“Public audiovisual governance: the return”. This could be the title of the new episode proposed, Tuesday, May 2, by Senator (UDI) Laurent Lafon. As part of a bill “relating to public broadcasting and broadcasting sovereignty”the chairman of the Senate’s Cultural Affairs Committee is bringing a sea serpent back to life: the grouping together of public broadcasting companies within a holding company.
It does not matter that the presidents of France Télévisions, Radio France or even France Médias Monde do not aspire especially, nor urgently, to this scheme which includes the INA (National Audiovisual Institute). It does not matter, too, that the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul-Malak, in the midst of negotiating the next contracts of objectives and means (COM) with these companies – which will set their budgets by the end of the year , but also their strategic orientations, for the next five years – has not yet decided on its position on the question. “There is an urgent need to move forward”argues Senator Les Républicains Jean-Raymond Hugonet, who co-presented this proposal filed “in his own name” by his centrist colleague.
The two men readily agree: their intention is not revolutionary, and “is strongly inspired” of the reform project carried by the former Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, who remained where the confinement of March 2020 left him: in the open countryside. Even the name of the future entity they call for, France Media, would be the one that had then been put forward. “This important subject has been covered by the Cultural Affairs Committee for a long time. It is astonishing that Mr. Lafon took this initiative without informing her or having her deliberate., storm David Assouline, its vice-president (PS). The holding company, whose president would be appointed by its board of directors and not by Arcom (Audiovisual and digital communication regulatory authority, ex-CSA) could be set up from 1er January 2024 – if the National Assembly were also to adopt it.
“That’s the meaning of the story”
THE “political time”due to an absence of a majority in the National Assembly and a “need to establish a dialogue” between the two chambers, seemed appropriate to the senator to advance his pawns. “We also know that there will be a need to revise the LOLF [loi organique relative aux lois de finances] » to perpetuate the device which replaces the fee, removed, he slips. The senator pleads for a public resource “fiscal, sustainable, sufficient, predictable”. Sor financing by a fraction of the VAT currently in force, the sustainability of which is already favored by the Ministry of Culture.
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