25/02/2003

Florence Canta is the head of acquisitions at France 2

The general French context
“The group was formed three years ago. This public service brings together 3 channels: France 5, France 2 and France 3.
Inside the France Télévision group, the idea was that in the context of increasingly tough competition every year, the 3 channels shouldn’t have to compete between themselves for the youth audience.
So the bosses of the group decided that:
- pre-school programmes would be shown on 5;
- productions aimed at the 4-10 age range would be on France 3;
- programmes for older kids (11-14 years) would be broadcast on France 2.

The channel that has the most projects and the highest volume of production and more important financing is France 3. This broadcaster targets the age range that is covered by the highest number of European channels.
It’s budget is around Euro 15m, double that for the production of France 2.
Inside the France Télévision group, France 2 is considered to be the channel for drama. Youth programming is concentrated on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. 6% of the channel’s programmes are for this sector, with 41 hours of annual production on animation, and a total of 75 hours of this type of programme broadcast on the channel. They’re not large amounts.

As for the rest of the French audio-visual sector, there are private channels (TF1, M6, Canal+), and cable channels. The competition in the cable channel market is more important for youth programming. The audience of young people, spread across the whole day, has now reached 12%”.

What are the consequences of this for France 2?

“The fact that kids programming goes out on Wednesday and Saturday mornings has financial repercussions. The morning slots are considered ‘dead times’, and in order to maintain the financial balance of France 2, it’s not possible to go over an average investment of Euro 1,360,000 for a 26 part series of 26 minutes per programme.
The main investment of our channel is concentrated on ‘prime-time’ and is mainly spent on drama.
The fact that the channel has to concentrate on a teenage audience also poses problems. France 2 is the only French channel to have a strategy aimed at teenagers.
There’s a very similar situation in Europe. Most of the producers and youth broadcasters concentrate on the 4-10 year old age range. So it’s very difficult, in fact almost impossible to co-produce programmes for the adolescent market with other European broadcasters”.

What type of projects is France 2 looking for?
“The projects have to fit into a programme schedule which is mainly made up of “live” drama series for American, English and Australian kids….
The problem is to integrate animation shows in the middle of “live” series.
It’s only three years since France 2’s strategy has been clearly defined. The first productions with this new editorial policy are only coming on stream now. An example is ‘Wombat City’, the first 2001 production. It’s an animation series for teenagers: the graphics are strong, it deals with new subjects and the dialogue is based on humour.
It appeared to be too difficult to achieve these aims in an episode lasting 26 minutes. So France 2 chose to make each episode 13 minutes long. France 2 managed to integrate this series in the middle of other ‘live’ programmes, without losing audience share”.

What projects are being planned?
“Starting from September 2002, there’s a new series called ‘Les durs du mur’ (a 7 minute format that has never been done by France 2 before). It’s an edgy mini-series that as taken risks with the graphics. It’s about the adventures of a group of young people, set in an imaginary suburb.
The cartoonist Yack Foczniak uses humour. The project was done totally by an independent producer, who was also the author and director of the series”.

Cartoon Master Cardiff, UK, June 2002