This station streams regional news, weather, sports journals and French Top 40 pop hits from Caen in Normandy. It still carries the name France Bleu in some listings, but since January 2025 it broadcasts under a new identity, Ici Normandie, part of a network-wide rebrand that changed the name without changing the signal, the studio or the local programming listeners already knew.
Thirty Years as France Bleu, Then a New Name
France Bleu itself was created on September 4, 2000, when Radio France merged its scattered local stations with Radio Bleue, a station originally built for senior listeners, at the initiative of Radio France chairman Jean-Marie Cavada, according to Wikipedia's history of the network. That merger created a network of 44 local antennas covering France, each one producing its own regional news and culture coverage under one shared brand. On January 6, 2025, the entire network, including this station, began broadcasting as "Ici," part of a shared branding push between Radio France and France Télévisions that had been building since 2022.
A City Built by a Conqueror
Caen only really entered history in the 11th century, when Duke William of Normandy, soon to become William the Conqueror, built the city's castle and founded two great abbeys there with his wife Mathilde. That medieval core survived centuries largely intact until the Battle of Caen, a brutal stretch of fighting between June and August 1944 that reduced much of the city to rubble. Reconstruction under architect Marc Brillaud de Laujardière took nearly twenty years, finishing in 1963, and the rebuilt city later earned France's Patrimoine de la reconstruction heritage label for how well that postwar rebuild was handled.
Tune In
Same studio, same city, new name. Stream Caen's regional station, still findable as France Bleu and now broadcasting as Ici Normandie, free on Radio Shuffle.