Convened this Tuesday by the National Center for Cinema and Animated Image (CNC) for a meeting on the chronology of the media, the Audiovisual sector remains very divided, even if the discussion made it possible to lay the foundations for a constructive dialogue.
Last January, French cinema and the main representatives of the audiovisual sector signed a new agreement on media chronology at the Ministry of Culture. For the record, this governs the dates on which films can be broadcast, online and on television in particular, in the months following their release in cinemas. These rules, which must protect creation, have been the subject of intense negotiations since the rise of streaming platforms, which are upsetting the situation.
Apart from TV channels, only Netflix, among other platforms such as Disney +, Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV, had signed this agreement. The Disney firm, precisely, had clearly tempered the enthusiasm.
“We believe that the new media chronology does not establish a fair and proportionate framework between the various players in the audiovisual ecosystem. This is all the more frustrating as we have increased our investments in the creation of original French content” commented the firm.
For the record, in September 2020, Disney had dropped the threat of boycotting cinemas in France. And it was not because the firm no longer believed in the big screen, but to avoid the constraints of the French media chronology, while largely promoting the meteoric rise of its Disney + platform. Latest threat to date: the possibility of not releasing its blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever…
“We ask the public authorities not to give in to the diktat of paid platforms!”
On September 28, the managers of the groups of the free TV channels TF1, France Télévisions and M6, published a column in the newspaper Le Mondedenouncing a “blackmail” of certain American platforms. Disney, not to name it: “As soon as the new chronology came into force, Disney, who had not wished to sign the text, reinterpreted it in order to remove the exclusive exploitation of free television”.
“Free televisions have played the game [des discussions] even though the arrival of these new players to international financial power is likely to subject them to increased competition. The channels have accepted that the pay platforms can broadcast the films before them despite the very modest additional contribution that these services agree to – of the order of 50 million euros per year, i.e. less than half of that of the televisions. free” they wrote.
Last June, Hélène Etzi, the president of The Walt Disney Company France, firmly stuck to her positions on the media chronology, judging, in a interview granted to the newspaper Les Echosthat she was “unfair, restrictive and unsuitable […] changes in film consumption patterns”.
And to carry out the threat: the firm announced that the Christmas Disney, Avalonia, would be a Disney+ exclusive. A decision that had provoked the fury of cinema operators, through the FNCF, the National Federation of French Cinemas. Disney’s positioning in France is all the more worrying for some Audiovisual players as the firm accounts for 20% of the French Box Office…
Media Timeline: The Last Burst Bunker
It is under this title that Pascal Rogard, Director General of the SACD, spoke in a post published on his blog the day after the forum of the leaders of the free channels in Le Monde. “To discover today that Disney can make the decision not to release its films in theaters, 8 months after the signing of the agreement, is still astonishing” he writes.
He pursues : “However, it is not the SACD’s fault for having said it and repeated it aloud when we decided not to sign in view of the risks that this new chronology posed to cinema attendance by impoverishing its supply of films carriers.
Beyond the “marketing” logics which can push a platform to reserve a major film for its subscribers in order to make its service more attractive than the competition, it is obvious that the rules reserved for the platforms and in particular the excessively long period after the room and the very short corridors of exclusivity granted to them are a complete foil”.
SACD’s position has remained constant since January. “PNo one can imagine that the terms of this agreement can today remain in force for a period of three years. The rapid changes in the sector in terms of supply, technology and demand will inevitably lead to a rapid evolution of the place of cinema in all the offers available on the French market. The conclusion of this agreement for a period of 3 years therefore appears both incomprehensible and unreasonable” then thundered its general manager.
Reform the system in place
If Netflix, which has 10 million subscribers in France, signed the January agreement, allowing it to broadcast a film 15 months after its theatrical release, and for a period of 7 exclusive months, the Redmond giant remains also in favor of further reforming the system in place.
“Our position has not changed. We are the only subscription video service to have signed the agreement. We did so in a constructive approach, as a partner of French creation” comments on the platform, in remarks reported by the newspaper The world. “But we said at the time that we could not be satisfied with a fifteen-month period for the long term. We would like, at the very least, to reduce it to twelve months, i.e. the period put forward by the Ministry of Culture before the signature of the agreement”.
It was in the light of all these considerations that the CNC conducted a meeting yesterday bringing together professional organisations, studios and platforms, intended to verify the terms of application of the deadlines set by the January agreement concerning the new media chronology, to which we have returned in detail here.
According to information from our colleagues Boxoffice Prothe discussions during this meeting proved to be constructive. “On the tightness of the broadcast window for free-to-air channels – one of the points criticized by Disney – the representatives of the TV groups reaffirmed their wish to benefit from a protected deadline, while agreeing not to block the whole of this window. A message well received by the studio, as well as by the other majors present, Warner Bros. and Paramount, whose streaming platforms will be launched in France in the coming months”.
Further reform the media chronology? Some have no real interest in it, like Canal+, which came out on top of the agreements last January. A next meeting is supposed to be organized at the end of November, after the still theoretical release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in theaters. But the noose is tightening. A review clause is planned for the end of January 2023, where the conclusions of all the discussions by then will be supposed to be drawn.
And the exchanges promise to be tough, against the backdrop cinema attendance at its lowest. In September, it painfully reached 7.4 million admissions; i.e. 20% less than in September 2021 and 34% less than in September 2019. This is the lowest level of attendance recorded since 1980, the first year of monthly statistics from the Center National du Cinéma…