“The new TNT channels are doomed in advance”

While Arcom must announce this week the final list of projects selected to occupy a frequency, Alain Weill, who had submitted an application for “L'Express TV”, questions the choices of the audiovisual regulator.

After 10 years of deficit, the magazine L’Express is profitable again and plans the launch of a European version L’Express Europe have second semesters 2025.”This growth will only be sustainable if we take other initiatives” notes Alain Weill, its president. The weekly currently has 80,000 subscribers and 9,000 newsstand sales per issue, good figures compared to other companies which have been in decline over the last 30 years, but which have probably reached their peak. glass ceiling.

“With Express Europe, we will try to benchmark, for example, why does the education system in Finland work better than here? What is good about it?”

“It is a 100% digital magazine, a paid information site with newsletters in the 24 languages ​​of the European Union” explains Alain Weill. “Foreign newspapers will arrive in France, which will be an additional difficulty he notes, we have to take the initiative and we are going to go into virgin territory“. It will not be a copy and paste of the French version even if “part of the French content will be retained, but it will be an original editorial line to reach this European target” he explains. “The journalists will be European, he continues, a Spanish journalist will be able to work on a French or Portuguese subject and a French journalist on a German subject since everything will be treated from a European angle“.

Always with this aim of diversifying and with his good results, the president of L’Express had also considered a version on television, on TNT, L'Express TV. An application rejected by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom) of which it does not “don't understand the criteria very well, maybe they have good reasons, we have almost turned the page, we are awaiting the final decisions from Arcom this week” he confides.

The evictions of C8 and NRJ12, two channels which have proven themselves for 20 years, concern him and he also does not hide his incomprehension concerning the change in numbering to bring together all the news channels, “BFM TV and CNews have been suffering from new competition for five years and now, we are going to weaken them further, not to mention the two new entrants of the year who will be the last in the class at numbers 26 and 27 and who are condemned by advance“So, is he planning to challenge this decision?”We will look at the motivation for the different authorization decisions and we will position ourselves at that time, but today, we are focused on other projects and it is important to be in a very positive dynamic.“, concludes Alain Weill.