse and Marseille. And then the very first 7 o’clock diary begins in one of the studios of Radio France. The radio then broadcasts every day from 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m., continuously.

Since then, franceinfo has covered the biggest events – especially those that have remained engraved in the memories of listeners. “What struck me was the fall of Berlin. It changed a lot of things in history.“, says one of them. From the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is only one radio station. With its special editions and journalists on site , franceInfo recounts and analyzes the facts: this history of the world which is being written, but above all the radio which invites itself into your home, often impromptu.

“It was in Corsica, in the creeks of Piana, people put their radios louder and louder. We wondered then what is happening: it was the towers of September 11“, remembers this couple, before specifying: “We were completely out of phase because we didn’t know, we hadn’t put on the radio, as if cut off from the world.”

franceinfo is also about happier times: “The events that marked me during my adolescence were mainly sporting and franceinfo has always been present on these events, and in particular the 98 World Cup…“, smiles a football fan.

In France, in Europe, all over the world, it has been 35 years since the franceinfo teams follow one another to bring you the news. And this smiling listener: “I would have liked to experience the French Revolution on the radio!“