10/11/2006

At a meeting on Wednesday of the follow-up committee headed by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), the three operators who signed the agreement on Video on Demand with French professional film associations on December 20, 2005 revealed its latest figures: 865 films including 395 domestic titles have been released on VoD.

At the end of September, Canal + (Canal Play), TF1 (TF1 Vision) and France Télécom (Orange 24-24 Vidéo) offered 865 titles on VoD (Video on Demand) compared to only 776 in August – an 11.5% increase in less than two months. This figure shows the domination of French films (45.7%, 395 films) over US productions (34.7%, 300 films) and also includes 52% arthouse titles.

The five new participants – Artevod, Club Internet, Imineo, Universciné and Virgin – presented their results to the follow-up committee and announced that the renegotiation of the charter on VoD exhibition regulations has begun.

One of the main requests made by operators is the alignment of VoD releases (33 weeks following a film’s theatrical release) with that of DVDs (six months), increased access to catalogues (MK2, for example, does not participate at all at present), and the launch of subscription formulas instead of one single downloading per unit fee currently in force.

Meanwhile, French professional film organisations are seeking firm production financing commitments. France Télécom has sent an encouraging sign in this regard, with the setting up a new co-production arm scheduled for early 2007 (see news). Public institutions also seem set on promoting initiatives for operators willing to participate in negotiations, as shown by the statistics announced at the follow-up committee.

France has 25 VoD platforms for over 3,300 available programmes, including over 1,000 features and approximately 2m fee-paying transactions in the first half of 2006.

(Translated from French)