COVER N. 634 - FRANCE

Postmark: 50 ans Radio France Premier Jour 42 Saint-Etriènne 29.08.2025 

Posted on the 29th August; Received on the 6th September 2025

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What a fantastic cover. I was absolutely blown away by what I found inside the very big and unexpected envelope coming from the Post Office Services at St. Etiènne, France.

The Haddock Captain in me shouted "Tonnerre de Brest! Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ça ????

Inside the large envelope another, smaller one, but still quite large, loomed.... Damn! I had never seen a one stamp souvenir sheet this big… 14.3 x 18.5 cm… standard framing size….

And then just a tiny legend on it. "50 ans Radio France", “on Air”...

What to make of it? Beautiful as the illustration might be, I could not make sense out of it… I immediately realised it had to do with the celebration of the 50 years of Radio France, but I did not even know what Radio France was (well, of course, a radio station, but its history???) let alone the rationale for the bande dessinée / video game illustration….. I was totally in awe and lost in perception.

And yes I was also totally grateful to Eric for such a fantastic addition to my collection. Un énorme Merci, mon ami!

The history of Radio in France goes back to 1897, when Eugène Ducretet successfully transmitted radio signals between his workshop and the Panteón, located some 4000 metres away.

Ducret would later install a radio transmitter on the 3rd stage of the Eiffel tower and pursue his experiences, what led to the iconic tower being saved from dismantling since it provided a perfect emplacement for the antennae that would ensure an ever growing communications range, which would prove paramount during the 1st world war.

Regular broadcasting from Radio Tour Eiffel, the first to do it in the Hexagon,  would go on from 1922 until 1940.

After the second world war, radio broadcasting, as in many european countries, Portugal included, became a state monopoly and in 1975, during the Presidency of  Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the radio broadcasting sector was reorganised, a new umbrella state entity - Radio France -  being created, tasked with the mission of Informing, Educating, Disseminating Knowledge and Entertaining the French Public at large.

50 years later, Radio France keeps doing so, in spite of the substantial evolution and modification of  the radio broadcasting panorama, which now encompasses all the small and not so small regional, ex-pirate and corporate radios that fill the ether, not always with anything worth listening to (but that's my usual grumpy opinion about media in general, these days...).

Today, Radio France is responsible not only for 7 broadcasting networks, but also for maintaining two orchestras and two choirs, as part of the tools to duly fulfil its mission.

On 29AUG2025 La Poste issued the phenomenal one 1,39 € stamp  miniature sheet on the cover, celebrating the 50 Years of Radio France, which Eric tells me is the biggest single stamp sheet ever issued in France,  if not in the whole wide world, I would suspect.

The image is rich in symbolism but I confess I had to go and look at the release notes to understand it (and Eric also provided some clues) since a foreigner not familiar with the theme, such as I, would have trouble reading all those not readily decipherable semiotic hints.

And my conclusions, perhaps due to my "outsider" status, do differ slightly from the official explanation of the image, and this I find also great, for such is the beauty of art!

At the fulcrum of the image lies Radio France's headquarters building - La Maison de la Radio - designed by architect  Henry Bernard  and inaugurated in 1963 as the headquarters of the then RTF - Radiodiffusion-télévision française - itself  classified as an Historic Monument, as well as a 3D representation of the company's logo. So far, so good...

Now, as I see it, the image presents the building, lying on its side, as some sort of spacecraft travelling through the air under the power of a light that pulses at the vanishing point of the perspective, which also occupies a position in relation to the hexagonal window that can be interpreted as an allegory to the location of Paris, where Radio France Headquarters are located,  in the French hexagon.

The propelling waves are the signal transmission waves, of course.

What I don't really get is what are the three human figures doing. Just like the general ambience of the drawing, they are reminiscent of video game or comic book characters, maybe progressing through some obstacle course... who knows....

The author of the drawing, Ugo Gattoni,  Eric told me, is the same artist who created the colourful and exquisitely detailed  Paris Olympics Poster.

The First Day Postmark which replicates the logo for Radio France, was issued at Saint Étienne, a  city in the Loire département, some 60 km southwest of Lyon, with a population of  approximately 173 thousand inhabitants.