Channel-TF1, 1-0. In the confrontation between the Canal+ and TF1 groups since the beginning of September, The Paris commercial court allowed, on Thursday, September 22, the first to win an important point. No, Canal+ is not obliged to broadcast the TF1 channels (TF1, TMC, LCI, TFX, TF1 Séries Films), contrary to what the group wanted to have recognized when it presented, on September 7, an action in reference. The six legal entities that went to court were ordered to pay Canal+ 3,000 euros in court costs.
Since September 2, viewers who received the cover and their likes through Canal+, MyCanal or the TNT Sat branch (whether or not they subscribe to Canal’s offer) are deprived of it, because the two groups cannot overcome their business disagreement. . On the one hand, TF1 wanted to renew, by increasing its prices (by 50%, according to the opposing party), the distribution contract that had bound them for four years and which ended on August 31. On the other hand, Canal+ refuses to pay a penny to offer free channels to viewers.
In a press release released at the end of the day, the group led by Maxime Saada is pleased to have been confirmed in its fight for the court’s decision, and undertakes to resume the broadcast of free DTT channels [de TF1] for all your subscribers as soon as the latter [le groupe TF1] will allow it for free”. TF1, which announced that it was appealing this decision, was dismissed on the grounds that the suspension of the broadcast of its channels does not cause “illegal disorder” neither “imminent harm”.
“Changing the Law”
The summary intended to restore its signal only in white areas, where viewers can only receive free DTT channels through Canal+’s satellite television package, TNT Sat. The Court considered that TNT Sat’s offer was inseparable from the commercial contract. In fact, as the court recalled, nothing legally obliges Canal+ to distribute TF1. An anomaly that Roch-Olivier Maistre, president of the Authority for the regulation of audiovisual and digital communication (Arcom, ex-CSA), regrets and would like to repair.
would have to “consider changing the law”, advocated, on Tuesday, September 20, during a hearing before the Commission for Cultural Affairs of the National Assembly. It’s not normal, he felt she, that “viewers are taken hostage”, and deprived of their free channels, because of a commercial dispute. At the beginning of the conflict, the president of Arcom tried to mediate, but without success. Like the viewers without a subscription, the 5.4 million Canal+ subscribers will have to wait for the two competitors to find common ground to recover their channel offer as it was until the end of the summer.
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