Patrick Le Lay, head of French media group TF1, speaking at the Vieilles Charrues festival, revealed some details about the forthcoming Bretton channel, TV Breizh. Le Lay said that he had so far managed to gather 60-70 per cent of the Fr100 million (Pounds 10.2 million) needed to launch the channel. Investors include Silvio Berlusconi and Franç ois Pinault of the Pinault-Printemps-Redoute retail group. Although aimed at a linguistic minority, the channel is seen as part of a the wider "construction of Europe" with a potential audience of eight million people. The channel should be on the air in March or April 2000.

TV Breizh hopes to break even with 200,000 subscribers, half of them in Brittany, for a subscription of Fr50 a month. To begin with the channel plans to be carried by the two satellite bouquets TPS and Canalsatellite, but hopes to find a major boost with the start of DTT in 2002. The channel intends to broadcast for 18 hours a day, including a major Hollywood film each day dubbed into Bretton. Other programmes will include children’s programming, Bretton language lessons, and live talk shows in Bretton and French. Local production houses will be called on to contribute. However there are no plans for a news programme. The channel will have about 50 staff, with studios in Lorient.

Le Lay insisted that the project was purely personal, and not part of TF1 or the Bouygues group. There remains a legal problem about the operation of a non-French language channel. However, the revival of regional languages, which have long been repressed in France, is proceeding. Until very recently children would be punished at school for speaking in Bretton to each other.