A former manager of M6 and BFM Business, Kim Younes Charbit, will be proposed by France to succeed Yves Bigot as president of TV5 Monde, the French-speaking channel told AFP on Tuesday, confirming information from Télérama.
Her candidacy will be submitted to the other shareholder countries of the international channel during a board meeting on October 2, at the end of which she could be officially appointed CEO, according to TV5 Monde.
Since its creation in 1984, TV5 Monde has always been chaired and managed by French people, with France controlling, via various public companies – including France Télévisions – more than 60% of its capital, also shared between Belgian, Swiss, Canadian, Quebec and Monegasque public companies.
A graduate of HEC, Kim Younes Charbit, 42, joined the program management of M6 in 2008, then M6 Publicité, where she headed the marketing, innovation and communication department until 2019 and her appointment as general manager of the BFM Business channel.
Having stayed in this position for less than a year, she has been running the production company Elvie, which she founded, since 2020.
Her appointment as candidate comes after several months of crisis within the channel and the dismissal this summer of news director Françoise Joly.
At the end of May, its CEO Yves Bigot announced that he would not be reappointed and that he would resign on June 30, five months before the end of his mandate.
The French Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs had launched a few days earlier an unprecedented call for applications for his position, which closed on June 9.
The current secretary general of the public group France Télévisions, Christophe Tardieu, has been acting interim since July 1.
His or her successor will have to tackle the 2025-2028 strategic plan, which envisages the entry of seven African countries (Benin, Gabon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville) into the channel’s capital and raises internal concerns regarding freedom of the press, according to several media outlets.
