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On 16 September, Bouygues, RTL Group, TF1 and the M6 group announced that the proposed merger between the TF1 and M6 groups, announced on 17 May 2021, had been abandoned. The merger would have brought seven free-to-air DTT channels (TF1, M6, TMC, W9, Gulli, LCI and TF1 Séries Films) within the same group. The decision comes after the parties were questioned by the board of the Autorité de la concurrence (French competition authority) on 5 and 6 September. Following an in-depth examination, the competition authority noted that television remained a very powerful medium for the French...

The Reporters Without Borders organisation asked the Conseil d’Etat (Council of State) to annul a decision of 5 April 2022 in which the Autorité de régulation de la communication audiovisuelle et numérique (Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication – ARCOM) had rejected its request to issue a formal notice to the broadcaster CNews pursuant to Article 42 of the Law of 30 September 1986. Reporters Without Borders requested that the Constitutional Council should verify the constitutionality of Articles 3-1, 13 and 42 of the law. It argued that,...

Following the broadcast of the programme “Face à l'info” on CNews on 20 September 2020, the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (French audiovisual regulatory body – CSA) (now ARCOM) fined the broadcaster EUR 200,000 pursuant to Article 42-1 of the Law of 30 September 1986 after the political commentator Eric Zemmour said several times on air that foreign “unaccompanied minors” were “for the most part”, “thieves”, “rapists” and “murderers”. Eric Zemmour and the broadcaster both asked the Conseil d’Etat...

Under the Loi de finances rectificative pour 2022 (Amended Finance Law for 2022, law no. 2022-1157 of 16 August 2022), the television licence fee that funds French public broadcasters (France Télévisions, Arte-France, Radio France, RFO, RFI) and the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (National Audiovisual Institute) was abolished. The EUR 138 fee (EUR 88 in the French overseas territories) was paid by every taxable household and brought in EUR 3.7 billion to the state each year. It will be replaced by a percentage of VAT revenue until the end of 2024. In particular, Article 6...

The Fédération française de tennis (French Tennis Federation – FFT), the official organiser of the Roland-Garros French Open tennis championships held in Paris from 16 May to 5 June 2022, discovered that several websites accessible on French soil were broadcasting, free of charge, live streams of matches to which it held the exclusive broadcasting rights. On the basis of Article L. 333-10 of the French Sport Code, introduced under the Act of 25 October 2021, it filed a summons for urgent proceedings against the main Internet access providers in order to prevent the 19...