There is a common point between the live broadcast on television of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, and the first film and radio report of the arrival of the Tour de France in Paris on July 27, 1948. In both cases, the commentary was provided by Jacques Sallebert. As a young radio journalist at the RTF, he was sent to the Parc des Princes in 1948 with two cameramen, Michel Wakhévitch and Henri Persin. Before telling the story of the sprint and interviewing the Yellow Jersey, the Italian Gino Bartali, he had to face technical problems which prevented him from sleeping for several days, a production manager Jacques Armand and his two young assistants, Gilles Margaritis, future director from La piste aux Étoiles and Claude Barma who later directed dramas and mini-series that have become cult, starting with Belphégor.
The problems started with the arrival of the report van at the Parc des Princes. It turns out to be much larger than expected, therefore impossible to install on the lawn in the center of the velodrome. He was taken a few hundred meters to Boulevard Murat, where another problem arose. The buildings housing the Claude Bernard and La Fontaine high schools act as a screen and prevent the transmission of images. The firefighters, called urgently, manage to place an antenna at the top of a large ladder. It is still insufficient. A physicist, who knows a technician from the RTF, launches the idea of using one of these captive balloons used by the French army for observation and air defense.
This is how images are born, before many others, of which Madelen offers you a souvenir selection, taken from black and white reports that are part of the history of the Tour de France on our small screens.
This began on June 29, 1949, when the Journal Télévisé was born. Measuring the popularity of the event, Pierre Sabbagh, founder and director of the JT, decided to offer, three times a week, a summary of about ten minutes of the previous day’s stage. Technically, it is impossible to do otherwise. No budget having been allocated for the purchase of cameras, an agreement was made with the direction of News cinematographic Pathé, Gaumont, usually diffused in the cinemas. It is agreed that images of each stage will be sent each evening to Paris, by train or by plane. They will be picked up on arrival by a driver who will immediately transport them to rue Cognacq-Jay, where they will be developed in less than three hours, in a makeshift laboratory.
The means of information are so weak that before being processed, the film is stretched out between two cans of peas stolen from the canteen. The commentary is then improvised live, from a tiny cabin, by Georges de Caunes, who also left the radio to try the adventure of the small screen. His remarks were never recorded and, the first year, the diffusion was minimal. In 1949, the number of televisions was in fact estimated at 3,800. The system would last until 1955 when, for the first time, Catherine Langeais announced the broadcast at 8:20 p.m. of the summary of the day’s stage. In 1958, fixed cameras, placed at the top of the passes of the Pyrenees and the Alps, allowed viewers to watch, live, the passage of the best climbers. In 1962, the broadcast progressed further, with the retransmission of the last ten kilometers. Two years later, on July 12, 1964, a record audience was set with the live duel on the slopes of the Puy de Dôme, between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor. The start of a new cycle.
