For public broadcasting employees, the pause was short-lived. While on November 20 deputies voted in favor of reforming the financing of public broadcasting, thus sparing France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde, the INA and Arte the budget scenario, the governance reform project has been relaunched the next day. In spring, the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, had to give up, due to the dissolution, her desire to group the different entities into a holding company intended to merge them immediately.
The merger is no longer relevant: the text “relating to public broadcasting and audiovisual sovereignty” voted by the senators on June 13, which the National Assembly must examine on December 17 and 18, refers only to the creation of a holding company, called France Médias. This would see the light on the 1stAhem January 2026.
A fervent defender of a rapprochement between public broadcasters, Delphine Ernotte, president of France Télévisions, would see her mandate, which will end in August next year, extended until the end of 2025.
“Is everything going to go as planned?
“With a law definitively approved at the end of the first half of the year, this would give the Audiovisual and Digital Regulatory Authority time [Arcom] initiate a nomination procedure for the presidency of the holding company”decrypt an actor in the file. And, if necessary, to Mme Ernotte to present his candidacy. The second chapter of the senatorial text, which covers topics other than public broadcasting, could be left aside initially to avoid prolonging the debates.
“But will everything go as planned? “, s’asks an interlocutor from one of these companies, recalling the threats that hang over Barnier’s government. Even if it were still in effect in mid-December, “The approval of this law with the support of the National Group, which does not want to strengthen public broadcasting but rather privatize it, raises questions”duck.
“A form of relentlessness”
According to several sources, Prime Minister Michel Barnier wants France Médias Monde (France 24, RFI, Monte Carlo Doualiya) to be among the future subsidiaries of France Médias. However, in June an amendment was passed that excluded what is also called “outdoor audiovisual” of the diagram; could reappear on December 11, during the examination of the text in the Cultural Affairs Committee. The objectives and means contracts (COM), which set the priorities of the different companies and the resources assigned to them, would be replaced by “multi-year strategic agreements”.
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