Vivendi’s Canal+ Group is fighting back against a decision over the summer by France‘s Arcom audiovisual and digital communication authority to strip its controversial C8 channel of its TNT frequency.
The pay-TV giant announced on Thursday that it would be referring the matter to France’s Council Of State, the country’s highest court for issues and cases involving public administration.
C8 was one of two channels, alongside NRJ12, to learn in July that it had lost its TNT licence in the renewal process. Arcom awarded these frequencies instead to new networks, Ouest-France TV’s OF TV and Réels TV, backed by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s CMI group. The current term expires in February 2025.
“C8 firmly opposes Arcom’s decision… such a decision by Arcom is unprecedented in the history of TNT, dating back to 2005,” the group said in a statement, noting that the channel had been operating for close to 20 years.
The Canal+ Group said the decision not to renew the frequency had impacted the channel economically and socially and in terms of its competitiveness in the market.
Although the channel can continue to broadcast, the loss of the frequency will likely hit audience numbers, due to the fact that around 20% of French households still access TV via TNT.
C8 has courted controversy in recent years for the populist and politically right-leaning agenda of some of its shows.
Prior to C8’s loss of its TNT frequency, the channel had racked up close to $8.2 M (€7.6M) in Arcom fines on various counts of lack of honesty and political plurality in recent years.
Particular criticism had been levelled at populist presenter Cyril Hanouna and his provocative chat show Touche pas à mon poste (It’s Only TV).
Earlier this year, left-wing deputy Sophie Taillé-Polian, who retained her seat in recent parliamentary elections, launched a campaign calling for C8 and its equally controversial sister channel CNews to be stripped of their frequencies, citing repeated sanctions against the channels for “disinformation, racism, sexism, incitement to hate, non-respect of pluralism and lack of honesty.” CNew retained its TNT licence.
In Thursday’s communiqué, the Canal+ Group said C8 had been hit by at least three “injustices” under the Arcom decision.
“First of all, it appears obvious that Arcom mainly intended to sanction the channel because of its “failings” linked to the program Touche pas à mon poste,” it said.
“The Authority has already heavily sanctioned C8 for this reason and nothing authorized it to repress it again, in the entirely different framework of the frequency allocation process.”
It added that Arcom’s behavior was “all the more shocking” because C8 had offered to introduce a broadcast delay for Touche Pas à mon Poste and said it was open to further obligations.
On announcing the TNT frequency rewards in July, Arcom said the decision had been taken in “the interest of each project for the public with regard to the priority imperative of pluralism of socio-cultural currents of expression”.
The Canal+ Group challenged Arcom’s definition of “public interest”, suggesting the body had ignored the some channels millions of viewers.
“It dismissed C8, which ranks first on TNT and attracts more than 9 million cumulative viewers every day. Furthermore, it necessarily ignored the fact that C8 respects and largely exceeds all of its obligations, particularly in terms of accessibility, the production of audiovisual and cinematographic works or even the broadcasting of new programs,” read the statement.
“C8 was a better bidder on all these criteria compared to many other applications. Everything suggests that a climate of hostility towards the channel and the type of programs it broadcasts reigned within the Arcom college. C8 cannot accommodate such a lack of objectivity and impartiality.”
The Canal+ Group concluded that the loss of the TNT frequency threatened the future of the channel, and the jobs of its some 300 employees, as well as the livelihoods of the production companies with which it had collaborated with for years.
“It would not be acceptable if C8 could not ask the Council of State to prevent such a massive and disproportionate attack on the very existence of the company,” it wrote.
“C8’s appeal aims to guarantee effective judicial control and allow the channel to assert its rights today before an irremediable situation arises with the granting of new TNT authorizations which should take place at the end of the year. while the authorization of C8 ends in February 2025.”
