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On 2 April 2014, France’s competition authority (Autorité de la Concurrence) re-authorised the purchase of D8 and D17 by Vivendi and Groupe Canal Plus, subject to a number of conditions. On 23 December 2013, the Conseil d'État had cancelled the Competition Authority’s approval, granted in July 2012, of the purchase of the channels D8 and D17 by Groupe Canal Plus (GCP) (see IRIS 2014-2/18). Procedural reasons aside, the administrative judge found that one of the five undertakings Canal Plus had entered into - on acquiring rights in respect of French films - needed to be reinforced to take into account...

On 12 March 2014, the audiovisual regulatory authority (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) issued a “firm” warning to the France Télévisions group further to comments made by sports commentators during the Olympic Games in Sochi. The group attracted the wrath of viewers because of a number of comments proffered by a former champion and a journalist who were both reporting on the figure skating events. A number of the utterances at issue referred to the physical appearance of the female skaters, such as “The costume’s quite an eyeful - and so is she”, “Valentina has loads of charm, rather...

On 27 February 2014, the court of appeal of Paris ordered Arte to stop broadcasting the bi-media programme Intime Conviction, thereby upholding the decision of the judge deliberating under the urgent procedure the day before. The programme began with a television film, broadcast on 14 February 2014, telling the story of a fictional character, a medical examiner named Paul Villers, who was suspected of having murdered his wife. The Franco-German channel achieved its second-highest audience rating of the year that evening. The second stage of the programme was the scheduled showing, between 10 February...

On 26 November 2013, the Court of Cassation put an end to the proceedings between the production company Endemol, the “inventor” of the audiovisual format of locked-in reality TV, and the company run by its former employee, ALJ Production, which launched the Dilemme programme. Endemol claimed that the programme, broadcast from May to July 2010 on the channel W9, adopted the essential features, both technical and aesthetic, of its own audiovisual formats and programmes, thereby creating confusion in the public’s mind. The company instigated proceedings against its competitor on the grounds of unfair...

On 16 January 2014, the court of appeal of Douai overturned the judgment handed down in January 2012 by the regional court of Lille in the high-profile case of the documentary entitled Le Mur (not to be confused with Dieudonné’s banned show!), which criticises the treatment of autism by psychoanalysis (see IRIS 2012-3/20). Three psychoanalysts had agreed, under the terms of an authorisation to use their images and their voices, to be filmed and interviewed for the three-part documentary. When the film was released, they had called on the courts to completely ban its showing, on the grounds that...