A thumb pressing the button “off” of a remote control. Nicolas de Tavernost went without words on Tuesday February 13 to reveal himself, on the social network X, that his career at the head of the M6 group was coming to an end. Thirty-seven years after co-founding the channel at the origin of the group of which he has chaired the board since 2000, the oldest French audiovisual executive will hand over the reins on April 23, when at the end of the general meeting of M6, the supervisory board will register his resignation. The current director in charge of commercial activities, David Larramendy, 49, who joined M6 in 2008 and has been a member of the management board since 2015, will then take over.
With this surprise announcement, Nicolas de Tavernost anticipates a release which could only have taken place in eighteen months, on August 22, 2025, the date of his seventy-fifth birthday. “It’s still more pleasant to choose the date of your departure, which, I remind you, was rather delayed than anything else”declares to World the manager, who had benefited from two extensions of the age limit to chair the management board of M6.
“The word succession is not taboo”, he assured last year, his difficulty in preparing his replacement was proverbial. After the former general director of M6 Publicité Robin Leproux, then the former boss of RTL Christopher Baldelli, the current general director of radio activities (RTL, RTL2, Fun) Régis Ravanas saw the position slip away from him in 2021, when the project to merge M6 with TF1 was formed.
“A new generation”
After having failed, the following year, to carry out this consolidation operation that he called for, then to lead to the sale of M6, Nicolas de Tavernost successfully defended, in 2023, the candidacy of the former “small rising channel” to obtain a new 10-year broadcasting authorization. “The strategic objectives are now clarified”he indicates, he judged “preferable to entrust the presidency of the group to a new generation who will have to carry out its transformation”. Once examined, the candidacy of Cécile Frot-Coutaz, general director of Sky Studios and former general director of the Freemantle production group, was rejected in favor of the internal profile of the advertising boss, considered more capable of “maintain the group culture”.
For the last time in his career, with his hair disheveled as it should be, Nicolas de Tavernost presented on Tuesday evening the financial results of the group with which his name had ended up being confused. He welcomed a net profit up 45% over one year (to 234 million euros, thanks to asset disposals), an operating margin of 22.9%, but a decline in operating profit. by 10.6%, due in particular to a falling turnover (-3%, including 1.5% caused by the decline in advertising) for the second consecutive year.
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