Ara Aprikian has been Deputy Managing Director of TF1, responsible for content for nearly six years. He defends old-fashioned television against Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other Disney +.
Are you worried about rivalry with multiple subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) and video streaming platforms?
The competition with international platforms is now frontal and triple. It is editorial and economical with SVOD services because, with their considerable financial means, they are able to capture the best talents, exclusively, and create a very strong pressure on costs and on our audiences. Some do not even hide their ambition to “replace linear television”.
This competition is economic and social with GAFA [Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple] and social networks, which capture almost the entire digital advertising market without having publishers’ liability obligations. In doing so, they also become vectors of disinformation, “fake news”, even hatred, where we have the will to create social links, to embody peaceful pluralism and to contribute to national unity.
However, television, and TF1 in particular, is still popular with the public today – 50 million French people watch us every week – and has many advantages. To support the inevitable evolution of uses, we continue to develop in streaming, via our platform MyTF1 which has been enriched with a free video offer financed by advertising (MyTF1 Stream), and very recently ” a paid offer of extended replay, in high definition, without advertising (MyTF1 Max). And Salto, the unique SVOD platform launched with France Télévisions and M6, brings together the best of French television content.
Internet service providers (ISPs) distribute on their boxes not only your channels but also competing platforms: how do you differentiate yourself?
ISPs present content that invariably relates to platforms or linear channels, without it always being very easy to distinguish them at first glance. This phenomenon illustrates the increasingly direct competition between these platforms and our content offers.
However, TF1 sets itself apart by the quality and diversity of its program offering – local and exclusive. We are also developing new services for their subscribers for distributors. Thus, the MyTF1 Max service that we have just launched in OTT [sans passer par la box des FAI et moyennant 3,99 euros par mois au bout d’un an] will also be available to Orange TV subscribers.
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