BFMTV and RMC officially pass into the hands of the shipping company CMA CGM

Announced in mid-March to general surprise, this acquisition from the Altice group of businessman Patrick Drahi received the green light on Friday from the audiovisual regulator, Arcom, and the Competition Authority.

BFMTV and RMC are officially changing flags: the acquisition of their parent company, Altice Media, by the shipping company CMA CGM owned by billionaire Rodolphe Saadé was finalized on Tuesday, July 2, marking a major upheaval in the French media landscape.

Announced in mid-March to general surprise, this acquisition from the Altice group of businessman Patrick Drahi received the green light on Friday from the audiovisual regulator, Arcom, and the Competition Authority.

Led by Rodolphe Saadé, the Marseille-based shipowner had specified on March 15 that the amount of the transaction was 1.55 billion euros. With this acquisition, the Franco-Lebanese billionaire and CMA CGM are adding a big stone to the media empire they are building, just two years after setting foot in the sector.

During this period, Rodolphe Saadé took over the newspaper The gallery and the group Provence (regional dailies Provence And Corsica Morning), in addition to stakes in M6 and the online video media Brut. In mid-May, CMA CGM recruited the outgoing boss of M6, Nicolas de Tavernost, as vice-president of its new holding company CMA Médias.

But the construction of this new media giant has raised fears about independence. In March, journalists from Provence went on strike for 72 hours. They were protesting against the dismissal of the editorial director, after a front page on Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Marseille was judged “ambiguous” by management.

On Thursday, the unions and the newspaper’s management signed a “charter of editorial independence and ethics”which guarantees the protection of journalists from “any form of pressure”.

Led by Marc-Olivier Fogiel, BFMTV was for a long time the number one continuous news channel in France. But in May and then in June, it was overtaken by CNews, a subsidiary of Vivendi, the group of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.

While authorizing the acquisition by CMA CGM on Friday, the competition authority made it conditional on compliance with commitments concerning the advertising market in the south of France, where CMA CGM now owns Provence and local channels BFM Paca. CMA CGM has also made commitments to Arcom.

They are particularly relative “to pluralism, honesty and independence of information and programs”, the regulator had specified in a press release, while BFMTV is applying for the renewal of its TNT (digital terrestrial television) frequency.

As part of the green light from Arcom, two local BFM channels, BFM Lyon and BFM Alsace, must stop broadcasting on DTT to migrate online. Indeed, their authorizations dated from 2021 and 2023 respectively. However, the law prohibits the transfer of a channel within five years of the allocation of their DTT frequency.