BFMTV and RMC are officially changing flags: the acquisition of their parent company, Altice Media, by billionaire Rodolphe Saadé’s shipping company CMA CGM was finalized on Tuesday, marking a major upheaval in the French media landscape.
And this is already reflected in the departure of its leader Arthur Dreyfuss, announced on Tuesday evening.
“Not continuing at the head of the media group is more useful for the new shareholder, more relevant for the group and more coherent for me,” he wrote in a message to employees.
The former head of M6, Nicolas de Tavernost, will take over the interim. He was appointed vice-president of CMA Médias, the new specialist subsidiary of CMA CGM, in May.
Announced in mid-March to general surprise, the acquisition of Altice Media received the green light on Friday from the audiovisual regulator, Arcom, and the Competition Authority.
“After receiving approval from the relevant regulatory authorities, and following the announcement of March 15, the CMA CGM group and Merit France (the group’s family holding company) have today finalized the acquisition of 100% of the capital of Altice Media,” CMA CGM said.
Led by the Franco-Lebanese billionaire Rodolphe Saadé, the Marseilles shipowner had mentioned a transaction for an amount of 1.55 billion euros.
With this acquisition, Mr. Saadé and CMA CGM are adding a major stone to the media empire they are building, just two years after setting foot in the sector.
– Independence –
During this period, Mr. Saadé took over the newspaper La Tribune and the La Provence group (regional dailies La Provence and Corse Matin), in addition to holdings in M6 and the online video media Brut. Not without provoking fears in terms of independence.
In March, journalists from La Provence went on strike for 72 hours. They were protesting the dismissal of the editorial director, after a front page story on Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Marseille was deemed “ambiguous” by management.
On Thursday, the unions and management of La Provence signed a “charter of editorial independence and ethics”, which guarantees the protection of journalists against “any form of pressure”.
Also in March, Rodolphe Saadé had tried to reassure Altice Media staff about jobs and his desire not to interfere directly in the work of editorial staff.
Altice Media, which was called NextRadioTV until 2021, was gradually sold to Patrick Drahi by Alain Weill from 2015. The group includes the news channel BFMTV, the radio RMC and the TNT channels RMC Découverte and RMC Story.
– Competition from CNews –
Led by Marc-Olivier Fogiel, BFMTV was for a long time the number one continuous news channel in France. But in May and then in June, it was overtaken by CNews, a subsidiary of Vivendi, the group of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
While authorizing the acquisition by CMA CGM on Friday, the competition authority made it conditional on compliance with commitments concerning the advertising market in the south of France, where CMA CGM now owns La Provence and the local channels BFM Paca.
CMA CGM has also made commitments to Arcom. These relate in particular to “pluralism, honesty and independence of information and programmes”, the regulator indicated in a press release, while BFMTV is applying for the renewal of its TNT (digital terrestrial television) frequency.
As part of the green light from Arcom, two local BFM channels, BFM Lyon and BFM Alsace, must stop broadcasting on DTT to migrate online.
In fact, their authorizations dated from 2021 and 2023 respectively. However, the law prohibits the transfer of a channel within five years following the allocation of their DTT frequency.
The sale of Altice Media is part of Altice’s debt reduction strategy.
In addition to a significant debt, the group has been rocked for over a year by a corruption scandal involving Armando Pereira, its co-founder and head of the Portuguese subsidiary.
