French commercial broadcasters slam ‘unfair’ competition from pubcaster

Credit: Nathalie Guyon

French commercial broadcasters have grouped together to complain to the country’s prime minister about what they regard as unfair competition for audiences by public broadcaster France Télévisions.

In a letter to prime minister Elisabeth Borne seen by newspaper Le Figaro, TF1, M6, Canal+ and Altice, which operates commercial channels BFMTV and RMC, reportedly slammed the editorial decisions taken by the pubcaster to air programming that directly competed with commercial offerings on its flagship France 2 channel.

In the letter, as reported by Le Figaro, the quartet say that the pubcaster has been allowed to take advantage of an unbalanced regulatory regime to “develop an astonishingly commercial programming line-up on its big channels, in particular France 2” at the expense of programming more in line with its public service remit, which has effectively been ghettoized in smaller channels France 4, Culture Box or the group’s digital platforms.

Unlike France Télévisions, whose mission is set by a government decree that covers all of its output, the commercial channels have to sign separate agreements with audiovisual regulator ARCOM covering the output of each individual channel.

The commercial broadcasters, grouped together as the Association des Chaînes Privées (ACP), accuse France Télévisions of taking advantage of a rule that allows it to accrue sponsorship revenue from programming after 20:00, when advertising on the public channels is forbidden.

The ACP says that, through sponsorship, the pubcaster has been able to make close to 25% of its commercial revenue from programmes aired after the 20:00 threshold.

The group called for changes that would force France Télévisions to make programming commitments on a channel-by-channel basis, to clarify what is acceptable in popular genres such as sport, fiction and American cinema, and for a halt to the expansion of the pubcaster’s sponsorship and advertising activities.