high level of unemployment and the high cost of living (in part due to imported goods from metropolitan France, as well as high salaries among the French state's public servants) generated frustration and social tensions among a significant part of the city's population with low incomes, who survived thanks to social benefits introduced after the transformation of Réunion into an overseas department in 1946, and who had difficult access to the consumer society and imported goods. In 1991, that social tension exploded after the authorities decided to close a TV station, , which was broadcasting pirated B movies (action films and erotic movies in particular) and Reunionese Creole talk shows, particularly popular among low-income people. Télé Free Dom had been broadcasting from its studios in Saint-Denis without a license for more than 4 years when CSA, France's electronic media regulatory authority, ordered it to cease operations. Despite protests from its viewers incited by the founder and owner of Télé Free Dom, a metropolitan Frenchman, the French government instructed the prefect of Réunion to seize the transmitter of the TV station on February 24, 1991. A month of riots throughout the city ensued after Télé Free Dom went off air, with their epicenter in the large projects of Le Chaudron built in the 1960s and 1970s. Hundreds of rioters threw stones at the police, and for several days they torched cars, looted and then set fire to banks, car dealerships, supermarkets, and large DIY and furniture stores in the retail parks on the outskirts of the city. Eight looters died in the night of February 25 to 26, 1991, trapped inside a burning furniture store, which led to a temporary lull in the riots, but they soon erupted again in March. A visit by prime minister Michel Rocard on March 17 failed to calm the situation down, and it was only after a visit by France's first lady Danielle Mitterrand, who went to the projects at Le Chaudron to discuss with local residents and who promised to relay their grievances to the French president, that the riots finally ended on March 24. Geography The city is located on the north end of the island, and was a port. Saint-Denis was "originally the main port of Réunion, but an artificial harbour at Le Port, on the northwest coast, replaced it in the 1880s, because of unpredictable winds and tides at Saint-Denis." The