Les Grosses Têtes
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Les Grosses Têtes (Template:IPA-fr; ("The Big Heads" or "The Big Brains" in English) is a daily French radio program on the RTL French radio network, created by Jean Farran and Roger Krecher on 1 April 1977. The current host is Laurent Ruquier.
Presently broadcast from 16:30 to 18:00 in France (16:00 - 18:00 in Belgium), this show has several regular segments. The first quarter of the show is hard-hitting news and the next quarter deals with cultural issues. Then, for the next 30 minutes the host takes phone calls from listeners. Finally, guests are interviewed and joked about (these jokes are called gauloises on the show). Part of the format is when guests are asked questions sent in by the listeners, the most famous being Mme Leprieur.
A TV version was broadcast on TF1 from 1992 to 1997. On 27 March 1996, Philippe Bouvard, Vincent Perrot and the president of TF1 Patrick Le Lay were fined for having provoked racial hatred by telling a riddle comparing Muslim women to robbers.
In 2000, station managers thought that they could do without the services of their aging best host (animateur de référence) and replaced him with Christophe Dechavanne. The rapid loss of listeners showed that the program's success was due as much to the audience's attachment to the hosts as to its formula, which led to the return of Philippe Bouvard as host and producer of the show the following season. Since September 2014, the show has been hosted by Laurent Ruquier.
