“I appeal to your sense of responsibility and the general interest to avoid depriving hundreds of thousands of homes of the reception of all DTT channels”, urged the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak. In a letter sent this Friday to the president of the board of directors of Canal+ Maxime Saada, which AFP was able to consult, confirming information from the Parisian, the minister asked the Canal+ group to restore the broadcast of TF1 channels in its TNT Sat offer that allows to receive DTT channels in areas where land coverage is poor.
This ministerial request comes after Canal+’s decision to stop broadcasting the free channels of the TF1 group (TF1, TMC, TFX, TF1 Séries Films and LCI) by renewing the distribution contract between both parties, due in particular to the requirement of a payment “of a very substantial remuneration”, the group owned by Vivendi announced on Friday.
“Without interfering in the commercial dispute between the two groups and a negotiation that is a matter of freedom of contracting”, the minister explains that she is “careful that the negotiations between publishers and distributors do not result in blockades that could compromise the access of all audiences to the free offer of digital terrestrial television” (DTT).
People deprived of access to 5 TF1 channels
And “this situation does not conform to the legislator’s intention, which was to guarantee total coverage of DTT in the territory by forcing DTT channels to make their signal available free of charge to a satellite distributor who requests it. ”. she remembers
In an interview with the Journal du Dimanche (JDD), Maxime Saada reaffirms for his part that “free DTT channels -such as those of the TF1 group- are free for the entire public and must continue to be so”.
“Canal+ broadcasts more than 150 channels in France, including all the other DTT channels without exception. We do not encounter these difficulties with the other DTT players, including the M6 group”, he says.
“A feeling of omnipotence”
Is Canal+’s decision linked to the hearings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday before the Competition Authority for the merger proposal between M6 and TF1? The president of the board of directors of Canal+ assures that “it is a pure coincidence of the calendar”.
“The contract signed with the TF1 group in 2018 ended on August 31, 2022. However, in 2018 there was no such merger project. At the time, we requested a longer contract duration, which was denied by TF1”, he explains.
At the time, the commercial negotiations between the two audiovisual groups regarding the distribution of the free channels of the TF1 group had generated this same situation of blockage.
The cut of the signal of the TF1 channels then provoked the outcry of some viewers and led the then Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, to summon Canal+ to restore the broadcast of the TF1 channels in the TNT Sat offer.
Source: BFM TV
