These four very well-known channels have decided to throw in the towel and will disappear from DTT next year.
We already knew it since the summer: the C8 channel should disappear from DTT next year, following Arcom’s decision to deprive it of frequency from February 2025. While C8 and the band Canal++ of which it is a part have multiplied the appeals in recent weeks, the regulatory authority recently confirmed its decision. The last appeal filed by C8 (but also NRJ12, also suspended) before the Council of State was deemed “inadmissible” at the end of November, virtually sealing the fate of Cyril Hanouna’s channel.
Enough to put Vivendi and Vincent Bolloré, the owners of the audiovisual group, in a rage. The latter decided to retaliate in a resounding way. Canal+ announced this week the total withdrawal of its four pay channels from DTT from June 2025. A real bolt from the blue in the French audiovisual landscape. C8, the leading TNT channel in terms of audiences, will therefore not be the only one to disappear from the screens in a few months.
“Drawing the consequences of the withdrawal of the C8 channel, the first DTT channel, by Arcom and an increasingly restrictive tax and regulatory environment for the group in France, Canal+ announces the withdrawal of its pay channels from the TNT,” the group said in a statement released Thursday. Concerning taxation, the press release points to an “increase in its tax paid to the CNC”, the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images, and “threats to its VAT rate, which is directly linked to its status as the leading financier of cinema French”.
Concretely, Canal+, Canal+ Cinéma, Canal+ Sport and Planète will no longer be accessible by TNT from June 2025. These emblematic channels, which concentrate the best of Canal+ premium content (films, series, sport, etc.), will not be therefore no longer offered to homes equipped with a simple TNT decoder. CNews and CStar, the group’s two other channels on TNT, are not affected.
The approximately 700,000 people affected will be offered “the necessary equipment so that they can continue to benefit from all of the programs on their channels on other modes of broadcasting”. To have access to it, you will actually have to take out a satellite or ADSL subscription with Canal+. A shortfall in perspective, but above all a clever shift for the group, which intends to boost its subscriber base and prepare its IPO, as explained the Le Jours website.
This response in the form of a poker move is still a strong signal sent by Canal+ in its standoff against Arcom and the public authorities. It remains to be seen whether this coup will be enough to change the position of the audiovisual policeman, who must still reallocate in the coming days the 15 DTT frequencies for next year, from which C8 has been excluded.