La Une

La Une (French pronunciation: [la yn]) is a Belgian national television channel, owned and operated by the French-language public-service broadcasting organization RTBF. La Une is the equivalent of Flemish station VRT 1, of the Flemish broadcaster VRT.

Experimental television began in Belgium on 2 June 1953 with the live broadcast of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

On 31 October at 20:30 from Studio 5 of Le Flagey, the headquarters of the National Institute of Belgian Radio (INR), Andrée Rolin officially opened the channel. After that, the announcer Janine Lambotte opened the broadcast with the newly created experimental television and broadcast 2 hours a day, 6 days a week. Transmission began with the French television news relayed by the RTF transmitter TV-Lille (France's first regional station), followed by a cabaret-themed broadcast called Boum.

In the early days, INR broadcast two to three evenings per week, with a strong focus on theatre and drama, and was aired on Fridays and during the holidays. On Wednesday and Sunday evenings, the channel broadcast its own productions. The rest of the programming was provided by RTF. The first live sports coverage began with the FIFA World Cup 1954 and Monday Sports from 1955. The first newscast premiered on 1 September 1956, produced entirely in Brussels and with very few pictures, except for the presenter reading the script.

The weather report already existed. For several years, it was in the form of animated cartoons corresponding to the weather announced. These drawings were carried out at the Royal Meteorological Institute live from a frosted glass leaving only the drawing of a character with an umbrella or a radiant sun on bathers, etc. visible. These were done by Bob Boudard, a cabaret variety artist gifted with a talent of drawing cartoons (and also capable of whistling and interpreting various musical pieces). Hidden behind the frosted screen, Boudard had to carry out the bulletin on the fly when he arrived at the institute, often at the last minute thanks to taxi drivers who had got to know him and who were ready to go and bring him in time because he had various obligations that kept him busy in Brussels, among others maintaining his cafe on the Rue des Dominicains, a meeting point for many actors from the theaters of Brussels' city centre.

The Brussels World's Fair in 1958 gave the INR an opportunity to strengthen its new television networks and supersede radio. The panel "Belgian experimental television" disappeared from the screen, outside broadcast vans were acquired, Expo Magazine was broadcast daily for six months, and closing days and the interruption during the holidays disappeared. Every day, reports, interviews, debates and animations made the summary of activities of the Expo '58. The Investigations and Reports section introduced the first major magazine on Belgian television: Neuf Millions (Nine Million).

In 1953, there were only 6,500 television sets in Belgium. The INR transmitters were then located at the Palais de Justice in Brussels and limited to a reach in a radius of 40 km. It was not until 1954 that transmitters were built in Liège and 1958 in Wavre, which could cover almost 96% of the French-speaking territory. In 1956, there were over 100,000 television sets, and in 1960, it reached the 70,000 viewer mark throughout Belgium.

In 1960, the Harmel Act replaced the National Institute of Broadcasting by Radio-Télévision Belge (RTB). The new facility included a Dutch public broadcaster (Belgische Radio en Televisie or BRT), a French public broadcaster (Radio-Télévision Belge or RTB) and an institution of common services. Both broadcasters were independent of each other and had full cultural autonomy, an organic vis-à-vis independence from the government and the guarantee of freedom of information. RTB/BRT was headed by a program director appointed by the King.