On October 7th Delphine Ernotte-Cunci, the head of France Télévisions, announced the appointment of Xavier Couture and Carolina Got to key positions within the public broadcasting group.
Xavier Couture and Caroline Got
Xavier Couture becomes deputy managing director in charge of France Télévisions’ strategy and programming. The press release adds that “digital, youth, sports, cinema, purchasing and studies will also be under his aegis.”
He succeeds Caroline Got in this post, while she becomes executive director of France 2, taking over from Vincent Meslet, who left France Télévisions two days earlier on October 5th “due to differences over strategy”, according to another press release issued that day.
Xavier Couture began his career in the written press, particularly the sports pages, before joining TF1 in 1988 as head of Special Events. After passing through La Cinq, he came back to TF1 between 1993 and 2002, first as channel director, then as director of both the channel and sport, at the same time becoming vice-chair of Eurosport France. CEO of Canal Plus from 2002 to 2003, he joined the production company Endemol and then Orange from 2007 to 2013. For the past three years he has worked as a producer, consultant and columnist, particularly on the programme On ne va pas se mentir for the news channel i-Tele.
Like Xavier Couture, Caroline Got also worked in the TF1 group, first from 1999 to 2004 for TF1 Vidéo as head of purchasing, then from 2004 to 2007 for the satellite bouquet TPS as head of pre-purchasing films. Finally from 2008 to 2015 she worked with two of the Group’s DTT channels, TMC and NT1, at the Directorate General. During her career, she has also worked with Unifrance Film and the London-based ECM. She returned to France Télévisions in August 2015 after a brief stint running France 3’s foreign drama unit from 2007 to 2008.
Sources: communiqué
