The Salto video program platform is stopping, the France Télévisions, M6 and TF1 groups, which owned it equally, announced on Wednesday. “The France Télévisions, M6 and TF1 groups announce their decision to stop the Salto platform”, they indicated in a press release, adding that the legal representative in charge of its liquidation would specify “shortly the timetable for stopping the platform and subscriptions”.
“A specific communication will be sent very soon to Salto subscribers to inform them of the consequences on their current subscription,” they continued. According to them, Salto “to date has nearly a million subscribers”. This judgment is not a surprise: the future of the platform had been compromised for months and the abandonment at the end of September of the merger between TF1 and M6, to which France Télévisions had to resell its share to complete its budget.
“The complex and constrained governance of this alliance”
“This project stopped, the shareholders of Salto judged that the conditions were not met for the continuation of Salto in its current shareholding”, underlined France Televisions, M6 and TF1. They point to “the complex and constrained governance of this alliance and (the) refusal of most Internet service provider operators to distribute the platform like American platforms”.
“In addition, the expressions of interest received from several actors for the takeover of Salto could not lead to a concretization”, they assure. “The France Télévisions, M6 and TF1 groups have undertaken to make their best efforts to offer new opportunities to Salto employees”, after their collective redundancy, they continue. Launched in October 2020, Salto announced on its homepage on Monday that it was no longer taking new subscribers.