Chantal Barry welcomes us between two planes, in the cafeteria of the Sheraton Hotel in Roissy, right in Terminal 2. This busy businesswoman, 68 years old, with blonde hair and a dark suit, goes unnoticed among the other travellers. The public did not know her face, or even her name, at the time when she was one of the great figures of television. With her husband, Jean-Pierre, who died in 2018, she ran Euro Media Group for four decades, a key technical services provider in the audiovisual sector.
It was in their studios that we filmed “The Voice”, “Dancing with the Stars” and “Questions for a Champion”. With their cameras and mobile units we broadcast football matches, with their motorbikes and helicopters we followed the Tour de France.
The Barrys then sold their group. In 2016, these evangelical Protestants created a holding company, ZeWatchers, to invest in new companies and content that, according to them, would spread Christian values. Chantal Barry wants to ask herself what could intrigue a journalist in this story. She knows well that the answer lies in a name, that of one of her friends: Vincent.
Thanks to the Barry couple, Vincent Bolloré entered the media market in 2001. The State privatised the Société française de production (SFP), the main technical services provider at the time, a giant that crushed the market in which Euro Media was trying to position itself. discovery. The Barry couple and Vincent Bolloré joined forces to buy it. In 2002, the businessman had obtained a frequency on TNT to launch his own channel, Direct 8, and insisted on broadcasting it from the Bolloré tower in Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine). The teams of Chantal and Jean-Pierre Barry then took charge of building studios in the centre of the offices. Then, over the years, Vincent Bolloré had taken over the Canal+ group, Direct 8 had been transformed into C8, and both this group and this channel had become solid partners of ZeWatchers. Everything was going well until this summer.
“Benevolent programs”
At the end of July, the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) decided to deprive C8 of its free DTT frequency, thus sanctioning the mistakes and provocations of its star presenter, Cyril Hanouna.
However, C8 is not only the channel of “Baba”, as his fans call him. It also became a channel where Chantal Barry could install programs. “spiritual” distributed or produced by its company ZeWatchers: fiction and even reality shows, far from the outdated religious public service broadcasts. Thus, at the end of February 2025, C8 will stop broadcasting on TNT, unless the Council of State, contacted by the channel on September 19, speaks out against Arcom’s decision.
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