A new public TV channel launched at the end of 2025 in Monaco

“SIf I had to do it again, I wouldn’t do it like that. “

During the last National Holiday, Prince Albert II did not beat around the bush in Monaco-Morning as for the misunderstandings arising from the creation of TV Monaco. “The prospect of being in the TV5 Monde network required us to create a new independent entity, but we could have gone about it differently.” Otherwise than duplicating the treatment of local and international news from the Principality, already raw material for the state television channel Monaco Info. “We are too small to have two different channels, it is not possible to compete on the same subjects”admitted the Sovereign, confirming having entrusted the care to the Minister of State, Didier Guillaume, of “group under the same entity” both channels.

A model for France Télévisions

When approaching the chapter dedicated to the Directorate of Communication and its 2025 budget of 6.325 million euros, this Monday, the vice-president of the National Council, Jean-Louis Grinda, inquired about the evolution of this audiovisual project, recalling his wish to see the emergence “an independent television” and put an end to a situation worthy of the ORTF (French radio and television office). Concluding: “This cannot continue”.

Didier Guillaume therefore confirmed the State’s desire to start from a blank slate next year. “On September 1, 2025, we will press the button and there will be a new independent public television which will not depend on the director of communications [du gouvernement]nor from the government, with a board of directors, a strategic advice of professionals, orientations, a budget, an advertising agency for additional income. There will only be one public channel which will be efficient and professional, but which will not be 100% financed by the public.

Last January, elected officials requested explanations regarding the 24 million euros budget allocated to TV Monaco. “The sum is more than 1% of state expenditure, the budget is more than 3 times that of the National Council. It is far from negligible”said elected official Franck Julien.

On Monday, his colleague Franck Lobono insisted by welcoming the “production quality” of the Monaco Info teams and its director, Geneviève Berti, “who cannot afford TV Monaco”.

Geneviève Berti to lead the redesign

Geneviève Berti who, from January, will receive a mission letter from Didier Guillaume, the Minister of State having “appointed as a precursor to the new television channel”.

In her proposals, the Director of Communications of the princely government will have to take into account the exit of Monaco from the TV5 Monde network. “We will have left TV5 Monde, or are in the process of leaving it, I don’t know if this can be done in the middle of the year or at the end of the year”the Minister of State revealed on Monday with a view to the launch of a new channel in September 2025.

Thirty-seven years after the creation of TV5 Monde in 1984, Monaco had taken 5.3% of the capital

of the international chain at the end of 2021, or 4.282 million euros, to become the sixth member country and funder of this network including France, Switzerland, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Canada and Quebec. Chaired by Kim Younes Charbit since last October, TV5 Monde went through the year 2024 against a backdrop of internal crisis, notably after an investigation concerning “psychological risks”

was opened.

If the Principality of Monaco leaves the network, the latter has potential “replacements” since a grouped membership (1 vote for all) of seven African countries (Cameroon, Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Gabon, Congo and Ivory Coast) has been under study for some time. Even if press freedom is violated in four of them according to Reporters Without Borders. *