François Jost Interview | Alexandre Gilbert #307

François Jost is a French semiologist and emeritus professor of information and communication sciences at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Holding a doctorate in narratology, he first turned to filmmaking before beginning his academic career in Montpellier and later in Paris where he collaborated with Bernard Stiegler (INA). 

François Jost: Yes, the notion of play is central to this complex period, in which a major creative dynamic emerged. On the one hand, there was what I call the television at play—that is, a television open to experimentation, to reflexivity, to more self-aware forms of broadcasting. On the other hand, emerging also was the television of play—which means a television shaped by the logic of the game, of the slot, of entertainment; one marked by scheduling, by audience logic, by formats that accommodate competitive time-slots and viewer retention. These twin movements were made possible by a number of interlocking factors.

First, the institutional and technological stability that television had achieved by the late 1960s: in France, for instance, the public monopoly broadcaster Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF) had become a familiar presence; viewership was massifying; the habits of TV consumption were more settled. With that massification came a push for renewal—television could no longer afford to be purely a vehicle for old formats; thus new shows emerged, attempts at launching new channels, new ways of engaging the audience.

Television advertising in France was first introduced in October 1968. That commercial turn changed the logic of television: now television schedules, formats, and genres had to accommodate not just public-service goals but also audience-metrics, sponsor demands, and competitive time slots. Thus the television of play logic: formats tailored to audience retention, segmentation, scheduling, repetition, branding.

Third, there was also the explosion of cultural reflexivity—television began to look at itself, to play with its own form, to allow for more self-referential shows, more experimental programmes, more playful hybrids of genres. This is the television at play side. In the 1970s, one can observe programmes that consciously disrupted the classical flow, that inserted debates, that mixed high-culture references with mass-media forms. The intellectual climate—semiotics, media studies, the influence of thinkers like Roland Barthes (death of the author), Michel Foucault (function-author), Jacques Derrida (spectral author)—helped give rise to a more reflexive attitude towards television: the medium itself became an object of inquiry rather than (just) the announcements.

Therefore, the dual movement: experimental, self-aware formats (television at play) and concurrently the growing dominance of audience logic, scheduling, entertainment formats, and commercial pressures (television of play). These two movements are not mutually exclusive; rather, they co-exist, overlap, and sometimes conflict. In that sense, the television of the early 1970s is both more playful (in the sense of experimentation) and more game-oriented (in the sense of format, competition, schedule) than the more rigid era of the 1950s and 1960s.

You refuse the distinction between palaeo-television and neo-television as formulated by Umberto Eco. In what way does your approach differ from this dichotomy ?
François Jost: I had the privilege of knowing Umberto Eco, and I greatly respect his work. But I believe one must be cautious with his distinction between what he called palaeo-television and neo-television. That binary is helpful as a heuristic, particularly in the Italian context after the arrival of Silvio Berlusconi and commercial private TV. But when applied more widely to the French context, or to the 1970s, it tends to flatten the complexities.

The influence of Marshall McLuhan is relevant here: his dictum “The medium is the message” reminds us that the form of television matters as much (if not more) than the content. McLuhan argued that “the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ou senses — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” In other words: changes in medium change human perception, social practice, and institutional logic.

In my view, rather than a strict palaeo/neo break, what we see in the 1970s is a transitional, mixed zone. The older public-service logic, high-culture aspirations, reflexive programming continue to coexist with more commercial formats, audience metrics, and scheduling pressures. The result is a richer, more contested terrain. The “play” dimension accommodates that tension: one side playing with television’s possibilities, the other adapting television more explicitly to the logic of game, schedule, and competition.

You refuse the importance viewer, as a central element of the neo-television concept. 
François Jost: Yes, although one must be nuanced. Advertising in television did not simply produce a new type of passive viewer; it also changed the structural conditions of television production, distribution, scheduling, and form. In France, advertising was formally introduced into television on 1 October 1968. With advertising came institutional adjustments, and audience measurement tools (which later became much more refined). The viewer therefore increasingly faced not just “content” but the frame, the slot, the brand, the sponsorship, the flow of television itself as a commodity and marketplace.

This shift suggests a more realistic viewer — one who is addressed not simply as a citizen or cultural subject but as a consumer, as an audience whose attention is being counted, whose consumption of programmes (and advertising) matters. In that sense, Poels’ suggestion of an “aware viewer” is valid: the viewer now inhabits an environment in which the commercial logic is audible, visible, integrated into the form of television.

However — and this is a caveat — I would resist the idea of a clear rupture. In my view, the evolution was incremental. The first advertising spots were limited in scope, regulation was tight, and the public-service ethos remained strong. The measurement tools (audience panels, ratings) were refined significantly only in the early 1980s. So while the advertising logic was increasingly present in the 1970s, I would not claim that at that moment the viewer was fully redefined by that logic. The infrastructure, the regulatory frameworks, the institutional incentives were still evolving. The 1970s remain a zone of overlap between older viewer-models (citizenship, culture, public information) and newer models (consumption, audience, metrics).

The sexual revolution and feminist movements translate the influence of the new social movements by Alain Touraine.
François Jost: I would say: yes and no. The new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s — feminism, sexual liberation, consumer activism, environmental awareness — certainly impacted television as both subject and form. The aesthetics, the topics, the kind of debates televised, and the presence of new gender identities and social conflicts in programmes all reflect that influence. But I’m reluctant to reduce the analysis to Touraine’s schema of “new social movements” alone. The intellectual milieu often looked at television with a critical eye — thinkers such as Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, or in the French cinema field Pasolini or Godard. Television was and is a contested terrain.

In other words: yes, the broader social movements provided conditions for change in television (in topics, in the legitimacy of debate, in the cultural visibility of previously excluded voices). But the register of analysis needs to go beyond that: television’s institutional form, its production culture, its aesthetic potential, its relation to audience, its reflexivity — these are equally important. To give a specific example: the very notion that television could become a site of self-reflexive play, of critique of itself, of hybridity between culture and entertainment, owes not merely to social movements but to a more general media-cultural shift (in part theorised by McLuhan).

Therefore I would say the new social movements are part of the context, not the whole story.

Can we truly speak of a “golden age” of television ?
François Jost: The 1970s are often called a golden age of television, marked by creativity, new formats, and cultural engagement. Yet this label risks mythologising the period, projecting ideals onto a more complex reality. While innovation thrived—color broadcasting, new channels, experimental shows—constraints like monopolies, state control, and limited audience feedback tempered it. The decade was a zone of possibility, not perfection, and nostalgia should not obscure its ambivalences.

The “memory-inflation” brought about by the VCR (video recorder) has changed our relationship to television ?
François Jost: The arrival of the VCR introduced time-shifting and replay, transforming television from a live, scheduled medium into an archive. Shows could be stored, revisited, and curated, fostering nostalgia and reflective viewing, as seen in series like It Was Once TV or Les Enfants de la télé. Television thus gained a historical dimension, becoming a cultural record and shaping viewers’ relationship to memory. In the 1970s, this shift coincided with experimentation, commercialisation, and technological change, reflecting the dual movement of “television at play” and “television of play.”