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So Much TV, So Little Time, Not To Forget Money

Michael Hedges March 15, 2019 Follow on Twitter

The delivery of video to homes is fraught with anxiety, certainly among those accustomed to providing that service. Consumers, particularly home consumers, love their television. Without delving too far into the sociological, television provides a bit of entertainment, a bit of information and a bit of noise in the room. Digital technology came along, upending the choice process, and created a new social process, bigger than the living room.

very important dateSubscriptions to video on demand service Netflix overtook Canal+ by the end of 2018, according to Ministry of Culture data, widely reported in February. Netflix gained one and a half million subscribers through the year bringing its total to 5 million. Canal+ lost a quarter of a million for a total of 4.7 million. Quelle horreur! Actually, Canal+ had 8 million subscribers when subscriptions through various telecoms were counted.

This week (March 12) Canal+, owned by Vivendi, resurrected the CanalPlay SVoD platform, renaming it Canal+ Séries. Its offer, obviously, is TV series and for a price slightly less than Netflix. The catalogue of 5 thousand episodes is mainly Canal+ productions though some international series are included, mostly oldies but goodies like Twin Peaks and X-Files. Canal+ Séries will be available internationally.

TV fans in France have a myriad of visual opportunities. Amazon Prime Video offers the expected comedy and drama series and film favorites, from American Gods to Monk, a co-production with TF1. Orange Cinéma Séries (OCS) is a subscription video service from telecom Orange with much of the HBO catalogue, such as Game of Thrones, at a slightly higher price. OCS has about 3 million subscribers.

Coming soon, as they say in the promo, is Salto, the joint venture SVoD service of TF1, M6 (RTL Group) and public broadcaster France Télévisions. Salto was announced last summer. “Faced with global services, Salto will allow our users to access a wide range of services and showcase the best of French and European creation,” said France Télévisions president Delphine Ernotte in a statement, quoted by Variety (June 14, 2018). Each of the broadcasters already have video on demand services, thus Salto will be “complimentary.”

The idea of a competitor from Netflix in France came in 2015, a year after Netflix arrived. M Ernotte gained support from the France Télévisions board, not to forget politicians, and ran with it. Two years later (2017), she was still pitching for partners amidst several rather obvious problems. "We do not own the rights to the works we financed, and we can not afford to buy them,” she said to BFM TV (January 9, 2017). The project was put on hold, briefly, last year before an operating agreement was negotiated with TF1 and RTL Group.

But these joint ventures among broadcasters have almost become a business model. Fear of Netflix - more properly, fear of the idea of Netflix - is a great motivator. SVoD service BritBox from UK broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4 was announced recently. Scandinavian public broadcasters formed a co-production alliance in 2018 to bring bigger budget film and series product to market through the broadcaster’s individual online portals. At the same time Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT, the TV spinoff from Modern Times Group) positioned its Viaplay SVoD service against Netflix with sports and movies.

It is quite possible that all the latest hustle to launch video on demand services has something to do with a major Apple announcement on March 25th. Apple TV is coming and will be worldwide. But wait! The Walt Disney Company, recently expanded, will be putting the entire Disney library on its Disney+ video-on-demand service by the end of this year.

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