France

[FR] 2007 Balance Sheets of the Analog Television Channels

IRIS 2008-9:1/33

Aurélie Courtinat

The Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (national audiovisual regulatory authority – CSA) recently published the balance sheets of many channels, including the analog channels that most people in France still receive. Global and comparative analysis of the balance sheets shows that the channels are generally quite respectful of their obligations, in terms of both ethics and quantity, such as production quotas and obligations. The CSA noted however that all the public-sector channels have spontaneously exceeded these obligations by a wide margin. There has been a general falling-back in the offer of cinema films on all the unencrypted channels, and it is often French and European works that suffer most. This decrease in the number of cinema films on television on non-specialist channels casts doubt on the need to maintain Article 8 of the Decree of 17 January 1990 which was intended initially to limit television’s competition with the cinema.

Among the private-sector channels, TF1 and M6 have seen their audiences dwindle (-8%, i.e. 3 million viewers for M6), to the advantage of the digital channels, which are gradually taking up a truly competitive stance on the audiovisual scene in terms of both audience and the resulting power to attract advertisers. Faced with this erosion, M6, originally a channel showing a high proportion of music content, has turned to a more generalist approach, increasing the broadcasting of entertainment which has now become the channel’s main genre, to the detriment of music, which the channel is increasingly associating with participatory quiz programmes, resulting in an increasingly blurred identification of the genre and a decline in both its broadcasting volume and the diversity of the musical works it offers. Like the other analog broadcasters, TF1 respects all its obligations but does not escape the temptation to schedule most of its cultural broadcasts at night, which tends to warp the obligation to schedule programmes of this kind negotiated in its agreement with the CSA.