In a letter sent this Friday to the president of the Canal + group Maxime Saada, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak asks the audiovisual group to restore the broadcasting of TF1 channels on its TNT Sat offer which allows you to receive DTT channels in areas with poor radio coverage. “I appeal to your sense of responsibility and the general interest to avoid depriving hundreds of thousands of households of the reception of all DTT channels”, writes Rima Abdul Malak in this letter.
This ministerial request came after Canal+’s decision to stop broadcasting the free channels of the TF1 group (TF1, TMC, TFX, TF1 Séries Films and LCI) during the renewal of the distribution contract between the two parties, due in particular to payment requirement “very substantial pay”the group owned by Vivendi announced on Friday.
The Minister of Culture explains that she is “careful that the negotiations between publishers and distributors do not lead to blockages likely to compromise the access of all audiences to the free offer of digital terrestrial television” (DTT). Gold, “cutting off the signal of the TF1 group channels on the TNT Sat offer deprives people who can only receive DTT via satellite of access to the five free channels of the TF1 group”, emphasizes Rima Abdul Malak.
Four years ago already, the commercial negotiations between the two audiovisual groups around the distribution of the free channels of the TF1 group had generated this same situation of blockage. The cut in the signal from TF1 channels then caused an outcry among some viewers and led the Minister of Culture at the time, Françoise Nyssen, to summon Canal+ to restore the broadcasting of TF1 channels on the TNT Sat offer.