At the head of TV5 Monde, the opaque and surprising appointment of Kim Younes – Libération

As the Francophonie summit opened on Friday, the public channel, shaken by crises, saw the arrival at its head of a forty-something from private TV, married to an associate from Rothschild, specializing in Africa. A unique profile, designated at the end of a criticized recruitment process.

It’s the kind of job that is usually used to re-employ former government underlings or senior civil servants in need of glitter, or even to reward France Télévisions executives for services rendered. The presidency of TV5 Monde, a French-speaking channel little known in France but watched by 62 million viewers per week across the planet (including 80% of this audience in Africa), is seen as a quasi-diplomatic function, very focused on public audiovisual, since it is co-owned by the audiovisual media of several partner governments (France – for around 60% –, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Quebec and Monaco). During the Francophonie summit, which opened this Friday, October 4 in Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne), the future of the channel should be particularly discussed.

Hastened by the holding of this event, the announcement of the person chosen to succeed Yves Bigot surprised everyone. The presidency of TV5 Monde was thus awarded on Wednesday, unanimously by the board of directors, to Kim Younes, a forty-year veteran of private television, eleven years at M6 and a few months at the helm of BFM Business, before becoming he four years ago producer of fiction and documentaries. An unknown factor for many observers of the designation process, who expected to see someone disembark from the inner circle. The astonishment is even more present among the twenty candidates who tried their luck to become CEO of TV5 Monde, such is its number