TV5 Monde is looking for new shareholders. The French public chain has approached Monaco and Luxembourg to help spread its capital base, and the two small states could soon join other investors, France, Canada, Belgium, and Switzerland.
The money raised would fund the development of the international chain and a transition to high definition and live subtitling in French and English. The chain also wants to expand the distribution of its themed channels, Tivi5 World (currently distributed in Africa) and TV5 Monde Style HD (broadcast in Asia and North Africa), and a “World Tour of la Francophonie”.
All these developments are part of their 2017-2020 strategic plan, to be debated by current shareholders at the end of November in Switzerland.
In recent years, the chain had asked its shareholders to increase their subsidies, but this approach seems to have reached its limits, hence the search for new capital.
The public television services of the participating nations feed TV5 programming, but the situation would be different for both Luxembourg and Monaco, as these two states do not have a public TV channel. The Principality was a shareholder in TMC (Télé Monte-Carlo) until June, when it exchanged its 20 percent holding against 1.1 percent of French channel TF1, which held the balance in TMC.
Public grants that fund French public broadcasters, which hold two-thirds of the capital of TV5, account for almost 90 percent of the budget. The rest of its income comes from subscription revenue in countries where the service is a paid model, such as in the US, and advertising revenues.