11/11/2002 - Marin Karmitz, the head of MK2 and BLIC, accuses French state TV of neglecting film and audiovisual industries

Public service has abandoned cinema. In an interview that was published in the 8 November issue of French daily newspaper, «Le Figaro », Marin Karmitz, the head of the MK2 Group and president of BLIC (the office that coordinates the film industry) accused French state audiovisual media of “distancing itself from French cinema.”
Marin Karmitz was especially critical of France 2 and TF1. Despite being able to air up to 192 feature films per year, for the last three years France 2 has aired only 140 per annum while the number of films on TF1 is unchanged. Karmitz said, “pluralism of cinema should be found on France 2 and France 3 and not be limited just to Arte, the only publicly owned channel with an intelligent policy towards cinema.” Karmitz also said that the claim made by TV channels that “cinema does not pay” was totally unfounded.”The same people also said that French TV series had no future on television. If that had been said about cinemas, and we took notice of it, we would have failed in our intent to make the French film market profitable once more.”
The MD of MK2 is also worried about cinema’s dependency on television and he denounced the TV companies’ policy of vertical concentration. “The market continues to be disturbed by a system according to which television distributes,, owns the rights to and also produces films. We must return to a market where the profits are generated by cinema attendance, DVD sales and, most importantly, by the conquest of foreign markets and not only by means of television companies which have developed the concept of integration to an absurd degree.”
A powerful speech that is bound to give rise to numerous discussions over the coming weeks.

(Translated from French)