On June 15th the directors of France Televisions, TF1 and M6 (Delphine Ernotte, Gilles Pélisson and Nicolas de Tavernost) announced the launch of Salto, a shared subscription-based internet broadcasting platform.
According to Le Monde, the three companies have agreed to invest at least €50 million in this new platform, which should start transmitting in 2019. Each partner will own a third, with some decisions needing to be made by them unanimously, by-passing the platform’s own management team.
Several subscription options will be possible: the first, costing between €2 and €5 per month, will allow access to all programmes on the three groups’ various channels and to premium services. The second option, €7 or €8 per month, will offer unlimited access to films, series, documentaries etc, thus competing with large groups like Netflix. This option will show mainly French-made films plus a few European. Each of the three groups will also maintain their free sites (France.Tv, MyTF1 and 6Play), which allow viewers to watch programmes a few days after transmission.
The idea of a free offer on Salto was not retained so as not to disadvantage internet service providers who offer TV boxes.
The president of the M6 group compares Salto to TPS, the satellite television package created by the same groups with Suez in 1995 to counter Canal Plus’ domination of pay television. Last November Delphine Ernotte suggested the idea of public and private channels sharing a platform to create a “French broadcasting team”. This type of public / private broadcasting alliance is not unique to France, similar reflections are underway in its European neighbours and platforms of the same type already exist in the UK and US.
Sources: Le monde, HuffPost
