This year, for Christmas, the giants of the PAF are looking gloomy. When it comes time to take stock, TF1, M6 and France Télévisions are not doing well, the public service even expects to end the 2024 financial year in the red, reveals an investigation by the Parisian. According to the French daily, the three television giants are suffering from an advertising sector in crisis as much as complicated news in France as in the rest of the world. In October, the advertising market showed a significant decline, while advertisers significantly reduced their budgets. In times of financial unrest, budgets allocated to communication are often the first to be sacrificed. This 2024 school year was no exception to the rule. According to a TF1 employee, “there has not been such a significant turnaround since Covid”. She still specifies that TF1 should get back on its feet, the company will be helped by the good first three quarters. France Télévisions also expects a significant drop in its budget, while the Barnier government is considering a reduction of 86 million euros in allocation.
What are the consequences for programming?
Faced with this precarious situation, M6, TF1 and France Télévisions must adapt their strategy and reduce expenses. This will obviously happen through a greater share of rebroadcast during prime time. TF1 will, for example, offer episodes ofAlice Nevers for the month of December as well as a TV film: By your side. For his part, M6 reduces the sail on new programs at the end of the afternoon. From today, a fifth issue of Un jour, un doc will be offered at 5:30 p.m. Entertainment programs should be the first to be affected, by budget cuts as well as a smaller share of orders. According to a producer interviewed by The Parisian, the envelopes allocated to the production of access programs have decreased by 20% in recent years.
Streaming to save furniture?
After the failure of Salto, the result of a collaboration between M6, TF1 and France Télévisions, the two public entities decided to go solo. In 2024, M6+ and TF1+ will emerge, with the firm intention of integrating into the consumption habits of the French. Taking up the foundations of an already rather extensive offering of rebroadcasts, the two rivals added some acquisitions as well as the possibility of reviewing historical programsin their beginnings. Koh Lanta, Top Chef or even The Voicea collection of programs are now offered in full to users. For TF1+success is there with 33 million monthly users. Such figures allow it to take first place in the ranking of the most popular SVODs in France, ahead of Netflix. But these results do not only concern paid offers, TF1+ having largely relied on free offerings accompanied by advertising pages to generate revenue. The group does not communicate the proportion of paying users.
If TF1+ represents all the same a financial strike force for the front pageadvertising is omnipresent, the reduction in advertisers' budgets should also be felt. For his part, M6+ displays a number of monthly users of 20,4 millionswith the same observation as for its main competitor, a free plan necessarily attracts more curious people. The firm's financial report for the 2024 financial year should be an opportunity to take the temperature. Last October, the group's advertising revenues showed a clear decline of 4.3% overall and 3.8% for the television schedule. Le Parisien's investigation can be found here.
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