It is a provider of live streaming world news which can be viewed via its website, YouTube, and various mobile devices and digital media players.

[8] The channel was created with the backing of president Jacques Chirac, with the aim of providing a French perspective of the news, which was dominated by English-language media outlets.

In 1996 to 1999, after nineteen governmental reports in ten years, Prime Minister Alain Juppé asked Radio France Internationale president Jean-Paul Cluzel (who was also General Inspector of Finances) to create a French international news channel.

The UMP-led government decided to follow that recommendation but, with the return of the Socialist Party to government and the nomination of Hubert Védrine, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, favoured the augmentation of existing outlets such as TV5, which started to produce its own programming, notably its news bulletins, which in turn created its own news team.

Additionally with the creation of EuroNews in 1993 (with French-language commentary), the media presence of France overseas became more complex, more fragmented, and costlier, without being able to rely on a true round-the-clock international news channel.

But everybody notices that we are still far from having a large international news channel in French, capable of competing with the BBC or CNN.The recent crises have shown the handicap that a country suffers, a cultural area, which doesn't possess a sufficient weight in the battle of the images and the airwaves.

Let us question, in the time of terrestrial television networks, of satellite, of the internet, on our organisation in this domain, and notably in the dissipation of public funds which are reserved to them.On 7 March, speaking in the French Senate in front of foreign delegates to France, and as part of his presidential campaign, Chirac said, "We must have the ambition of a big, round-the-clock news channel in French, equal to the BBC or CNN for the English-speaking world.

For our expatriates, it would be a live and an immediate link to the mainland"[11] After his reelection, the first reflections were engaged at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Dominique de Villepin.

Various technical options were examined at the time, in an unreleased report: The subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reassured the authorities about the project, especially in February 2003, when the American broadcasters CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC opted not to broadcast the long applause given by the members of the United Nations Security Council after Dominique de Villepin gave his address on the Iraq conflict.

Broadcasting primarily in the French language, this service will assure a more important and more visible presence of France in the worldwide battle of images, and to contribute to the pluralism of international information by offering to our viewers the choice of a different viewpoint on the news, marked by a singular point of view of our country on world affairs, by its culture and by its own ideas, and to value its historical links and its privileged geography.

[13]By the application deadline on 22 April 2003, three candidates replied: One month later, a parliamentary commission gave its conclusion, voted with a unanimous decision by its members in the National Assembly, to form a public-owned corporation (groupement d'intérêt public) grouping all of the public broadcasters (France Télévisions, RFO, RFI, TV5 and AFP) with the goal of launching the channel at the end of 2004.

Then Foreign Minister Michel Barnier announced on 21 July that the channel would not be funded before 2007, which was confirmed by a vote in parliament on the Finance Bill.

Trade union members working for France Télévisions continued to voice opposition to the project and circulated a petition in March 2005.

The launch of the channel was made official after a statement to the cabinet of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, headed by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres on 30 November 2005, "The project of the International French News Channel (abbreviated in French to CFII)[...] will allow us to propose our own country's vision of world events and to reinforce its presence in the world.

"[17] Alain de Pouzilhac, former CEO of Havas, was named president, along with two deputies, one each from group partners TF1 and France Télévisions.

This decision was taken by the supervisory board, chaired by France Télévision president Patrick de Carolis, who made the choice from a list of five potential names.

France 24 launched on 6 December 2006 at 20:30 CET, initially available online as a web stream, followed by satellite distribution a day later, covering France and the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the United States (specifically airing in New York State and the District of Columbia using two channels: one in English and the other in French).

Since April 2007 the channel increased its reach, airing programmes in Arabic for viewers in the Maghreb, North Africa and the Middle East.

Following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president in May 2007, a "steering committee" of twenty members was called in with view to reform in June 2007.

On screen, a black tickerbar shows every top story in order, and on the white bar, it says the name of the website, which is "FRANCE24.COM" in capital letters.

[5] France 24 has two main sources of funding: the audiovisual license fee, paid by each household equipped with a television, and the state subsidy.

France 24 is available by satellite in most of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as by cable and antenna in the US cities of Albany, Atlanta, Macon, and San Francisco.

In the United States, Canada, and Central and South America, France 24 is represented by the American telecommunications company New Line Television, headquartered in Miami, Florida.

[citation needed] In 2007, France 24 started a VOD service on Virgin Media, allowing customers to access weekly news updates and programmes to watch when they choose.

[35] In October 2009, France24 relaunched its website France24.com with a complete video archive as well as a video-on-demand service whereby the viewer may watch any of the three channels with the ability to replay the past 24 hours of programming anytime.

On 1 March 2010, France 24 released live streaming with experimental automatic transcription in association with Yacast Media, the search engine Exalead, Vocapia Research, and Microsoft.

[38] France 24 is a supporter of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) initiative, which is promoting and establishing an open European standard for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of broadcast TV and broadband multimedia applications with a single user interface, and has announced that it will launch an HbbTV interactive news service in 2012 via the Astra 19.2°E satellites with support from Orange and SES.

[50] Burkinabé authorities accused France 24 of providing "a platform for legitimizing terrorist actions and hate speech propagated to fulfill the malicious intentions of this organization in Burkina Faso."

[54][55] The agency accused France 24 of slanted coverage regarding the aid provided and measures taken,[56] focusing solely on the Kabylia region and singling out Algeria, even though the fires affected the wider Mediterranean basin.