Precision : franceinfo.fr is the public audiovisual digital information offer. Its teams and their production, at France Télévisions and Radio France, are partly financed by the license fee.
On Tuesday June 28, the programs of television channels, public radio stations and the franceinfo.fr site were severely disrupted. Some of the employees were on strike against the abolition of the audiovisual license fee. A promise made by Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign, with the stated desire to apply this measure from 2022.
But what is this fee really for? What is its amount? Is it higher than with our neighbours? In four graphs, franceinfo helps you visualize what this tax represents, paid today by nearly 23 million French households, according to a senatorial report.
Two-thirds of the fee finances France Télévisions
The license fee is a tax used to finance the various public audiovisual media. In 2021, it made it possible to collect 3.7 billion euros. Two-thirds of this amount, or just under 2.5 billion euros, are used to finance the France Télévisions group, according to a recent Senate report. This group, of which franceinfo.fr is a member, is also made up of the France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5, franceinfo (channel 27 DTT) channels, the network of La 1ère channels on the overseas portal, or even france.tv slash, the online offer for young people.
The second beneficiary of the license fee is the Radio France group, which is financed to the tune of approximately 600 million euros by the license fee, or 15.9% of the total amount collected. The seven branches that make up the group are France Inter, franceinfo, France Bleu, France Culture, France Musique, FIP and Mouv’.
Arte France, the French branch of the Franco-German channel, is also the beneficiary of the fee, since a little over 270 million are devoted to it each year. A similar share of the license fee is allocated to France Médias Monde, an internationally-oriented group made up in particular of RFI radio and the France 24 news channel.
TV5 Monde, a channel aimed at the French-speaking world, is also the beneficiary of the license fee, up to around 80 million euros. Finally, the National Audiovisual Institute (INA), responsible for the management and development of audiovisual archives, is also financed by this contribution: 90 million euros are devoted to it annually.
The license fee accounts for more than 85% of public media funding
The license fee represents the majority of the financial resources of all these public media. More than 85% of the budgets of France Télévisions and Radio France come from this contribution. The rest comes mainly from advertising, but the latter is less present than on private channels or antennas. For example, she is absent on public channels between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The share of royalties in media resources even climbs to 96% for France Médias Monde and 99% for Arte France, advertising being non-existent on channel 7 of TNT.
The fee has increased by 16 euros since 2008 in France
The amount of the fee is now set at 138 euros in France and 88 euros overseas. This amount is due by each household with a television screen, or 27.61 million in 2022, according to a Senate report. Some people being exempt from the fee, in particular the elderly or disabled with low incomes, just under 23 million households actually pay it, specifies this Senate report. In total, therefore, 3.7 billion euros were collected in 2021. It is written into the law that the fee must be indexed to inflation, which explains the gradual increase from 116 euros in 2008 to 139 euros in 2018, in mainland France.
But, since 2018, this indexation has been frozen and the fee has even dropped by one euro in 2020, throughout the territory. The amount collected as part of the fee has also dropped in recent years due to the rate of household television equipment, which fell from 98% in 2010 to 92% in 2020, according to the recent Senate report.
The French pay less than the Germans, but more than the Italians
Do the French pay more than their neighbors for their public broadcasting? Not really, according to figures from the European Broadcasting Union, which calculates by country the total sum devoted to financing public media, divided by population. With an average of 50 euros per person per year, France is very far from the 131 euros spent on public service media in Switzerland, the 100 euros in Germany or the 69 euros in the United Kingdom. In these countries, funding is via a license fee paid by everyone, whether or not they own a television. But across the Channel, Boris Johnson has announced the abolition of the fee by 2027.
On the other hand, Spaniards and Italians pay only 39 and 29 euros respectively. In Spain, public television is financed by taxation, while in Italy a system of fees linked to television ownership, as in France, is in place. But if our transalpine neighbors pay less than the French, it is because advertising is more present there on public channels.