Nicolas de Tavernost, patriarch of the French audiovisual landscape

And in the end, Nicolas de Tavernost wins. Who defies the rules, defies the forecasts and is preparing to become the CEO of the French audiovisual giant born from the merger of M6 and TF1. For a surprise, it’s a surprise. Admittedly, he had obtained, in 2019, that the age limit for chairing the executive board of M6 be pushed back (for the second time) by two years, in order to coincide the date of his departure with that of his seventy-second birthday. But August 22, 2022 was inexorably approaching.

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Only two months ago, in private, the man said he was monitoring operations while waiting to go out of business, as planned. Finally, the one who devoted thirty-four years of his life to the former “little chain that goes up”, the challenger of TF1, will conclude his career in a position that no one, six months ago, imagined seeing create.

M6, which he carried on the baptismal font for the Lyonnaise des eaux in 1986, before becoming deputy director in 1987, owes everything to the daring leader who left Sciences Po Bordeaux. Starting with its operating margin, which rose to 21% in 2020, the year of a global pandemic, when that of TF1 rose to 9.1%.

Strong advocate of consolidation

Renowned as a rigorous manager, not to say stingy, Nicolas de Tavernost never sought to make M6 the most watched channel in France, but the most popular in the “Woman under 50 responsible for purchasing”, preferred target of advertisers, and therefore the most profitable. In 2017, the takeover of RTL radios by M6 had no other goal than to create synergies, synonymous with rationalization of costs, and to bring together the powerful advertising agencies of the two groups.

A fervent defender of consolidation, eternal defender of a regulation that he assimilates to a straitjacket, Nicolas de Tavernost again pleaded, on April 7, before the Senate, for a relaxation of the rules which, if necessary, could undermine the integrity of the group he helped to build.

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We can imagine the septuagenarian with the eternal rebellious hair savoring with unfeigned pleasure the decision of the two shareholders (Bouygues and Bertelsmann) to entrust him with the presidency of the future giant of French television. Exactly twenty years ago, on May 11, 2001, The world published in “one” the furious tribune of his lifelong rival, Patrick Le Lay: while the leader of TF1 had agreed with its M6 counterparts from “To prevent the intrusion into France of the tele-dustbin”, the reality TV show “Loft Story” gathered on M6 pharaonic audiences allowing the channel to play, for the first time, “In the big leagues”.

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