Catherine Laborde becomes a weather presenter, and TF1 starts screening the American soap The Young and the Restless under the title Les Feux de l’Amour.   

Patrick Le Lay takes over as Chairman & CEO of TF1. Talk show Ciel mon mardi makes its debut, as does Jean-Pierre Pernaut as anchor of the lunchtime news. TF1 takes its first steps into the music business with the creation of in-house label Une Musique.

The Chirac government privatises France’s flagship channel, and the Bouygues group is selected as preferred bidder. From 1987 onwards, TF1 launches new formats that will go down in the channel’s history: home shopping show Le Magazine de l’objet, devised by Pierre Bellemare, rebranded a year later as Téléshopping; kids’ show Le Club Dorothée; variety show Sacrée Soirée, hosted by Jean-Pierre Foucault; gameshows Le Juste Prix and La Roue de la Fortune (French versions of The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune); and Nicolas Hulot’s cult show Ushuaïa.

Coluche hosts a four-hour live show promoting his new Restos du Coeur food aid charity. He invites a host of performers and celebrities to take part in a live show for no fee in aid of his charity. At first some of them decline, to which Coluche is said to have riposted “Vous êtes vraiment une bande d'enfoirés” (“You really are a bunch of jerks”). Hence the Enfoirés name adopted by the band of performers in the now annual show.

Appointed as Chairman in 1982, Michel May steps down in July 1983. He is succeeded by Hervé Bourges, with the ambition of making TF1 a popular mass-media channel. The start of his term sees the end of black-and-white transmission from the Eiffel Tower: TF1 is now broadcast in colour across the whole of France.

On 2 July 1981 Jacques Boutet becomes the new Chairman & CEO and makes the channel more highbrow, bringing new faces to the screen such as Frédéric Mitterrand and Michel Polac (presenter of Droit de réponse).