France Télévisions will have a budget deficit of more than 40 million euros in 2025

For the first time in nine years, the board of directors of the public group approved a budget in deficit, to the tune of 41.2 million euros, which is notably the consequence of a forecast turnover down by 104 million euros.

Lhe board of directors of France Télévisions approved its 2025 budget, which “establishes itself in deficit for the first time in nine years”to the tune of 41.2 million euros, the public group said in a press release on Wednesday. This budget, drawn up from the finance bill prior to the government’s censorship and expected to be in the red for the first time since the arrival as president of Delphine Ernotte-Cunci, “is therefore making new, rigorous and unprecedented efforts while preserving the essential missions carried out by France Télévisions”the company said.

A law approved in November by the National Assembly – in the same terms as in the Senate – had perpetuated the mechanism put in place provisionally since 2022 to finance public broadcasting (France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde, l ‘INA, TV5 Monde and Arte), namely the withdrawal of an amount from public finances to compensate for the abolition of the license fee. Compared to the 2024 budget, the group’s forecast turnover is down by 104 million euros, a movement linked to the drop in public resources (-36 million over one year) and the decline in own resources (-68 million euros), after a year marked by significant advertising revenue during the Paris Olympic Games.

Compared to the 2024-2028 objectives and means contract (COM) concluded with the State, the forecast public resources even show a drop of 86 million euros, underlined France Télévisions. The company must also “to cope with the natural evolution of its expenses and shifts linked to various indexations and inflation, to the tune of 40 million euros”. France Télévisions, however, maintains “its major strategic orientations as defined in the COM project”that’s to say “its essential missions of information, presence in the territories and support for audiovisual and cinematographic creation”.

More “an extremely rigorous management policy” is in sight. The group thus “made decisions concerning the level of its workforce and control of its payroll, program expenses and investment projects”. The budgetary effort made “over the year 2025 will amount to more than 60 million compared to the 2024 budget”concludes France Télévisions.