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PARIS - One of Nicolas Sarkozy's most visible, and most controversial, attempts to transform the French way of life took effect this week.
Advertising has vanished from prime time on all state-owned television channels as part of an attempt by the President to create, in his own words, a public television service to "rival the quality of the BBC".
The abolition of prime-time commercials - part of a much bigger revolution in the French broadcast landscape - has provoked strikes by television journalists and a torrent of insults and allegations that transcend the usual political boundaries of right and left.
Sarkozy's critics allege that his true motive is to transfer part of the shrinking pot of advertising revenue to the privately owned television channels. They also claim another part of his reform - the direct nomination of the boss of state-owned France Televisions by the Elysee Palace - is a reversion to the bad, and dreary, old days of politically controlled French television.
Sarkozy's attempt to shake up French broadcasting - announced a year ago - has been energetically resisted by centre-left and centre parties. Like many Sarkozy policies, the broadcasting reform defies the normal categories and prejudices of French politics.
Advertising of all kinds is regarded as wicked or spiritually demeaning by many people on the bourgeois-bohemian left.
The idea of a ban on advertising on public channels was originally floated by left-wing politicians. An inexplicable gulf in quality lies between French cinema and French television.
- INDEPENDENT
