ABSTRACT
From the beginning, the history of French audiovisual political advertising has been marked by distrust and drastic regulation. In 1936, between the two rounds of the legislative elections, the Pathé Company decided to broadcast speeches of the main political parties’ leaders in movie theaters, just after its newsreels. It caused such violent collective reactions that this kind of political advertising stopped immediately (Delporte, 2007, pp. 28–30). In December 1955, a few weeks before the general election, each of the parties that already had at least one MP was allowed a five-minute program, aired between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. on what was the only public television channel, as well as two 10-minute and one five-minute programs on public radio. The day and hour of broadcast were determined by drawing lots, to ensure the equality between parties. This official campaign was the real starting point for the practice of providing candidates in national elections access to dedicated programs on television.
