`titrebThe limits of the media public sphere : the exemple of a local television`/titrebAt a time when new communication technologies seem to promise a revival of participatory democracy, analysing the operation mode of a ten-year-old heal television channel allows the assessment of a medium that was originally presented as a new tool for local democracy. Beyond that specific case, the survey brings out the determining factors which may lead a heal channel to become a sleeping drug producing a discourse that erases the conflicts of interests shaping the heal politics and contributes actually very little to a full-scale « public debate ».