Nomination to the presidency of France Télévisions: candidate hearings

- Good afternoon Madam, dear colleagues, under the provisions of the deliberation of March 11, 2025 on the procedures for appointing the President of France Télévisions, in accordance with the law of 1986, candidates are evaluated on the basis of a strategic project, experience and skills. We are therefore proceeding with the hearing of Delphine Ernotte Cunci, in two parts, at 2pm, with a first filmed part, lasting one hour, on the presentation of your strategic project, 30 minutes followed by an initial exchange with the panel. This recording will be available on the Arcom website tomorrow afternoon. A second part will take place behind closed doors, also lasting a maximum of one hour. The panel is made up of 8 members, Antoine Boilley having to withdraw from the proceedings as he was an employee of France Télévisions less than three years ago. It's 2:02 p.m. I'll give you the floor for 30 minutes maximum, and I'll give you a little sign when we enter the last five minutes. The floor is yours.

- Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, ten years ago, 70% of French people were first informed by the news broadcast. Today, 90% do so via their cell phone. Ten years ago, Netflix had just arrived in France. Twitter was a huge newsroom, Dailymotion was still thought to rival YouTube and Facebook was a social network for youngsters. Ten years ago, I was presenting my first candidacy for the presidency of France Télévisions, I had contributed to the rollout of cell phones in France and 4G, and I was convinced that it was in this way that the whole of society would be turned upside down. Arcom was still summoned the French Superior Audiovisual Council, and the main debate was how to differentiate France 2 from France 3. There was talk of digital lag. France Télévisions was under fire from critics, and its then president had not been spared, rather violently and unfairly. Ten years ago, I said, without really convincing anyone, that Google and Netflix were our competitors, not TF1 and M6. Five years ago, in the middle of Covid, I came to present a new candidacy, saying that France.tv should become the leading streaming platform and aggregate public service supplies. It seemed like a pipe dream, but today it's a reality. Ten years ago, some people were saying that there wasn't a crisis in television, but a crisis in the television set. In short, our business would continue as it was on mobile screens. With the arrival of connected TV sets, the TV set has been able to adapt, but not yet television. Regulation has developed, with the European Union adopting the DSA, the DMA and the Media Freedom Act. In just a few years, France Télévisions has developed its digital supply and embraced the times. This is the fruit of the commitment of all our employees, whom I would like to salute before you again and again. I never cease to admire their commitment, creativity and sense of public service. Despite the necessary savings, the company has been able to adapt. By giving me the time to act, you have entrusted me with the best aid for action: continuity. Management is all about time management. Keeping up with the times and maintaining tenacity in the marathon of reforms. Today, we're living through a crazy acceleration of which the last ten years were the premises. By 2030, generative artificial intelligence will have turned everything upside down. The way we gather information, produce content and interact with audiences will never be the same again. We need to prepare for this disruption. And the challenge is not just to stay in the race, but to stay one step ahead. So why another five years? Why come to you to ask for this mandate after a committed transformation for which you have drawn up a precise and documented assessment? I have one unshakeable conviction: it's imperative to remain contemporary in these turbulent times. When chaos is just around the corner, a sense of proportion is even more important. Just a few days ago, the President of the United States wiped out the public media with the stroke of a pen. A few months ago, we were wondering how to save France Télévisions from privatization. In these troubled times, television must be a rock, a hope, a space for reconciliation. We must seize the changes in society, watch out for weak signals, never take refuge in the ordinary. The strongest expectation is horizontality. Yesterday, with a limited supply, the word came from the top down, from Paris to the regions. Those days are gone, audiences have virtually unlimited choice, they are media players, and sometimes media themselves. We've gone from an era when a single medium spoke to the masses to a time when it's a permanent exchange. We need to turn France Télévisions around. Our digital success is indisputable: since the beginning of this year, and again in April, with 39 million monthly single visiters, we have become the leading streaming platform in France this year. The average age of our users is 47, at the barycentre of platforms. We now need to take things to the next level, as our platform is still seen too much as an extension of linear television. We can no longer think in terms of content without thinking, from the outset, about distribution adapted to each individual. I want to make France.tv the essential digital hub for our country, by 2030. This platform will necessarily be a hybrid, capable of offering live coverage of the country's events to enthusiasts, while offering flexibility with the widest supply of French and European content. Designed first and foremost for a digital environment, this content will be better shown on linear channels, showcasing the diversity of France Télévisions. This transformation has begun, but we need to go further. We need to simplify our branding scheme, as the BBC has done, with a single brand. We need to rethink our organization. We need to bring editorial closer to digital. It's our budget that needs to be reallocated: our investments will be focused on the platform, and we will give priority to funding the content that performs best and is most relevant. We need to take this horizontal shift seriously, not because everything is the same, but because we need to seize the developments of the times to continue to provide our audiences with the best programs. This applies first and foremost to information. Because the way people get information has been turned upside down, we need to respond to the legitimate aspirations of our audiences. We need a new contract for information, and I want to give continuous information its rightful place. Since its creation almost ten years ago, France Info has come a long way, and we've given priority to the race for relevance, which is an asset but also a constraint, because we can't give in to the ease of a quick audience. Our results have yet to come. We need to work more closely with our audiovisuel partners, and integrate the channel more successfully into the France Télévisions editorial team. For too long, the all-news channel has been seen as an appendix; now it must be the heart of France Télévisions' news. The global situation has changed. It's up to us to be the bulwark against the manipulation of information. No special interest holds us back; our only compass is the truthfulness of the facts. Your decision earlier this year gives us a unique opportunity. We will lead the battle wherever it takes place. Disseminating our supply is essential. With INA, our strike force, a sense of the news and a shared editorial line, we will contribute to a calmer public space. My other concern is to restore political debate to its rightful place. People say that debate is everywhere, but in reality, there have never been so few exchanges between politicians and citizens. At a particular moment in our democratic history, the public service has a responsibility to offer more regular political programming. Between now and 2030, we'll have municipal, regional and legislative elections in 2029. At a time of growing democratic fatigue, it's up to democratic audiovisuel to strengthen the link through regular, appropriate broadcasts. Elsewhere in Europe, campaigns are now taking place on TikTok, which challenges us to reinvent the forms of political broadcasting. We can combine the voice of citizens with expertise, confronting them with the challenges facing society. The Conseil d'Etat's decision in February 2024 gives us the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to plurality. The public service has a strengthening duty of impartiality. We are not here to represent one opinion over another, but to enable everyone to express themselves. And we must allow points of view to meet rather than exacerbate divisions. This is the price of democracy. Finally, we need to be firmly rooted in the regions. Bringing France 3 and France Bleu closer together is a democratic imperative, not an economic one. I have made the deployment of local services a priority. I believe it is our duty to fight agains the territorial divide. At a time when many public services are dropping, we need to ensure territorial equality and continuity everywhere. We've been doing this in overseas France for years, with stations that have succeeded. More recently, we've been doing the same in France, in partnership with Radio France. This means giving priority to digital, which is why I'm committed to concentrating all local supplies on the Ici platform. We have the people, the production methods, and we'll be able to deploy and cover the territory more effectively. We can be even more robust with alliances with the PQR. We've started to strengthen our relationships with regional producers, and we can go even further by improving exposure for local productions, especially regional and overseas documentaries. To remain contemporary, we need to move towards augmented television. Born in a world of scarcity, public audiovisuel should aim to be different. In an age of profusion, there is no choice but excellence, and in a world where everything has to be paid for, public service is for those who don't always have it. In the face of a race to the bottom, the challenge for public audiovisuel is to ensure quality for all. We will aim for editorial excellence by choosing creation. The Cannes Film Festival, which opens tomorrow, embodies France's cultural influence. I was keen to renew our partnership with France Télévisions, because I felt it was important to make it a popular event that rallies people around France's passion for cinema. I have the same ambition for French drama, which increasingly combines success and international influence. From Kaboul to Sandre, we have renewed and diversified our supply, and we must persevere. This desire for renewal needs to be carried through to the flow. We've started this editorial shift, but it's still difficult to get new writing to emerge. We need to bring out the French formats that tomorrow will be uploaded all over the world. Cultural exception is sometimes a complaint, even though it makes our industry one of the most creative in the world. I take it upon myself to defend support for a high level of creativity - it's essential. I think we have to do everything we can to preserve our investment in programs, because it's this vitality that keeps us contemporary. There is no greater mission than to showcase all cultures, heritage and contemporary creation. This ambition permeates our proposals, and our range of cultural programs will be constantly renewed to remain relevant. Culture box was an adventure during the period of confinement, and we were able to continue without touching the programming. It's an unprecedented breeding ground for talent. With Canal 24, it's a new ambition. 2024 was rich in emotion, from the Paris Olympics to the reopening of Notre-Dame, our screens dazzled the world. The event will be the future and the key to tomorrow's television. We're bringing the gaming back to France in 2030, and we'll be building on the experience we gained during the Paris Games. We need to look to the new generations. Staying contemporary means constantly evolving. We can all see how our children or those close to us consume programs. Imagination and inventiveness are a must. My editorial priority is to reach out to these youngsters and adapt our formats to their needs. I want to continue to increase our investments, and forge solid relationships with youngsters, first and foremost with French animation, an essential pillar. The talents of tomorrow are sprouting on YouTube today, and I'm not one of those who's content with that. They often no longer need television to emerge. Knowing how to detect them, how to work with them, also means being one step ahead. To play our part with youngsters, we also need to address the fundamental issue of screen time. Every day there is a new health warning about this scourge, and public television has a particular responsibility to promote sensible, appropriate screen time, especially among youngsters, who are particularly concerned by mental health challenges. Broadening our audiences also means better representation of everyone. We must not relax our efforts on the representation of women in front of and behind the screen. We still have a way to go when it comes to the role of the working classes. It's a daily fight, sometimes mocked or scorned, but I'm fully committed to it, because fair representation for all is a key issue for television. Our excellence goes hand in hand with our economic requirements. After ten years of a balanced budget, I have resolved to adopt a deficit budget in 2025. We must remedy this situation as quickly as possible. A public company must balance its books. We don't yet know our budget pathway, but we do know the extent of the crisis in public finances. France Télévisions knows how to make savings - we've made many, and we know we'll have to continue to do so. But we've reached a stage where it's illusory to cut back little by little on the same organization, and we need to rethink the manager. Between now and 2030, our economic imperative is to reduce production costs. To produce as much, we'll have to produce less. Lighter technical means and automation are opening up new possibilities. Artificial intelligence will redefine the contours of production. It's up to us to make the most of it. It's a reality we all have to face, producers and employees alike. I was talking about new ways of sharing value with producers, but they have to commit to saving money. I've shown that we know how to renegotiate historic contracts. We will continue to do so. Within the company, we're going to work differently. A new collective agreement is necessary to ensure the future of public television and preserve its employees. Only dialogue and clear-sighted anticipation can prevent abrupt developments. Transparency is essential to any transformation in an otherwise turbulent environment. This requires stronger, more solid alliances. For several years now, I have been working to strengthen our European integration with other public services. I have the same determination for the French-speaking world with TV5 Monde, and even if there have been clashes in recent years, I have never wavered from my conviction that strengthening our ties with the private sector is the only way to remain strong. The recent creation of the Filière audiovisuelle is an excellent way of ensuring that the audiovisual industry speaks with one voice. It's unusual to present a project for France Télévisions to you today without mentioning the holding company currently under discussion in Parliament. As far as I'm concerned, there's no mystery about it - it's the way things have always been. Since the first day of my action, I've been in favor of rapprochement, as I was for France Info, so that France 3 and France bleu could become Ici. The road we have travelled has led to this merger, by adapting our structures and reducing our costs. I understand employees' concerns, especially in the current economic climate. But I believe, on the contrary, that a holding company would protect public audiovisuel and act as a deterrent to privatization. Whatever the parliamentarians' choice, you can count on me to defend the spirit of union. I believe in a strong public audiovisuel and will do everything in my power to defend it. If you place your trust in me for a new mandate at the head of France Télévisions, I will launch this project without delay, opening discussions with the unions as quickly as possible to define a new social managerial framework, and discussions with the State on the budget pathway. As of August 22, I will be implementing 5 priorities, firstly for France Info, with an expanded schedule and a new studio. I want to see the channel increase its output as of next season. Then there's the project for a new organization combining digital and content to speak to everyone, and to excel in distribution.

Shift France Info's regional content to the Ici platform, clarifying the promise of this supply with uniquely local content over the coming months, to gain in success. Then rebuild a cooperation plan with public audiovisuel partners, based on the conclusions of the Bloch mission. If you place your trust in me today to preside over the destiny of this fine enterprise, I hope that this mandate will be one of handing over the baton to a new generation. I want public television to be a point of reference for people growing up in a world saturated with screens, a beacon they can find again and again throughout their lives. I hope that among today's creators, the poets who want to change the world through the power of their imagination, hope is summoned by France Télévisions. I hope that in a world where war is rearing its ugly head, those with a taste for clarity and a thirst for information will know that there is a free medium where they can respondent without hindrance, from the end of the world to the corner of the street. Let the youngsters who enter the world of work come to build the television of tomorrow, and let the managers of tomorrow's company emerge from among them. Public television has a rich and dense history, built after the war by those who wanted to shed a new light on mankind, who believed that better information for everyone would ensure peace. It has been given a new lease of life to become a place of difference and cultural excellence. I am a candidate to build its future. Thank you for your support. -

- Thank you very much. We'll now move on to an initial discussion with the members of the panel. And any questions they might have for you. Let's start with Juliette Théry.

- Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you Madame for your very clear and interesting presentation. I have a question about the publishing business, in a world where the public increasingly has direct access to programs, either directly via purely digital supplies - as you said, YouTube is a competitor of France Télévisions - or via platforms that are increasingly moving towards a hybrid publishing and distribution model. So in this context, and these developments, how do you see preserving a supply and access to an editorialized supply, i.e. a selection of programs, of public service content that have all the characteristics of public service programs, which you have described in detail? And more concretely, how do you see the link between the publishing activity, i.e. program selection, and a distribution activity that tends more towards exhaustiveness, in this context of hybrid platformization? Thank you.

- This is a central question for the years to come. Our activity as a publisher is obviously paramount, in other words, it's the very justification of our existence to be able to have a supply policy in the first place - we propose programs of our own accord - and to know how to editorialize them, firstly so that as many people as possible have access to them, and also to enable them, as of the discovery of a documentary or a drama, to go a notch further, to continue to pursue either knowledge, the acquisition of knowledge, or reflection a little further with other programs. So to preserve this supply, this publishing activity, the central point for me is really to build around the France.tv platform. That's why we recently opened it up to all our public audiovisuel partners. Today, we're bringing together Arte, INA, soon the parliamentary channels, TV5 Monde, and I think we'll have to go even further by hybridizing formats, welcoming text, podcasts, and showcasing Radio France's magnificent podcast supply on television. So we're already consolidating and building on what is already our first channel, France.tv. That's why I'm proposing a different organization, to really put this platform at the heart. In terms of distribution, there are two different things. There's how we show France.tv, how we're present on all connected devices. I believe that if we want to make television exist more widely in universes where the competitors are Netflix, Disney, etc., we need to go further with partners, to have this portal of general interest, to enable one-click access to linear channels and to the completeness of our supplies on the France.tv platform. And then there's the brand. Another distribution method is to distribute content separately from the platform. I think we need to do this more, because it's an obvious way of reaching youngsters who are watching less and less traditional media, and who are increasingly on YouTube and TikTok. We're going to have to find ways of using YouTube to complement what we have on France.tv, and even, for certain works, what we've already started to do, their works in their entirety, when we know that audiences can only be reached by these means. But this raises the question: are we recognized when we're on YouTube? Do we know that it's France Télévisions? Will it encourage someone who watches content on YouTube to go to the France Télévisions platform tomorrow? That's why I think the brand movement we've made, and will continue to make, is essential. You have to be recognized, and that's all the more difficult in the environment we're facing. So yes, the brand needs to be better recognized, and that's why we're going to have this France.tv brand. - In the same vein, you mentioned the reorganising, the premium pole, etc., as it's connected to the question asked, if you could elaborate on the underlying idea. Why isn't this already the case? What do you propose to change? - We had a pretty strong revolution in 2018 when we decided to move from a channel logic to a much more holistic one, we reorganised the direction of antennas and programs no longer by channel but by programme type. And we were right to do so, as it enabled us to offer a much more eclectic supply at all times. And I think that this way of working has had a lot to do with the improvement in audiences and market share in linear programming. But today, we're faced with a slight limitation: in concrete terms, programs are designed primarily for the linear channel, which is the first reflex. Of course, we're also thinking about the platform, because we're editorializing it, and we're thinking about social networks, because we're putting in extracts, we're cutting up the 8 p.m. newscast, for example, to give access to the different subjects on social networks, but that's after the fact, I'd say. But I think we need to think in digital terms first. Let me take a very concrete example. I'm talking about political broadcasts. In Romania, it was TikTok that did the political broadcast, not the private, traditional media. What does it mean in 2027 to have a political program that isn't also thought out at the same time with its declination or formats, which can be quite different on YouTube, where you can have long formats, or on TikTok extremely short formats? So right from the program design stage, we need to integrate different formats and distribution methods. It seems complicated to me to do this without shifting the weight of the body towards digital, without ensuring that the digital department, which today is a department in its own right, doesn't spread out to all the other departments involved in broadcasting and programming. So I'm not presenting an organizational diagram, but an organizational philosophy, and that's why I'm proposing that we put this project on the table with the teams who are currently in charge, and that we define the outlines. The aim is to shift the weight of the body from linear to digital. And to think first about content for the France.tv platform. - Thank you, Romain. Romain Laleix? - Madam, you mentioned the 2025 budget deficit, and the need to return to balance in a context of very tight constraints on public finances. Can you tell us more about your priorities for allocating the company's means, and the savings or new resources you envisage to deploy your strategy while guaranteeing France Télévisions' economic sustainability? - Well, the Board of Directors voted for a deficit budget in December because, at the time, there was no intelligent solution without touching public service missions, which the authorities didn't want us to give up, and rightly so in my view, there was no other solution than to have a deficit, which can only be temporary, because it's not possible to have a public company in deficit. What are the constraints? We're in discussions with the government, but I have no idea what the financial pathway will be. First and foremost, I think we need to preserve our programs. As I said, we've made a lot of savings, staff cuts and also a lot of reductions in program costs. A medium that continues to cut program costs is depriving itself of the creativity and abundance needed to remain relevant in a world where formats have to be created for YouTube and TikTok. We're going to need that creativity. If we don't want to make cuts to our programming budget, it's imperative that we rethink the way we operate. We know that we're going to have to get rid of some obstacles. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, because we've got some obstacles today that are no longer justified, I think we need to be able to resize certain means in line with activity. We're also going to have to reduce certain means, certain production means, because we can, today. And we're going to have to work once and for all, to break with what's holding us back and really move towards multi-skilling. What's holding us back today is the social agreement we've been working on since 2013, which was necessary. I'm not criticizing the 2013 agreement, but today, 12 years later, professions and technologies have changed, artificial intelligence is everywhere and will be even more so tomorrow, so we're going to have to redefine the managerial framework. From my point of view, it's all this that should help reduce the personnel costs we incur to run our business. You also mentioned additional resources. I don't think so... Additional advertising resources. It's true that we're in the middle of discussions with certain major platforms to distribute the France.tv universe. That's additional revenue. I also think that if we have a digital-first vision, which is what I want, there are opportunities that we're not taking advantage of. I'll take a simple example: the reopening of Notre-Dame. It was two days of images that interested the whole world. What's stopping us from making an ephemeral, event-driven channel? At the time of the Olympics... We didn't even think about it at the time, because we weren't thinking in terms of how to reach the widest possible audience, or how to ensure that the event would be distributed as widely as possible. So I think there are also additional revenues to be had from distribution in general. - Catherine Jentile? - You've talked a lot about news, explaining that you want it to be a center of excellence, and that you want to give it back its letters of nobility by putting a lot of emphasis on France Info. But in the world you've described, with the emergence of platforms, artificial intelligence and fake news, what is the process you're going to put in place to fight agains such interference? You mentioned the upcoming elections, and we know there will be a lot of interference. What processes have you put in place, or are you going to put in place, to ensure that France Info is a reference in this area of information? - You're right to say that tomorrow's challenges are important, and we obviously have some... I'm well aware of that. Over the last few years, I'd say we've developed a pole of expertise in the detection of false images and the verification of false images and videos. And in this respect, artificial intelligence can help us. We work very well with the Radio France agency, which also has a real center of excellence in fact checking, and in particular it's the agency that checks everything that appears on France Info. At INA, we have great specialists in artificial intelligence. So that's what I'm proposing in my project, I think we need to bring together these capabilities, with their particularities, but that we need to be able to have a tri-media audiovisual pole, which is capable of detecting false videos, images, erroneous textual information. And we already have teams. And getting them to really resonate with each other seems to me to be an essential first step. - Thank you very much. Bénédicte Lesage? - Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam, you haven't mentioned it yet, but you mention it clearly in your dossier. You want France Télévisions to set an example in terms of ecology, with the aim of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Can you give us the main measures to achieve this? And just as importantly, and as part of your responsibility as a public service broadcaster, how do you see editorial developments strengthening information and awareness-raising among youngsters about the ecological transition? And lastly, after I stop I promise, you talk about strengthening the use of AI. How do you plan to combine the advantages it can bring with the need for environmentally sustainable use? Thank you. - So, this is a very important subject, I'm going to start with editorial development and then I'll come back and talk about AI, of course. It's been a very important topic over the last few years. In all genres, be it drama, documentary or news, we've renewed and expanded our coverage of global warming and the practical ways in which our fellow citizens can fight this scourge on a daily basis. In terms of information, we've created a weather and climate service, and every day now, we have a weather bulletin that systematically talks about this, we've renewed our documentaries, we have major news programmes, major events, and soon, a major event on the oceans in June. This will remain a priority in our editorial line. Internally, there are several things. First of all, in production, as you know, we've been leaders in Ecoprod and Vendargues, which is a very important manufacturing center for us, fully compliant with the Ecoprod label. Vendargues has been extended, and we're delighted that M6 will be entrusting us with the production of its daily soap opera. I think Vendargues has been a pioneer in ecoproduction, and that's not for nothing. We need to convince ourselves and our ecosystem to adopt these eco-production standards. After that, I think there are things we can do in our day-to-day business. And to take things a step further, we've launched a citizens' convention on ecology and how, and what very concrete proposals could come out of this citizens' convention that we, as management, could commit to taking in order to contribute to what the company produces in terms of greenhouse gases. We took the gamble of making a citizen's convention, i.e. not relying on specialists because in each department, there are correspondents who have this as part of their responsibilities, but we're going to have to convince everyone, perhaps those who aren't yet convinced. We drew lots - and in this respect it's similar to the Citizens' Convention scheme - for 80 employees who will be brought together in several seminars over the course of the year to decide on a roadmap for the company. - On AI? - AI, well, AI, today, it's still rather beastly, it's still the hammer to crush the fly. You ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, for the address of the Arcom, and you spend a lot of energy for information that everyone else knows. But since there's been a recent move, perhaps you should check. It's pure beastliness. I think it's going to develop. In some adjacent professions, we're already seeing much more specialized AI engines, which take up less energy. For example, if you're EDF and you need a language model to interact with your customers on your bill, you don't need to have ingested the whole of Balzac and Proust to interact with your customer. Because it's not possible to maintain a scheme that consumes so much, there are already means to reduce consumption, like the Chinese who, it seems, have a process that's already more economical, and even, I think there will be little language models adapted to each situation that will enable us to be efficient on the situation without consuming what it consumes today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Denis. Denis Rapone. We have about twelve minutes left before the end of this first part. And then Benoît Loutrel.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam, in your presentation, you talked about plurality as defined by the Conseil d'Etat, with a requirement that is global. According to this ruling and the law, pluralism cannot be reduced to a mere restitution by the Palais Royal of all programs for all participants. How do you see the company taking this new requirement into account? - It's all the more important for us because, as a public service, we have a strengthening duty to set an example in terms of plurality. First of all, I think that, in the Conseil d'Etat's view, this goes beyond political speaking time, and even beyond election time. And we need to ensure a balance, necessarily always unstable, between the themes addressed in the various daily newspapers, in the various weekly magazines, in the various news programmes, their angle and the diversity of the personalities brought in to speak on these various programmes. And secondly, I think that plurality, for us, means going beyond ensuring that all opinions are expressed, it means ensuring that opinions are expressed with nuance, and that there is no reductionist, confrontational vision of the same theme. But to succeed in bringing the complexity of some people's solutions and the complexity of others' solutions into the debate. These are the things we need to succeed in putting in place. We have to report on them too. We've decided to make available, at regular intervals, the list of speakers on our various programs, the list of themes that have been tackled, so it won't be enough to prove plurality, but it's a way of being transparent, which will also encourage each producer, each person to ask themselves: have we really covered the whole spectrum? Have we focused on just one angle? Firstly, I believe in two things: we need internal debate. This debate is necessary, it takes place regularly, obviously, we don't always report on it. I know that just after October 7, at Arcom, you invited the heads of information to discuss how to deal with this highly inflammable subject. I think this is a step in exactly the right direction. I was wondering whether, in the same vein, we shouldn't also have a stronger form of mediation, because conflict is increasing in volume and aggressiveness, and I was wondering whether, in addition to these preliminary discussions, this collective way of dealing with subjects which is essential, the more complicated it is, The more complicated it is, the more we need to discuss it together, but if there wasn't also a renewed place to be given to the ethics committee, which is called upon when there's a controversy, but relatively little in the end, and if this ethics committee, between us, irreproachable, which doesn't come under the control of France Télévisions, so really ... If we couldn't also call on it at those moments when we're asking ourselves questions, perhaps as a preliminary, or even as a mediator, to prevent all these conflicts we see emerging from ending up in the courts. There's something to be invented around mediation with the ethics committee. I think that we ourselves need to be more in dialogue with our audiences and create a digital mediator, like the mediator who answers letters, in this age of social networks. We need to interact on a more regular basis.

- Benoit Loutrel? - I wanted to come back to the subject of information, the transformation of digital space and social networks. You say in your strategic plan that we need to recognize that the major social networks have become media. I share this idea, even if it's disturbing. I ask myself the same question about generative artificial intelligence. When we meet high school students, for them, it's natural. We'll have to reform their energy inefficiency, but I'm not sure we'll be able to fight it. My question: do we need to go a step further? Will France Info have to invent new incarnations specific to social networks in order to move into this instantaneous time that we don't have on the news channels? How far should we go on this subject? Thank you.

- On AI, we have a collective approach, it's a subject I discuss a lot with my European public service partners and beyond, because last week we made public a joint platform of demands vis-à-vis the tech giants, with the world's largest print media association. So we're speaking with one voice, public, private, print and audiovisual. And that's important. We have a number of prerequisites, and I agree that we can't do without existing in the different language models, but not under any conditions. We need to ask for permission, first of all, so that content isn't absorbed - it is today, but tomorrow it won't be without agreement. And that it doesn't happen without value distribution. And what the French press produces every day... Now we're getting into a problem. We have a certain number of demands of this type, but we're also opening the door by saying that we want to negotiate with these major artificial intelligence platforms, we want to discuss with them to see how we can find compromises on both sides to be stakeholders in these search engines that already exist today, and perhaps in these media tomorrow. Do we need different incarnations? Of course. - Public service influencers. - On the children's and teenage newspapers that we already have, that we publish, that we make available on YouTube every day, these are different incarnants. But yes, we need to learn how to work with influencers, learn their codes and find a way to operate. And by that I mean that if we work with an influencer who doesn't need France Télévisions to exist, they have to respect our ethical rules. So we have to find means to work with our own journalists, or with external influencers who will retain their freedom, but in compliance with our ethical charters. So yes, it's a whole new world to invent.

- Thank you Laurence Pécaut-Rivolier. Four minutes left.

- You mentioned child protection, a burning, topical issue. France Télévisions has always taken part in awareness raising and prevention campaigns, but beyond that, what more can France Télévisions do to highlight the need to protect children?

- We can take prevention a step further. Today, when a child watches a cartoon on the Okoo platform, parents can limit access time. So we're going to import this way of doing things into the France.tv universe, to set screen time limits based on the profile of the person logging on. And also warning messages when we know that a teenager who is no longer a child, but has been watching for a long time, to put a little message saying it's time to stop. I think that the better we know these audiences, and on France.tv, the platform, we know our audiences, the better we'll be able to prevent excessive consumption of these uses. But that's not enough, there's also the editorial supply, and taking into account this major issue, which goes hand in hand with the issue of mental health, which is deteriorating sharply among teenagers and youngsters who have experienced Covid. I think this is a subject for documentaries and dramas that still needs to be tackled, and it's a subject that's on the rise because children and parents are often at a loss when it comes to these issues.

- Thank you for your time. We're at 59 minutes, so I think we can leave it at that for this first part of the hearing, unless there's a very quick last question. So, thank you very much, we're going to end the recording of this first part. And let's move on while we make a few technical adjustments. I'm going to ask you to be a little patient.

- Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, under the provisions of its deliberation of March 11, 2025 on the terms and conditions of appointment, Arcom is proceeding with the hearing of four candidates. I remind you that under the provisions of article 44 of 1986, applications are assessed on the basis of a strategic project and decisions are based on competence criteria. We are proceeding with the hearing of Frédérique Dumas, in two parts: a filmed part, recorded for a maximum of one hour, for the presentation of your strategic project, you will have 30 minutes maximum, followed by an initial exchange with the panel. This recording will be made available on the Arcom website at the end of all the hearings, i.e. tomorrow afternoon. The second part will take place behind closed doors for a maximum of one hour, in the presence of the members of the panel present here, the panel secretary and the Arcom CEO. One of our colleagues, Antoine Boilley, will be deported from this hearing as he was an employee of France Télévisions less than three years ago. Madame Dumas, it's 4:32 p.m. You have the floor until 5:02 p.m. I'll give you a signal if you choose to use all the time allotted.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies... You're telling me... Ladies and gentlemen, members of Arcom, it's truly an honor for me to be here today, but I have to tell you that I'm fully aware of the responsibility involved, because public audiovisuel is at a crossroads. It is faced with a multiplication of ways of consuming images and uses, with audiences generally dropping on linear TV channels, with audiences that are drifting away - youngsters, but also certain social categories - with dwindling advertising resources, with public resources constrained by the budget deficit. For all these reasons, the legitimacy and survival of TV are being questioned and even challenged. That's why I'm here today. From the outset, through my various mandates and functions, I have been involved in all the major issues facing the sector: preserving cultural diversity, release chronology, investment obligations, bridging divides, adapting our regulations to new entrants, which means we have to evolve and stand firm on the essentials. I've always been involved as a producer, at the heart of creation, but also as an entrepreneur. That's why I wanted to bring together my convictions, my experience and my skills, to put them at the service of the challenges to be met, to share with you a project, a method and concrete proposals. First of all, to affirm that starting with a detailed analysis of usage, preferences, expectations and audience segmentation by generation has become essential. Then draw the consequences. The need to clarify editorial lines, attract talent, build strong program brands, improve the user experience in the digital space, promote dialogue between universes, have a tailor-made, subtle marketing strategy. But I also want to strengthen our governance by equipping ourselves with efficient management tools, build a genuine social pact, diversify our resources, and move forward in a determined and ethical manner. I'll be presenting my strategic project in three parts: first, the three environments in which France Télévisions will be developing: linear, digital and proprietary platforms, followed by social networks and third-party platforms. Then we look at content, and finally at the means required to implement this strategic project and capitalize on the value created. First, the three environments in which France Télévisions is developing. First, linear. For me, the linear supply is, and remains, essential and strong for building strong brands, and this can only be ensured by the complementarity and singularity of the channels. In my view, this is essential if we want to appeal to all audiences, meet their expectations and get them ready to discover more. The creation of a central block around the first issues is a fantastic opportunity to better design and organize France Télévisions' linear supply. This segmentation of supplies, which allows for marketing segmentation, is decisive for better production and distribution of programs on the digital platform. France 2 is by nature, and must remain, the channel that brings together all audiences. This is already the case, but I propose more innovation and depth. France 3, as a local channel, must be part of the everyday life of the French. I'm convinced that to give new impetus to this ambition, citizens and local players need to feel involved, listened to, heard, and even that this proximity responds to their concerns, valorizes their know-how and their initiatives, so I'm making several proposals. I'm proposing concrete tools to open up the airwaves more to the public, and this doesn't just concern Ici; it must be a hallmark of the public service. As for France 4, I'm proposing that the channel evolve and become the children's channel, for the whole family. For it to be perceived as such, we need a coherent editorial approach during the day, but also a move towards family programming in the evening. I've always believed that maintaining a linear, commercial-free channel is one of the raisons d'être of public service broadcasting, and contributes to its legitimacy. Including the whole family, the parents, meets an increasingly pressing expectation and will help give it greater strength. It's a significant change, and one that can only be brought about with the help of those involved in the sector. The move to Channel 4 will be a tremendous opportunity for this. As far as France 5 is concerned, a change in editorial line to make it the channel for 25/49 year-olds, given that they make up 30% of the French population. But it will only be worthwhile if it fits in with a strengthening, diversified editorial supply in the France.tv galaxy, supported by a more refined digital and marketing strategy. It's a real challenge, but I think there's still time to use the linear channel as a powerful showcase, and the advantage of having six channels is a comparative advantage that we're envied and mustn't squander. On Channel 27, soon to be 16, France info must become what it was conceived to be: an all-news channel, in real time, reactive and relevant, which doesn't abandon depth and decryption for all that. The creation of a news block is a fantastic opportunity to place France info TV at the heart of the public audiovisuel's news strategy, and to make it an emblem of grassroots cooperation with other public audiovisuel entities. Overseas France, la Première. These channels have good overall ratings on linear and digital channels, and are models of integration, but they could have even stronger roles to play. In this respect, we'll need to take the time to define the most relevant strategies, by setting up a field mission with local players. Next, France Télévisions' second environment, the France.tv digital space and proprietary platforms, to create a France.tv+ galaxy. Moving towards an umbrella brand has been a priority for a long time, and the inclusion of the Group's brands, given the announcement of the inclusion of INA, France 24 and LCP in particular, is a step in this direction. You may ask, why am I proposing this? Why the "+"? Over and above the fact that it's possible to further extend the scope of the site through European cooperation, I want to make it a strong alternative to the competition, a premium, free, unique supply that can't be ignored, with a fluid, enriched user experience, again in a unique way. We need to be able to distinguish, recognize and appreciate the public service supply. There are several ways of achieving this. First of all, as soon as you enter this universe, you have to feel good about it, it has to be elegant, it has to make you want to click everywhere, the supply has to be legible, understandable with the editorialization of all content, themes, appointments, collections, but also with the event-driven nature, the possibility of having access to exclusivities and privileged paths. Saying to yourself: here's all this, it's free and it's made for me. To be able to find your way around easily. The graphic quality of content is a decisive factor, as is the presence of spaces for personalized learning and discovery, with engaging itineraries. Another lever is artificial intelligence, which can improve notices, but in my view, human curation must be one of the hallmarks of public service television. It must be the platform that humanizes the notice by involving the faces of public audiovisuel or talent from outside, like ambassadors who are opinion relays. This would meet the need for discoverability. There are also other levers, such as cultural supply and strengthening the appeal of proprietary platforms, which could also contribute. Finally, the way in which advertising is integrated will also play an essential role. There are many other avenues to explore, all of which have a cost in terms of design and implementation, so they will be the subject of joint reflection with other public audiovisuel entities. This is also within the scope of areas where talent and skills are key. France Télévisions' third environment now, social networks and third-party platforms, I'm proposing an assumed digital strategy on social media, promoting and distributing existing content, and creating original, dedicated content of all kinds, in all formats, aimed at all audiences. An offensive digital marketing strategy, right down to the creation of playlists, so it's not just digital first, but before, during and after. This doesn't mean we're giving up on discernment; we need to be tailor-made, and we don't all approach them in the same way. It's not that different uses require different formats, but that other settings need to be taken into account. It's not a question of total dissemination, but of a well-thought-out digital strategy that's adapted, inventive and creative too. Having described these three environments, let's move on to a second part focusing on content. Programs in general, creation in its broadest definition, and news. First of all, creation must be in tune with each diffusion channel. France Télévisions is the leading investor, and this commitment must remain intangible. Clarifying the editorial lines of each channel will enable a more fluid editorial process, including for culture, sport, entertainment and society magazines, right up to the France.tv+ galaxy, for greater transparency in choices, facilitating the development of original concepts and formats by enabling France Télévisions' partners to be a force for proposals that are both creative and appropriate. Alongside creation in the broadest sense of the term, there is another challenge to be met: information. In this area, I am deeply committed to ensuring that public audiovisual services succeed in loosening the stranglehold of polarization. We need plurality and impartiality, thanks to rigor and transparency. Distrust of the media is growing, in a world saturated by excessive polarization. Humility is becoming an absolute necessity, based on the principle that freedom and autonomy must be exercised within a transparent, shared deontological managerial framework to reduce mistrust and the possibility of instrumentalization. We must, of course, continue to improve and strengthen our methods of verifying information, in conjunction with other public audiovisuel entities, by sharing best practices and tools in order to be more efficient, and also to be perceived as such. We need to go further, because the principle of fact-checking has its limits, and we need more citizen participation and constructive work. I'd like to suggest a few ways of fulfilling this promise. As I mentioned at the outset, France Info will be one of our priority projects. It will be vital to redeploy means and devise a coordinated strategy with other public audiovisuel entities. As a first step, I will be proposing to the President of Radio France, who has just presented her roadmap, that she consider appointing a joint director, with all the goodwill that this implies. Alongside the key role of information and creation, it is also the appeal of the cultural supply that is absolutely fundamental to strengthening. We need to make it a real marker to distinguish the public service supply. France Télévisions is the country's leading broadcaster of live entertainment. It accounts for 40% of the content shown. It currently represents only 22% of consumption. For example, the CultureBox channel accounts for 56% of airtime devoted to culture, but for very low audiences. We're faced with a real problem, which I admit is not new. I therefore propose to do away with the evening diffusion of Culturebox on France 4, which confines culture to an elitist box, and to spread it out over all the other channels. While this may be a difficult challenge, there are certain biases, such as the singularity of the channels, that could lead to innovative ideas. Culture will also have to be rethought within the France.tv + galaxy, as a culture portal, conceived as an online cultural magazine, with a hierarchy of events, but also an editorialization driven more by audience expectations. To bring culture alive and accessible. And I'm tackling cross-cutting issues such as diversity and media literacy. Strengthening diversity in all its facets, particularly with regard to diversity of origin, disability or more remote social categories. I'd like to approach the ambition of the visibility pact for overseas France with a different mindset, and with greater determination in terms of exposure. Diversity can also be understood through more technical issues, such as modernising DTT to reduce territorial divides, but also in terms of usage. I also put forward proposals for strengthening media and information literacy. This second part is followed by a final section on the means needed to implement the strategic project I'm presenting. First of all, I propose strengthening governance. I'm convinced, and I've had many opportunities to mention this in my 2018 report on public audiovisuel, that only governance makes it possible to take relevant decisions, and only good governance can make this possible, with control bodies, supervisory authorities, employees and citizens. Without it, mistrust sets in, leading to impotence. I'm talking here about governance at France Télévisions itself, which is based on transparency, exemplarity and responsibility at every level. For this to become a reality, we need to be able to equip ourselves with tools that enable enlightened steering, efficient tools for analysis, forecasting, monitoring expenditure and activity, tracing, planning and evaluation. Some of these tools have not yet been put in place, even though they have been included in the National audit office's notices since 2016, such as cost accounting. Strengthened governance would enable a new social pact to be drawn up on a shared basis. Indeed, strengthening editorial supplies in their specificities and complementarities, adapting them, taking into account audiences and developments in usage, adapting to technological developments, regaining room for maneuver - all this is only possible by developing professions, taking into account the automation of certain tasks. But this can only be achieved by continuing to guarantee the added value of public service, and by restoring meaning to the work of those who provide public service on a daily basis, by training and supporting the necessary developments of all kinds. I would therefore like to propose that we develop the 2013 collective agreement by building the project, starting from the ground up, and opening up the field of prospects for employees. Technological developments and the emergence of the IAG are causing such upheaval that this can only be done transparently, within an ethical and sustainable manager. It is therefore my deep conviction that I want to rely on a human resources strategy worthy of the name. It's the only way to regain trust, maintain high standards and move forward. It is of course impossible to conclude this presentation without addressing the issue of financing the audiovisuel sector, a crucial factor in ensuring its survival. France Télévisions' financial situation is very fragile. The transformation incentive plan has been abandoned, the deficit is widening, and the negative cash flow forecast for the coming years is limiting the company's financing capacity. The Inspectorate-General of Finance has pointed to a financial impasse. It is difficult to get an idea of the choices made in relation to the savings demanded in 2025. You have highlighted the fact that, without accounting restatement, France Télévisions will be in deficit for two years, in 2021 and 2022, for a total of 60 million euros. You pointed out that the years of surplus are due to exceptional income. And you pointed out that in 2023, the operating result will be balanced as a result of the amortization of programs, which has facially improved expenses, not to mention the recapitalization by the French State. In my opinion, there are other uncertainties, with a lack of visibility concerning certain ongoing projects, such as Vendargues. It will therefore be essential to carry out full financial and operational audits as soon as possible, and to share the conclusions in full transparency with the shareholder and national representatives. The National audit office's report could shed some light on this. Faced with a situation where resources have not been stabilized, or are even declining, such as linear advertising, it is essential to be able to re-establish a dialogue with the public authorities and national representatives around a shared project. What is equally essential is to establish a dynamic based on the development of cooperation and the emergence of new commercial resources to serve the transformation of the model. To respond in part to this challenge, I propose to implement a policy of creative diversification, and to make it efficient and transparent, the creation of a France Médias Créative entity, enabling the expansion of resources over time. This will bring together France Télévisions distribution, France Télévisions publicité and a new entity, France Télévisions diversification. Most media companies in Europe have leveraged their brands with third-party companies. The aim is to expand the scope of France Télévisions and strengthen its sovereignty. France.tv Studios will thus play an important role. Cooperation with other public audiovisuel entities will play a decisive role. When it comes to advertising and sponsorship, I'm looking for a well-thought-out, responsible model that distinguishes the public service without cutting it off from its specific resources. I'm proposing an advertising strategy that embraces innovation - targeted, geolocalized - but, above all, that doesn't give in to intrusive models, and that helps to create a sustainable model, following in the footsteps of Radio France. I'll conclude now: proposing a vision, a model, trying to respond as best I can, in a comprehensible and concrete way, to all the challenges facing France Télévisions, has guided me throughout the construction of this strategic project. What I want is to inspire people, to build confidence, to open windows, to feel proud of helping to build the audiovisuel public service of today and tomorrow, together with our employees and in cooperation with the other entities, and to contribute to strengthening its legitimacy and survival. It is in this spirit that I present my candidacy for the presidency of France Télévisions. Thank you very much.

- Thank you very much. We'll now open the floor to questions from the members of the panel, starting with Juliette Théry.

- Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you Madame. I'd like to ask you a question about the intermediate level of editorial supply. Publishing means selecting programs and presenting them to the public at large, and when you have public service obligations, that's also a difficult task these days, because the public is increasingly benefiting from direct access to programs - to all programs, in fact - without any real logic of pure selection, and thanks to digital supplies via networks or other means, or media platforms moving towards hybrid distribution and publishing models. When I listen to you, I'd like to know and fully understand what you're aiming for when you say you want to clarify France Télévisions' channels with a single, clear reference platform for the public as a whole, and how you see the articulation between publishing and distribution? How can we engage a selected public service editorial supply in today's rather complicated world of media distribution? Thank you very much.

- Thank you very much. In fact, what I think is that we need to get all these worlds working together. I think it's very important to make each channel unique and complementary on the linear channel, because that allows audiences to identify them more clearly, and it allows those who make the public service, who editorialize it, to make choices, and also those who make the programs, whether inside or outside, to understand. That's our starting point. And I was going to say, we all have Canal+'s free-to-air channels in mind; for me, linear channels are massively free-to-air. We've got 9 channels, if you count overseas France, so we're lucky enough to be able to push it, but we can only use it to the full if we have a strong pact, if we can clearly identify them. On the other hand, we need to focus on the platform, no longer on the channels, we're no longer on themes, it's an editorialization that has nothing to do with it, but to make the link, it's this digital strategy that enables us to push programs onto the linear, which can be declined. When I say "declined", I mean "declined" because these are marketing tools that highlight programs, but they can also be content created exclusively for audiences on the platforms. The idea is to go right down to the last metre, to multiply the points of contact to reach them. You're right, you can have a beautiful platform, very well editorialized, but if nobody goes there, it's not much use. Jeff Bezos said: "The first person to talk about a platform will be fired. That's it, it's how we get things to communicate, how we create points of contact to bring audiences back to France.tv+ and to linear programming. If we have iconic programs on the linear channel, it strengthens this... SVOD platforms don't have these assets, because they don't have the ability to promote their supplies with a free, unencrypted offer. I don't know if I've made myself clear.

- There's also the distribution aspect: as you said in your presentation, France Télévisions is committed to distributing other public services, such as INA. How do you see it from your side?

- On the platform?

- Yes, on the platform.

- There too, if it's just entries, we've left the entry through the channels on the platform, but if we come back with entries only on TV5, INA, initially, that's fine because it's useful, but the interest is to be able to reeditorialize. We do have one advantage, though, and that's artificial intelligence, which will enable us to put together and editorialize supplies as of content that may seem immense. It may seem interesting to editorialize them and not just throw them out and say: now that you're here, click on this entry.

- If I can just bounce around, in your project you mention the creation of a social network with other audiovisuel authorities. Can you elaborate on this?

- First of all, I'd like to say that this isn't just another concept. We're thinking: if there were a French iCloud, a European iCloud, no. But that's why I wanted to talk about it. But why did I want to talk about it? First of all, because it's still a subject where if we could regain sovereignty, not just because we need a French European network, but just to do something different, that would be interesting. And I've had the opportunity to meet several start-ups, and then I listed Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Minister of Digital Affairs, now Taiwan's Ambassador of Digital Affairs, she's a little genius. You know, Taiwan is 4th in terms of democracy, first in Asia, and during Covid, they didn't use any compulsory techniques, they succeeded through interaction with the population in creating trust and getting people to come to them. I know her, I've worked with her, but in Paris, she showed me what could be the beginnings of a social network that won't be based on the benefits of aggravating cleavages and virality linked to the instrumentalization of cognitive biases, but on the contrary, find a way that is also linked to our cognitive biases, which is to have pleasure, to be safe, to make our own way. She's modeled this, and it's interesting. I don't know if it's a four-, five- or even longer-year project, but with the other entities of the audiovisuel public sector, with start-ups, all those who want to find another path, try to do something together. But it's still to be explored.

- Thank you for that insight. Romain Laleix?

- With regard to the company's financial situation, you mentioned the need to find sources of savings, ways to cut costs, but also to develop new resources. Going beyond the company-wide agreement you've just mentioned, can you think of other areas, other activities, other very concrete cost-cutting challenges? And beyond digital advertising, can you think of any activities that could generate more resources for the company in the future?

- Absolutely. As for the first part, I think that if we take stock of the situation with financial, operational and other audits, we'll be able to find a certain amount of room for maneuver. That's why transparency allows us to verify information. There is room for manoeuvre when you see things as they are. For example, it's very important to have cost accounting that can distinguish payroll costs. In some places, it can cost 40 or 50% more without you even realizing it. It would also be easier to hold certain discussions with employee representatives. I'm really in favor of a human resources policy that takes into account and is transparent, but transparency has to be on all sides. When you're a producer, you're used to trying to find savings by getting your hands dirty; you go looking for things one after the other, which is what inventories allow you to do. If the cuts are brutal and massive, most of the time they don't serve any purpose. I'm in favor of having as many tools as possible to guide the way we make savings, even if I can't hide the fact that today, I find it hard to know what the real situation is, because it's not just the short-term situation, there's also the borrowing capacity, given that there were long-term debts... At some point, do we find ourselves in front of an iceberg and say: all the bridges have been cut? It'll be important to find out. As far as new resources are concerned, it's normal to address advertising, but I want to address it in an ethical and sustainable way. Public service is unique in that it's always different. It's a policy of diversification, as is done in many other private and public channels. It's also a question of sovereignty. For example, that's why I was talking about the Studio. It means producing events, institutional films, a whole range of services that can be produced for third-party companies. This is what we summon up as brand association, which can be very interesting. We can finance major editorialized evenings on diabetes or health issues through brands, without them appearing on air. There's also the part where the emblematic figures of the public service can come and take causes outside or not. And here, I know I'm touching on a sensitive point, I think it's a shame, as it's not the case with private channels, notably TF1 and M6, that when emblematic public service figures take a message outside, when they've built their awareness with public service values, these resources eventually escape the public service, which isn't the case elsewhere. That's why I'm proposing that there should be an agency to support France Télévisions' talent, because it's also about legal assistance, perhaps finding services, but on the other hand, keeping an ethical manager, making sure that public service values are preserved and that part of the remuneration goes back to the public service. I think it's the same as for social networks and the like: many things need to be reinternalised, for reasons of sovereignty. There's no reason why this shouldn't be the case: there are a lot of agents in the public service, so it's important to get this back. After that, it's also, perhaps, this habit when you're a film producer and you release a film, talent comes in to promote it. It seems normal for talent to get involved in promotion. I think that the emblematic talents of France Télévisions can get involved to expand the public service.

- Catherine Jentile?

- You said that France Info needs to be a reference brand, with fact-checking that's not enough in today's fast-paced, fast-moving world, and you talked about reducing the public's distrust of the media. What means do you intend to use to reduce this mistrust and restore information to the status you want it to have?

- What really struck me the most was that there was this work of verifying information, which still needs to be done and improved, because it's still the basis. As for public service, we all realized that even if it was done, it's public service, so it's false or committed. So the answer isn't just to say: you're wrong. There's not much point in that. The point is to convince. And I think that's where we need to involve citizens much more, and not just the media, in the creation of information and dialogue. The more we experience things, the more we understand their complexity, and why it's not as simple as all that. There are quite a few proposals, including an emblematic one, worked on with Professor Pialoux, an epidemiologist at the Salpêtrière Hospital, who has worked on different methods to move towards, the famous trust at the time of the Covid, mainly in Paris, and at the time we worked on the Covid, there was the story of knowing where the Covid came from, whether it was of animal origin, or a laboratory leak. That's been a development. At first, the thesis was that it was environmental, now it's the laboratory thesis. That's when he set up a whole operation at the city theater, with the idea of an assize court with a president and two lawyers, one defending the environmental thesis and the other the laboratory leak thesis. While they had confronted each other through the media, one saying that it's an animal for such and such a reason, there, in front of... There were others present too. We could see that 90% of the arguments were in favor of the laboratory leak thesis, and there were few arguments for the other side. But because the arguments were laid out and everyone could follow them, we were able to see what was going on. In the end, everyone arrived, not at their own conclusion, but at the conclusion because they had been led along a path. On some subjects, we won't be able to say: this is good, this is bad. When it comes to technocratic solutionism on the one hand, and radical shrinking on the other, we know we won't be able to... With the codes of suspense, a form of reality TV, it can perhaps extend and we make our own way. There are also other means that we've talked about. For example, I think that Ici, to come back to the Ici application, we could - and I've talked about the fact that we need to be careful, to be discerning when it comes to content on TikTok - we realized that during the elections in Romania, the algorithm was pushing one candidate, and the others were invisible. For the municipal elections, what would be interesting, because the advantage is to be as close as possible, with Ici, to local players, citizens, like mayors, would be to be able to open accounts, to open a discussion space on the Ici application, in a somewhat proprietary and sovereign way, without thinking that maybe, if we'd gone elsewhere, it would have been useless. These are just a few examples, and there are other program proposals. There's France Positive, where the idea is to say to ourselves that it's the same, on the ground, all the subjects that are Europe, the environment, even culture, most of the time, there can be a rejection, just because it says "environment", "Europe", nobody goes there. It's true that it can be interesting to realize that, on a day-to-day basis, there are many citizens or associations who are committed to these subjects, who most of the time are there to present very innovative solutions. So, France 3, which has become Ici, and with the app and the airwaves, could get closer. In fact, I think that if we don't get closer to citizens, if we don't solve their problems, if we're not useful, there's really no point in developing a regional television network. - Thank you very much. Bénédicte Lesage? We have about twelve minutes left. - I'll be quick with my question. Just to talk about the environment, since it's already been mentioned, what ambitions do you have for France Télévisions in terms of the ecological transition, both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in terms of programs on all linear and non-linear channels, and even content that could go digital to raise awareness, inform the public and get them to commit to the ecological transition?

- So there are two parts to your question. I know my answers are a bit long, even if the questions are short. There are two parts, inside France Télévisions and then vis-à-vis the public. Inside France Télévisions, what's complicated when you're on the outside is realizing how far we've come or not come. That's why I proposed an inventory and this mission to coordinate CSR, for example, and I'm adding the environment, so it's more about coordination, understanding how it works, understanding how ambassadors could seize it. And how to make things land in reality and not just in concept. I don't have all the information I need to say exactly what's going on today, but I think a lot has been done, and it's a strong commitment on the part of the current president. I know she's committed to further reducing our carbon footprint by 40% by 2030, so there you have it, all these challenges. And as you've seen with advertising, I've talked about it, moving towards eco-designed formats, and therefore having a real policy for coordinating all these issues, that's my commitment. As for how we talk to the public and to citizens, I gave an example of how to get as close as possible to what's being done, because, frankly, most of the time, these are extremely positive initiatives, and there's also this rejection of always seeing ecology, the environment as something that promotes eco-anxiety, because we tell ourselves that we don't want to see all that. So that's the first thing, highlighting everyday initiatives that show that there are possible ways forward, that it's interesting and that it's also fun. And if not, I think that on this subject as on others, we should not make boxes out of them, but try to have criteria that could feed into what are summoned editorial guidelines, when they are presented to the producer. I think it's more interesting, for example, to learn more about Europe through L'Auberge espagnole than through a program about Europe. I think it's all part of the editorial lines, so that people don't feel they're being imposed on. That's more what I'd suggest.

- Thank you, Benoît. Benoît?

- Yes, thank you. In your structure, three environments for France Télévisions. I'll come back to social networks. You say it's a question of partly diffusing programs coming from other environments, and also having an original supply specific to social networks. Can you tell us more about this? Formats, public service incarnations, public service influencers? - And to complete the picture, you said you didn't want to disseminate your vision on social networks, so that goes with the previous question.

- When I say not to disseminate, I don't mean to say that we don't go everywhere, but to ask ourselves when we do go. Each strategy must be fine-tuned under the provisions of marketing, but also of ethics. I was talking about information, maybe it's better to go to Ici to develop something interesting and not TikTok. And so every time we sit down, we look at the principles, we remember the objectives and we set a path based on the objectives we've given ourselves so that it lands. When I said... Well, maybe I mixed up two things in my expression. There's the fact that on the platform, there's Slash, for example, which isn't working very well. - I'll perhaps clarify, on the subject of information, by saying that in the end, we have to admit that a large, well significant part of the population only gets its information from social networks. So should there be a specific information supply from France Télévisions, designed to fit in with the codes, formats and writing specific to social networks, bearing in mind that Twitch is not TikTok? - Yes, I agree, I think we need to have formats adapted to all the social networks, but as of France info, for example, starting with the proprietary supply. That doesn't necessarily mean... I was going to say, in this area, never say never, because if we manage to find, if we make a YouTube channel that can be interesting on social networks, a variation of a strong France Télévisions brand, why not? That's why I can't tell you that we won't do it, but I can tell you that each time, you have to ask yourself the question, you have to go where they are, if that's all they know, it's impossible not to make a proposal. Now, is it something that's been thought up as of the social network, or is it an adaptation of something that's been thought up in another environment? It's difficult for me to be as precise as that. On the other hand, I think it's a complex subject, but not as complex as all that, i.e. it's complex because when you want to talk about it in a general way, it's complicated, but in fact, those who specialize in it know how to do it. So I think that when it comes to these subjects, you need a highly competent team, both in terms of technology and in terms of creativity and editorial inventiveness. But I was going to say, in the sense that there's an enormous amount of talent on these subjects. I don't know if I've answered your question.

- Thank you, Denis. Denis Rapone?

- I wanted to ask you, among the cardinal values of public service, impartiality is mentioned quite frequently. And there's a close link between this duty of impartiality and the obligation of plurality laid down in the 86 law, which was recently interpreted by the Conseil d'Etat as covering all the programs of the publisher, in this case France Télévisions, and applying to all the participants. How do you enforce this obligation? How do you ensure that it is respected and reflected in your proposal? - Over and above political guests, for example, plurality must also be measured when we have guests of any kind, in columns. So I know that there have been discussions, and in my opinion, it's something that's in your discussions every day, I think there are some obvious things, if we start to be on the side of the current of thought, it's not possible, but you specified it, we can't ask people who they vote for. On the other hand, for a guest, a column, especially if it's an in-house columnist, but a guest, we invite him on a specific subject. And we're supposed to know a little about his point of view. Otherwise, if there wasn't this injunction from the Conseil d'Etat, when you set up a debate, you're supposed to have the idea of saying to yourself: I'm inviting such-and-such a person because they have such-and-such a point of view. It's more a question of the point of view of a person with some form of awareness, either a researcher or an expert who we know will bring such and such a point of view. I'm not saying it's easy, but I do think that if there's this work, because it's the only interesting thing, it's to multiply them, which has to be done in any case when building a supply of this type, I have the feeling that, if we think in this way...

- How, in terms of organization and management, do you think you'll be able to implement the principles you've mentioned?

- And what role do you see for ethics committees in relation to this objective?

- Coming back to the question of impartiality, the first thing I'd like to reaffirm is that when you're president of France Télévisions, you have editorial responsibility. So, whether you like it or not, it goes back to you. So what's important is that we guarantee the managerial framework in which freedom of expression and the independence of journalists are expressed. Because it's something that absolutely must be protected, but within a manager, legal or otherwise. So I think it would be a good idea for us all to get back around the table, to share this managerial framework. Of course, we're all supposed to be familiar with it, but I'm very much of the opinion, and I've seen it in other places, that you need safeguards for everything, even yourself. The first safeguard is to be willing to re-examine one's own practices. So I think it's important to agree on a clear, comprehensible ethical framework, and to organize forums for exchange, because there's also this famous grey zone - it exists in every field - when you want to regulate something other than public service media, or media with frequencies, you have to deal with the question of the grey zone. For me, this gray zone is where we ask questions. We talk to each other. There are subjects where, in practice, we discuss whether or not it's a good idea to tackle these things. It's a whole lot of space, time and tools, and we try to have safeguards and apply them to ourselves.

- Thank you, we've reached the time limit for this part of the filmed hearing. We're going to move on to the in-camera exchanges. The cameras are about to switch off. This demands a few seconds' adjustment, as some of the audience will leave the room. We'll wait two minutes before resuming.

- Good afternoon. Please take your time.

We can begin this hearing. Ladies and gentlemen, pursuant to the deliberation of March 11, 2025 on the procedures for appointing the President of France Télévisions, Arcom has decided to hold hearings for four candidates. Candidates for the presidency of France Télévisions are evaluated on the basis of a strategic project, and the basis for the decision is based on criteria of experience and skills. We are proceeding with the hearing of Irène Grenet, which will take place in two parts, a filmed and recorded part lasting up to one hour, intended for the presentation of your strategic project. This will be followed by an initial discussion with the college. The recording will be available on the Arcom website at the end of the hearings this afternoon. This will be followed by a closed session, also lasting an hour, in the presence of the members of the panel, the panel secretary and the Arcom CEO. The panel is made up of 8 members, Antoine Boilley being deferred as he was an employee of France Télévisions less than 3 years ago. Madame Grenet, you have the floor for 30 minutes until 9:03. And I'll take the liberty of pointing out to you when we enter the last 5 minutes for this first part of the hearing, which will end at 9:34. The floor is yours.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for accepting my application. As I only have 30 minutes, allow me to get straight to the heart of the matter. Television got Kennedy elected. Social networks got Donald Trump elected. Back home, everyone remembers last year's misinformation campaign on the Olympic and Paralympic Gaming, with 210 million views on X alone. Less talked about is the Kremlin's relentless campaign to use every divisive issue in Europe to push Ukraine into the background. Their strategy of spreading anti-Western messages. The Russian offensive is now being dubbed by another pressure which is mobilizing the full might of America. We have brutally entered a new era, that of the information war, of the division of screens, and also, at the same time, that of the deficit wall for France Télévisions. France Télévisions was there for the Olympics. Public television, this aging medium, was able to attract youngsters and unite France around a single public space: the Olympics, our Olympics. That's what we need to do, ladies and gentlemen. But not once in a while, waiting for the winter of 2030, our next Olympics, but every day. Only then will France Télévisions have made a difference to the lives of French people in five years' time. Ladies and gentlemen, it's August 2030, 5 years from now, and no one knows what the geopolitical situation will be, or what the political situation in our country will be. On the other hand, every French person should be able to say that France Télévisions has given them something. The 20-year-old youngster who was 15 in 2025. In the meantime, he will have acquired the right to vote. In the meantime, while the AI was asking him: what do you want to consume? And no, you want to consume on which platform, he will have been informed on France Télévisions, educated, entertained thanks to France Télévisions, most of the time on his smartphone. The Ardéchois who types in Gorges de l'Ardèche and comes across the documentary. The grandmother who communicates on whatsapp in Réunion Island who follows the game on Twitch. Every French person will be able to say to themselves that France Télévision, which they finance themselves, is there for them. The average age of linear TV viewers is 65, a ten-year decline over the last twenty years. And the platform only makes this average ten years younger. It's not a question of going after youngsters for the sake of going after youngsters. It's about stitching up the French public sphere, unifying, reconciling if you like. But how can we reconcile when we no longer see each other? It's a fact that 15-24 year-olds spend twice as much time on networks as they do watching linear TV. In China, you know, we offer cultural and educational videos to educate young Chinese, while the rest of the world, Americans and Europeans, are left to their own devices on TikTok. This is the abyss from which the engineers of chaos are born. Unifying is in the general interest, and is a matter for public service. Only public audiovisuel can do this, only it still has the audience to act as a counterweight, only it is not a slave to advertising revenues, and not even to the streaming of advertising values to digital. Only it can take the lead in defending French creation, and only it can tackle the issue of social platforms, which derive their revenues from programs they don't finance. I wrote a book about this in 2022. Who could have anticipated the scale of the crisis we're experiencing today, which gives public service its purest meaning, fighting the engineers of chaos. This is the second time I've used this phrase, and it comes from a book. In France today, only France Télévisions has the talent, the audience and the public spirit to mobilize. This task obviously goes beyond the one man or woman you choose to lead it. You can't reform against people. But they can mobilize for a vision if they find it worthy and worthwhile. This is the meaning of transformation. Artificial intelligence is just a means. What France Télévisions lacks, ladies and gentlemen, is not AI. It's a vision. A vision that unites journalists and technicians, animators and directors, a vision that unites youngsters and the not-so-young, viewers and tiktokeurs, that unites territories and brings the French together. Television without vision, if you'll pardon the pun, is what prevents talent from expressing itself, what creates tension, what oppresses excellence in a company that abounds in it, having worked there for so many years, I can testify to that. I summon this vision: the French spirit in news, as in all our programs. A free, pluralist spirit, open to reasoning and debate, but irreverent, in love with equality, liberty, fraternity, but also culture, without dogmatism, nor cuistrerie. This is the spirit of the Shadoks, positive transgression, the opposite of the outrageousness that dominates social networks. Public television must be a bulwark against outrageousness, and this is also our cultural exception, which must shine through in every channel, every platform, every network, in the responses of artificial intelligence. This vision is simple, concrete, pragmatic and bold. France Télévisions must speak to all ages, not just the French aged 65 today. But also to those who are 15, and who will be 20 in 2030. To all French people, to the three blocs represented in Parliament. France Télévisions must not be afraid of diversity - the diversity of the French people, of course, which it will mirror. The diversity of producers, authors, drama genres, territories, French people, unions, and even the diversity of opinions on the appropriateness of its use of public money. France Télévisions must recognize that budget constraints will be lasting. As someone who has worked with France Télévisions' accounts for such a long time, I can't stress enough that choices will have to be made. Let's be very clear: making France Télévisions' programs an adjustment variable against the deficit is no longer an option. Over the last ten years, the share of national programming has fallen by 133 million, while the wage bill has soared by 100 million euros. It's time to open up the walls of France Télévisions, the floodgates of creativity, not the floodgates of spending. We need to give back priority to content over interfaces. I want to return the national news programme to the level it was ten years ago, and strengthen and protect the national news budget. Resolutely bold, inventive, popular content, Gavroche content that speaks for all French people, in mainland and overseas France, on all screens and all networks. I want to protect creation, by sharing with producers the fruits of their labor, a new creative pact. France Télévisions must reach as many French people as possible, wherever they are. I'll be proposing to our colleagues at TF1 and M6 that they host France.Télé content. This would be a new Salto that would be free for the French, inexpensive for France Télévisions, and a win-win situation. Lastly, France Télévisions must put its talents at the service of the other public audiovisuel divisions, to support the great move from podcasts to video, and to establish a friendly dialogue for joint mobilization. Ladies and Gentlemen of the College, what is at stake here goes beyond the simple media manager: it's a question of social cohesion. The all-age audience symbolized by the screen in the middle of the living room is no longer enough to bring generations together, nor to reconcile the French. We need to overcome the division of screens. These are our formats, our news broadcasts, our gaming, our ultra-marine programs. La France en vrai, Un si grand soleil, France et environnement, must form a link between the French. They need to detrump social networks. We need to fight for public space, not desert it. Here's how. Let's start with the brand. A single logo on every image of every program. France Télévisions left the blue, white and red to the first private channel, which was right to seize it. Do you know what launched the success of French tech? It's the origami rooster. The idea is the same. In the age of AI, publishers are no longer the only gateway to their programs. What emerges is the brand, the program brands and the media brand that carries them. In 2030, when citizens see the France logo attached to content, they need to know they can trust it. The BBC has succeeded in making this shift: its logo triggers confidence when you see it. Today, France Télévisions does not exist as a landmark in the minds of the French. Ask the French: despite the great popularity of its programs, it is still often confused with France 2. Look at the difference, which has never given France Télévisions a nickname. On the other hand, France 2, France 3, France 4 and France 5, which form a linear block, are landmarks for the French. The brand is a storytelling machine. The first step in a brand strategy is to decide who you are, and tell the story. What will public TV bring to the French in five years' time? Branding isn't marketing polish, ladies and gentlemen. It's anything but trivial. It's not about repainting a sign. It's about rebuilding the common values of public audiovisuel. Because you can't put the stamp of France on just anything. Investigative quality, honesty and plurality are the hallmarks of excellence, and their strength will drive out foreign propaganda and climate and historical misinformation. I'm well aware of the crucial role that will be played by the news director, and we'll come back to this later. When it comes to creative excellence, France Télévisions is the only one that can take the risk of cultural ambition. Offer this playground to independent producers and authors. There's no point in continuing to follow its performance on the commercial side, and France Télévisions must abolish the logic of market share. In the interests of time, I won't go into all my proposals here, but will just take a few examples to give France Télévision a fresh editorial impetus, and to bring about its digital and technological transformation in the face of AI. First of all, we need to reaffirm the centrality of news. France Télévision must become the most powerful information tool for all French people. How can we do this? Three examples: by increasing the means dedicated to information by 20 million euros, which are not protected in the same way as works of art. Information accounts for less than 13% of programming costs, which is not enough. The quality of information has a cost, and it's one of the last barriers that SVOD platforms haven't crossed. We need a news education programme, and we need to invest in new AI tools to go viral. Today, 160 hours of documentary are produced every day by all our newsrooms. Some are not even shown on the air. We have to make France info the laboratory of information, it has to occupy all public space, good information has to chase bad. Web teams will be strengthened. We will help content creators committed to honest information. At the same time, it is unacceptable that the power of this brand should not be reflected in the performance of the new channel 16. 0.8% audience share for the French public news channel. After the legislative and presidential elections, we'll have to assess whether it has made a difference in the eyes of the French. The third example: continuous dialogue with the French. This is something I feel very strongly about, ladies and gentlemen. Do our viewers consider our news to be plurality, impartiality and independence? The relationship between public service information and misinformation must be assessed on an ongoing basis. Our societies in Europe are now torn between those who on the one hand want to fight for honest information, and on the other, those who are scandalized by a supposed return to censorship. The screens of France Televisions must be a bulwark against a supposed freedom to misinform. But they must also be the opposite of censorship, allowing all opinions to be expressed. This is the meaning of the principles of plurality and impartiality. I will deploy AI-based reporting tools, with open data publication on the foundations of the new regulation. I'm expecting a lot from the Arcom regulation. The second pillar aims to breathe new life into publishing. Rencontres du Papotin has been the great innovation of recent years. We need the equivalent of ten Rencontres du Papotin a year. We need to get audacity out of all these compartments, get culture out of its box. What does this mean? Three new examples. First, content labeled as cultural will have the right to be mentioned on all channels at all hours, like movies that can be re-released in linear format. Secondly, less elitist programs such as drama and variety should be designed to contribute to the culture of the honest man. As Thierry Ardisson used to say, you can't catch flies with vinegar, but it's true, and it demands a lot of audacity. All genres will be tested. Thanks to the producers who share these risks. For a Papotin, there may be ten audience disappointments, but everything will be tested digitally. The primetime slot will host promising programs online. The third point is not to break the generalist logic of our channels. It's true that it used to be easier, when the queen of the household was on in the middle of the living room. Apostrophe was watched by all the big TV consumers, graduates or not, after the Friday night drama. If we segment channels by genre, we'll have no chance of finding a discovery magazine after our sports program. Let's trust our channels. France 3, the channel for the cultural and economic vitality of the regions; France 4, the channel for young people and their audacity; France 5, the channel for complex thinking in an uncertain world. And, of course, we'll be redoubling our efforts to reflect all our French citizens: the youth of our suburbs, the accents of our regions, the talents of overseas France. In a vision of diversity, inclusion will always be the norms, not the exception. Of course, we will reach out to all French people, as close to them as possible. Our regions will no longer be relegated to opting out, they will have a foothold. The third pillar to be examined concerns France Télévisions' digital and technological transformation. Our ambition is clear: to make France Télévisions the leading digital audiovisuel group in France. And not just a digitally diversified group. France Télévisions' content must go beyond the walls of France Télévisions to meet its audiences, on DTT of course, but also on streaming platforms, social networks and, tomorrow, within AI models. Everything is going digital these days, even sport. Let's take a look at e-sports: it's up to us to be more powerful than mind-numbing and dangerous content. The priority objective will no longer be to maximize a channel's audience at 9:05pm. Besides, is it reasonable to start all premiums at 9:05pm, for French people who go to bed early? The aim will be to provide access to our programs wherever they are, content first, media second. To achieve this, we'll have to adapt the way we show. Every program must be designed from the outset for multiplatform diffusion. The proportion of non-linear content will have to reach 20%, compared with 5% today. In-house means will become laboratories for creativity on all fronts. A close partnership will be built with Ina to remain at the cutting edge of data journalism. France Télévisions will become a content company, not a media company. Why keep a digital department when there is no TV department? Let's move on to the next step. Why resort to an external service provider for the video animation of the Cannes Film Festival, let's train our in-house talent. It's not a question of abandoning our loyal audience. Linear channels have a central role to play as sounding boards for what works online. Let's think about the Inoxtag phenomenon. We need to make the lives of the French more event-driven, and increase the number of live hours. I'll conclude by telling you how I intend to ensure this mobilization. Over the last few years, I've been transforming my field by bringing together scattered skills, bringing people together and giving them meaning. This first sequence has been filmed, and in addressing you as part of this hearing, I will be heard by all those working at France Télévisions, in Paris, in the regions and overseas France. If you retain me, it's not me, it's them, it's them who will transform their company. I'm not sure we'll be able to continue investing massively in the France.TV platform if we give priority to content. But it's the dialogue between French people, the financing of information, the creation of opinion and French democracy that are being hit with unprecedented violence. The status quo would be the greatest risk. These challenges are so great that they are beyond me, and so great that they are undoubtedly beyond all of us, unless we mobilize together. As soon as I am appointed, I will set up an advisory board made up of equal numbers of men and women from France Télévision, journalists, researchers and viewer representatives, to build our common ambition together. Within 100 days, this advisory board will issue a notice, which, if accepted by the supervisory authorities, will be used to summon an internal permanent transformation council. An original, ongoing consultation process to bring this ambition to life over the next five years. I repeat once again, the success of this transformation depends on the men and women who make up France Télévisions. I want to be the one who listens to employees. If we merge certain support functions with Radio France, it will always be in consultation with the teams concerned. If we equip editorial teams with AI, it will be to enhance their work. I am constantly grateful to the unions and representative bodies for their warnings. I want to be the one who recognizes the value of employees and defends it. France Télévision needs a Marshall Plan for professional information. Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, I am a woman of public service. I believe in the mission of public service, which is to make a real difference to the lives of the French people. I believe in the demands of public service, in its exemplary nature. Is every euro spent commensurate with the service provided? I believe in journalism, in the power and responsibility of the creative industries to help society increase. I believe in innovation and artificial intelligence, when they are carried out with respect for the company's social values. I believe in television if it serves all French people. And finally, I love France Télévisions. If I have one minute left, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say how pleased I am to have had the opportunity to present my candidacy for the presidency of France Télévisions. And perhaps, one last thing, I won't be running for the head of the holding company if it is created. I'm standing before you to run France Télévisions for the next five years, whatever the institutional context, and nothing else. Thank you for your attention, for your confidence, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

- Thank you very much. I'll now hand over to my colleagues for any questions your presentation may have prompted, for a question-and-answer sequence that will take us through to 9:34.

- Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for your presentation. I'm going to come back to a question you raised concerning the ways in which the public can access this fine supply you're presenting to us. We live in a world of multiple screens and uses, and this raises two questions: how can we preserve an editorialized supply, i.e. a selection of content, when the public is used to having access to a very wide and plethoric supply, whatever its nature, the access vector, which may be a social network or a publishing and distribution platform, so how do we do this? And how do you see the articulation between publishing and distribution, with platforms that increasingly offer a convergent activity, for the public it's not easy to distinguish? That's what I'd really like to hear, thank you.

- Thank you, Madam. On the first point, it's actually a major challenge, and one of the absolutely considerable difficulties: how to work on the form and content of a program so that it's diffusible and accessible without ultimately losing its salt, because we're dealing with creation, and creation means form and content, you can't have one without the other. The project I'm working on is a transformation project, precisely for this reason, because there are already a number of people within the program people, the program units of France Télévisions, who are involved in these new forms of writing, whose vocation is not to subvert the content of programs, but to make them accessible for different platforms. There are some, but these are new skills, and that's the whole point of the transformation, the whole point of the transformation. Today's audiovisual industry, more globally than France Télévisions, on an international level, perhaps a little late compared to other industries, music or otherwise, is thinking in terms of content that needs to be multicast to meet the demands of multiple communities, as they say. This content has to be modifiable, interchangeable, multimodal, multi-format, but it's still content. That's the difficulty. So the concrete proposal I'm making is to put all digital skills into programs, into program units, and forget about digital as a medium, we're no longer investing in digital as a medium, it's never overnight, obviously, we're not going to turn off the platform, that would be a waste of money, we're not going to remake a Salto, but of course we need the platform for a few more years, but the future of audiovisual is this. On your second question, the link between publishing and distribution, today France Télévisions has two activities: it has a publishing activity and a distribution activity, because today the platform, and this is an excellent thing, welcomes more and more catalog depth with data that are those of its colleagues, it's an excellent thing, TF1 is doing the same thing, because TF1 today gathers Arte's content. What I'm proposing, if you like, is to go beyond that globally, if I may say so, but obviously, with all due modesty - and I'll digress for a moment and come back to the question - I'm talking about a pathway, an ambition. I'm talking about a trajectory, an ambition. I'm looking five years ahead, in my written project, fifteen years ahead, but things move very fast, and since we have to make choices, I'm being very specific, and that's an important point. France Télévisions doesn't need a revolution, but I firmly believe that these transformations are necessary. To come back to the question about distribution and publishing, I think that France Télé today, rather than thinking of itself as a distributor, needs to think of itself as a publisher, but in the age of AI, this already exists in search engines, but it will be even more true tomorrow, and so, in a year's time, in a few years' time, it must promote content, it is no longer the only point of entry to this audio and video content, hence the importance of the brand to identify itself, not to be invisibilized, the program brand, obviously, and the brand of the major public service editor. It's a movement that I think is absolutely unavoidable, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely unavoidable. Otherwise, we'll remain in a situation in which, obviously, we'll have a fine platform if we invest massively, massively, massively, but even - and I wish our TF1 and M6 colleagues every success with their platforms - we're well aware of the major investment this represents. We're well aware that there's also a very rational element behind it in terms of protecting advertising revenues, but I think that France Télévisions can go further in its conception of the publisher of tomorrow. We could say in the age of AI, but even today, of the publisher, in a digital world. There you have it.

- Can I bounce back to the question of publishing? This time, it's more like not looking back but, today, the channels, I'm not sure I've completely understood whether you want to reaffirm their generalist character, and their vocation to deal with all themes or whether you want to give them back their own identity and what their place is in France Télévisions, today and tomorrow?

- Thank you very much, it's very important if it wasn't clear. There has been an extremely important and well-done movement to identify the personality of overseas France, of course, but also of our channels. What I'm observing is a bit of a pendulum swing: by dint of giving them an extremely strong identity, we've segmented them by genre. Today, for example, there's no drama on France 5, and documentaries are 8% on France 3. If you like... France 5 is the big magazine channel. It seems to me that, while absolutely preserving the personality and editorial line of each channel, we need to rediscover a form of generalist logic by multiplying and diversifying the genres within each channel. So, drama must return to France 5, and France 3 must become a major documentary channel. Cinema... And so, in terms of differentiation, always in keeping with the editorial line that has been worked on, and which is also written into the specifications, it's a question of creating a real difference in tone. That's what I've tried to express in my presentation, which is inevitably a bit cookie-cutter, but I think it's a very difficult job, and it will be the job of the program and on-air director, but I believe in it deeply. Forgive me for saying so, but this is what Arte has done, and it's also a way of democratizing access to culture. I was talking about Apostrophe earlier, but if we confine culture, which is frightening - even the term is frightening - to a culture channel, a knowledge channel, we run the risk of having a TV channel for intellectuals, for people who love culture. As for the second point in your question, if I understand your brand correctly, my idea of an umbrella brand is an ambition, if you like, for France Médias. Of course, you need a brand. If we come up with France médias, it'll be great, it's disconnected from the idea of the holding company. The idea is that this umbrella brand will strengthen the existing brands - France 2 and the others are powerful brands - but it can also be used to create new spaces, such as France médias environnement. It's a lot of work over several years, but that's the logic.

- Thank you very much. Romain Laleix.

- You spoke of the company's financial situation in the most serious terms, under the provisions of the deficit wall and long-term budget constraints. At the same time, you presented your ambitions and priorities in terms of programs, with the sacralization of the news and creation budget. What are the avenues for savings or new resources that you envisage to deploy your strategy while guaranteeing the financial sustainability of France Télévisions?

- Thank you, sir. Yes, I can mention these points, which I only touched on in passing. On the question of expenses, I'm not going to speculate on the question of public resources, and I can talk about commercial resources if I have to, but I think what's important is not to pass any verdict on what I'm presenting here, but to reiterate the main thrust of what we've been doing for the last ten years. As I said, the national program has lost 133 million, it's at 937 million euros today, its share of the overall grid cost has never been so low, 42%, it was 51% in 2015. At the same time, we know that there have been efforts on the payroll, I don't deny that, but the natural development of the payroll of our 8800 employees today means that it has increased by 10%. Today, it stands at almost 1.08 billion. This means that productivity efforts have not allowed us to safeguard our core business, program purchases, and they have led to a stabilization of news, and within the national program, the safeguarding of investment in works has essentially been to the detriment of flow, and flow is what sustains linear TV. Flow is live TV. Flow is entertainment, variety, what we need to rejuvenate our audiences. I'll answer your question, of course, but that's the overall manager who's been put in place, and it's a mechanical development. As of now, my project aims to give priority back to content. This means restoring the national program to its level of ten years ago, and strengthening the means for information. So, what does this mean? In the very short term, if we give priority to content, we give less priority to the platform. Today, the platform is worth between 100 and 150 million euros. It's a 150 million euro prospect, but it's more like 100 million euros of investment today. Once again, I'd like to pay tribute to what's been done - it's not a criticism, it's a fact. I think that in the state of the industry I've just described, this should no longer be a priority, at least not as much a priority as programs. So, that's the first point, and it can be done as early as the 2025 budget. There's a margin of 120, 150 million euros that we obviously won't use in its entirety, but that's in the short term, and it's a management decision. There's a second, much more complicated aspect, which demands the agreement of the French state shareholder. It's very simple: this development in the wage bill that we're talking about, which is gradually eroding the programs, either the State considers that public resources will enable it to absorb it - I don't know, I don't think so, but we'll have to ask. Or it's committed to transformation. And what does transformation mean? These are the famous agreements mentioned in all the reports, the 2013 agreement, the company agreement, the development, the work on productivity. I didn't put it in my program, because I know it, it's a sea serpent, in 2015, the National audit office was already talking about it. I didn't include it because it's a means, and above all, an agreement is signed by two people. So, to say from the outset, I'm going to revise the agreement, is very well documented, we know that there will be things that can and must be done about versatility, these are things that are documented. But the other issue, with the endorsement of the State shareholder - I haven't had it, I haven't spoken to the State shareholder - will be that. So, giving priority to content over platforms, and thinking about what we summon up as this intensity in payroll per genre, which necessarily will have to take place, necessarily. And that's it. I don't know if I've answered your question.

- Yes, you have.

- Thank you very much Catherine Jentile.

- You began your presentation earlier by talking about the danger of misinformation coming from Russia and interference, you might say, from the Americans today. And you said that information would be the alpha and omega, with a sum of 25 million euros for information. Over and above this sum, what means do you envisage to fight agains interference in the run-up to the French elections, and the means to be implemented to respect plurality, noting that you spoke of the three blocs represented in the French National Assembly that will have to be able to express themselves on France Télévisions?

- On the first point, I used a serious tone to raise it, but I am within the scope of the citizens who are also mothers, because it's a question once again of the transmission channel. Obviously, when you watch the 8 o'clock news, you don't run the risk of misinformation, and on the contrary, you have the opportunity to decipher the risk of misinformation. The fundamental meaning of my project, and one from which I have drawn absolutely all the consequences, because it's not a simple project to multidistribute, is to occupy the public space. It's not at all self-evident. We're giving content to platforms that don't finance it. There are obviously issues of regulation. The DSA deals with these issues. But the first fundamental point, the meaning of my project, is to assume, to propose to the State shareholder, to assume that we have changed era and that we must occupy the public space and not desert it, and that good information drives out bad. That's the general manager. The second thing is that AI, because when we talk about interference, a lot of it is linked to AI, AI is the worst and the best. And I think you have to use the best of AI. We need to work together on fact checking, so that we have the tools to use technology to respond to what technology is doing to us in this world of fragmented public space. There's a third point I'm very keen on, and I'm expecting a lot from the États généraux de l'information, and that's news programmes. This is one of the reasons why I want to increase the means available for information. I'm told it's a nice idea, but there's this and that, so we need money. We need priorities, and media education programs are one of them. News media education is about programs, about the inventiveness of editors and creators. We need to work, to open up the walls to content creators. If they're committed to the truth, we can help them. All this is something we have to build, it's the new world. This is a fundamental point. Information media education - and forgive me, this is perhaps the fourth point - is everything to do with developing a critical mind. It's not what's going to make us respond to the threat, but at least, if we've succeeded in making our fellow citizens aware that there is a threat, and that we need to think about how information is produced - that's what IME is all about today - we can react... Your report on the relationship between the French and information is extremely clear. Today, we need verified information. And to have confidence in information, you need verified information. We hope that this figure of 80% of French citizens who consider that information must be verified is already good news. The last point is everything that develops critical thinking. I have proposed the creation of France médias éducation. It should be like a French-style Coursera, popularizing academic excellence and science. All this is a way of responding to our new times.

- We have 10 minutes left, and I have three questions and three requests for questions. I'll start with Benoît Loutrel.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

- We'll need concise questions and answers to keep to the timetable.

- I'd like to know how you intend to roll out France Télévisions' supply on social networks? One possibility is to cut and paste, but to what extent do you want to make an original supply directly in the codes, in the writing formats of the social networks? Do you go so far as to imagine different incarnations? In other words, not the same journalists, but journalists specialized in the style of social networks? How do you see this occupation of space that you summon?

- I think there are two things at stake when we talk about delineated programming. There's a difference that can be made, at least for France Télévisions, compared with its private-sector counterparts. How does a linear program work on a platform today? This is true for many of our colleagues, and for France Télévisions. You take a program that's dubbed...

- Sorry, I was more interested in information...

- Yes, quite, I'm coming to that. In fact, there's no new writing. It's very important to have this, it's the basis of the economic justification for the difference I'm proposing. It's not an additional cost under the provisions of production. Nor is it detrimental to the dynamics of traditional, rather than digital, advertising resources. That's the global manager we're in today. This applies to platforms, and it applies to an absolute duplication of linear programs in digital programs. We must continue. Here again, I don't want to give the impression of caricaturing the transition from one world to another. I'm proposing to increase the amount of digital programs, which today stand at 100 million euros, to 20% of programming costs. There's a small margin. Today, in fact, whether it's in news or in any other program, creating a new program from content - that was the very question I was answering - is a profession. It's a form of writing that involves various techniques that I'm far from mastering, cutting a program, keeping the substance and content, but adapting it. And I think, to respond to this differentiation with the private sector, which is very important, that France Télévisions can afford to do this. Then, in concrete terms, it's either a 100% logical program, a very well-made game, a magnificent game. There's a video game version, you have to put it on Twitch, it's a new way of writing. Or, live, it's an extremely lively material for that, but it can be done on the documentary, it can be done on the works. It's a question of creation. And as for the incarnants, there's no reason... We're opening up, it's up to us to be the incarnants, the new incarnants. And if we bring them in, that's fine. What counts is the editorial.

- Thank you for your time. Bénédicte Lesage.

- I'm going to be brief. You say that France Télévisions needs to make strong societal commitments, in keeping with its public service responsibilities. Could you tell us more specifically how you see the ambition of ecological transition between now and 2030 in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the company, and CSR? And also in terms of programs and content to inform, raise awareness and mobilize the public in the ecological transition? - We have three or four minutes left.

- I'll try to answer quickly, it's an absolutely essential subject, thank you for the question, it's a very important subject for me on which I've worked a lot, and I work a lot, within the framework of climate agreements and so on. There's this aspect of our environmental footprint, and the other subject I feel very strongly about, which is more than just our responsibility as a public company, is our ability to create imaginary worlds, to inform on complex subjects, but also to invest in all genres, drama, to create an imaginary world. The first point, which is extremely concrete, and I believe you also published a report with ADEME and Arcep, is that television accounts for 52% of the carbon footprint of audio and video use, so there's a subject that's quite fundamental, and that's that there are a lot of elements linked to terminals. We can get a grip, and I think we need to engage in discussions with the manufacturers, Samsung, Panasonic, I worked with them a lot when I was at the advertising department, we need to engage in discussions, negotiations, and France Télévisions has commitments in relation to the Paris Agreement, we need to aim for generalized eco-design. We've worked a lot with Ecoprod. I work in an industry today, I don't have a lot of time, but these are important subjects, I think the audiovisual industry is quite mature, I work with a start-up that is setting up links with recycling centers, and the implementation of carbon calculation, which is fundamental. Secondly, still on the subject of our environmental footprint, of course, is our digital usage. I'm not sure that hyper-distribution is harmful in a context of sobriety. But in the meantime, I suggested in my report that we make this an area for discussion with our colleagues in the public audiovisuel sector, the eco mode, not immediately launching a video, an eco mode by default, there are things that exist, we need to calculate, it's a fundamental corporate issue, it needs to be in the objectives of managers, we need training for employees, journalists, it's totally fundamental. I'm sorry I haven't been able to spend more time on this due to lack of space in my report. The second aspect, which I believe in very strongly, is the responsibility of the creative industries, which is really the subject of the book I've written on the subject. What I'm proposing, very concretely, is to use the tool of the media observatory on ecology, there are some challenges, I understand that we can always question calculations, they calculate the volume of airtime devoted to the environment, I think it's only in information, it must be everywhere. For example, there's a wonderful drama on France Télévisions that I think does a great deal for the environment. You simply have to calculate the airtime. The media observatory on ecology gives us a tool, and I suggest we use it and pilot it.

- Thank you very much, we've run out of time for this first part of the hearing, which is being recorded. Thank you for your presentation and your answers. We'll now move on to the second part of the hearing behind closed doors.

- Please take your time to settle in.

- Thank you very much.

- I'm all set.

- We'll be starting in a few moments. In accordance with its deliberation of March 11, 2025, on the procedures for appointments to the presidency of France Télévisions, Arcom will hear four candidates in random order. In accordance with the law of September 30, 1986, candidates are evaluated on the basis of a strategic plan, and appointments are based on criteria of experience and skills. At 11 a.m., we open the hearing for Jean-Philippe Lefèvre, which will be in two parts. A filmed part, lasting up to one hour, will be used to present the strategic project. You will have 30 minutes. This presentation will be followed by an initial exchange with the college, the recording of which will be available on the Arcom website this afternoon. This will be followed by an in camera discussion with the panel, in the presence of the panel's secretary and Arcom's CEO, also lasting up to one hour. For this nomination proceedings, the college is composed of 8 members, Antoine Boilley having to withdraw from this procedure, in application of Arcom rules, as he was an employee of France Télévisions less than 3 years ago. It's 11:01 a.m. I'll give you the floor for 30 minutes maximum, and I'd like to point out that there are still a few minutes left as we approach the end of the allotted time.

- Mr. Chairman, members of the Arcom college, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not here to apply, I'm here to make a commitment. Not to communicate, convince or seduce. But to affirm a total, profound, unalterable commitment. Commitment is the backbone of my project, the foundation of my approach, the horizon of my vision. And in my view, it's the minimum requirement when you aspire to lead a group as essential to the Republic and its citizens as France Télévisions. What I'm talking about here is a commitment to a profession, to all those audiovisual professions that, every day, enlighten, tell stories, connect, those professions that inform, create, make democracy. As journalist Christiane Amanpour said, journalism is the remedy for tyranny. Every year, journalists are threatened, censored and imprisoned. And yet, they continue, they persist, because journalism, the media, public service, are not a luxury, they are a vital necessity, a dam against the erasure of reality, a pillar of free societies, an act of resistance, a commitment. Managing France Télévisions means taking part in this resistance, making every image an act of public service. It means defending the right to know, to understand, to be moved and to imagine together. It means rejecting the logic of withdrawal and algorithmic confinement. It's about making France Télévisions a media and a democratic tool, a space for connection, a lever for emancipation. It means asserting an active and concrete humanism, one that places human dignity, reason, freedom of conscience and fraternity at the heart of all action. A humanism faithful to the spirit of the Enlightenment, republican secularism and the ideals of social justice. A project driven by the fact that France is rich in all its components, a France made up of tradition, multiple statements of case and horizons, diasporas, new migrations, a France of all origins, cultures and identities. France Télévisions must become Europe's leading public medium for accessibility, the engine of journalistic excellence and creativity, the catalyst of a common imagination. Mr. Chairman, members of the Arcom College, in 2024, for the 8th consecutive year, disability was the leading cause of discrimination recorded in France. And in the audiovisual media, the representation of people with disabilities remains marginal. Only 1%, 1% of faces on screen, while 15 to 20% of our fellow citizens have a visible or invisible disability. This is not an oversight, it's a divide, and in a public service, it's unacceptable. I'm proposing a Marshall Plan for accessibility, to make France Télévisions the most inclusive audiovisual group in Europe by 2030. A structuring, human project, based on technology, and carried out on a European scale. Our first objective is to make 100% of our programs accessible to 100% of our audiences, across 100% of our territory. It's also a response to a democratic imperative. To achieve this, I want to see a technological revolution at the service of people. All recent advances will be put at the service of accessibility. I want accessibility designed for Dys disorders, which affect almost 10% of the population. The Canal+ group has led the way with subtitles adapted for dyslexics. We will go further. We'll be offering accessible subtitles with contrasts, computer graphics and educational animations. I'd like to see browsing completely redesigned for people with motor and neurological disabilities. We'll make hands-free mode and eye tracking widespread. I would like to address the entire France Télévisions company. Accessibility must not be an option, it must become a reflex. 100% of our teams will be trained by 2030. An accessibility grid will become mandatory for all new programs produced by France Télévisions and outside producers. I want to create a citizen's council on accessibility, bringing together users, researchers and associations. All France Télévisions sets will be accessible. This is not the case today. I will demand the same effort from our external partners who wish to continue producing for France Télévisions. And we will set a manager for the OETH, I want to exceed 10% by 2030. I'm proposing the creation of a joint research platform on audiovisual accessibility, a European platform, led by France Télévisions, with all public players, but also public players, because this Marshall Plan is a cause that goes beyond us and must transcend public and private service. Accessibility is not just a question of tools, but a question of outlook. Today, people with disabilities are still too often invisible on the screen. We need to make them more visible, with more female presenters, experts and characters with disabilities in our dramas and youth programs. We need to make them more visible, with more presenters, experts and characters with disabilities in our fiction and children's programs. This Marshall Plan for accessibility isn't just a little extra, it's the heart of a modern public service, a medium in which everyone can understand, learn, feel and participate, with the same dignity and the same rights. If I become Chairman of France Télévisions, this will not be a promise, but a norm, a reflex, a course. Accessibility obviously concerns all generations. This is the transgenerational point. And among these generations, there's one I'm going to talk about today, the new generation. Let's face it, today's youngsters hardly watch linear television any more, apart from major sporting events and programs which, I can tell you right now, are not on France Télévisions. They consume video on YouTube, Twitch, insta. The world has totally shifted. If France Télévisions doesn't get ahead of this shift, public service broadcasting will be off the radar for an entire generation. And I can't imagine the future of France Télévisions without this generation. My priority is to rebuild the link between France Télévisions and the new generations, to create trans-generational bridges. We have a solid foundation in the form of Umni, a free educational platform, and we need to continue developing it, thinking in terms of territory and accessibility. We need to go much further. In 2026, I want to launch a grand tour de France of media education, in partnership with Clemi, Arcom and all the associations representing French towns and villages, the AMF, Arf, ADF and the association of small rural towns in France. I'd like to visit neighborhoods, high schools, middle schools and village squares, to get a better grasp of the two major events: the municipal elections in 2026, and the presidential elections in 2027. Because education isn't just an add-on, like accessibility, it's a democratic lever. At the same time, I want to create a check mobile application on France.tv. Thanks to artificial intelligence, it will be possible to screener, take a photo of a public service program, and get information about it. Today, all broadcasters provide information on program summaries, on the journalists who have worked on them, on the ins and outs. I want anyone to be able to access this information at the click of a button. I'm proposing to shake things up and make France4 shine, by making it France4 play. I'm keeping the name, which is a public service landmark, all the more so with the decision to allocate DTT channel 4 to France4. I'm adding the "play" for youngsters, for digital uses. It's a totally hybrid, new-generation channel, designed from the outset for all platforms, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram. France4play will be a channel, but it will also be a creative space, a living platform. It's the first agora where the public service will bring together the new generation. With the playshow, live interactive television and social networks, around 100% hybrid formats, like playgamers, dedicated to the 35 million French people, with total parity, who play video games. Playarena, for sports fans in France. Playscapegame, to join the hundreds of thousands of youngsters who will be making escapades all over France. France4play is not television for youngsters, but television with them. And behind it all, one conviction: public service must become a lever for emancipation. Giving youngsters the means to understand, to choose, but above all to speak out. I mentioned accessibility and youth, and this obviously applies to all territories. These territories have always been within the scope of my personal and professional DNA. For many years now, thanks to my experience at the French senate, I've understood what the 36,000 towns and villages of France are all about. These territories are more than just names, laws and administrative layers. From Verdun, to the Perche regional park, to Marseille, territories are respected. And when every morning, on the screens of France 2 and France info, when for the big 8 o'clock news on France 2, all you see on the screens is Paris, I have a problem with that. When France 3's two major regional programs, 12-13 and 19-20, start at around 10.17am and 7.15pm, creating a lot of confusion, it's not serious. It seems to me that they start within a few seconds of the hour. We can't embody the public service of all French people if we marginalize their territories even in our own clock. If we want to reweave the democratic bond, it will have to be through the territories. The first initiative is Francetv.territoire, which will give the regional daily press and community media free access to some of our programs on a specific diffusion corridor, under a manager contract, with logotyping to ensure France Télévisions' presence. It's a strategy of strong editorial partnership. I don't have in front of me the contracts for the 8 wonderful and necessary documentaries shown two weeks ago on France 2 concerning the Barbie, Papon and Touvier trials, but these documentaries go beyond public service. They should be shown for the entire French population. I'd like to mention overseas France as a strategic pillar. I'd like to spare a thought for my friend Luc Laventure, who passed away almost three years ago. With France Outre-mer studio, I'd like to create local incubators to seek out talent, whatever it may be, not just for the premieres, but for the whole France Télévisions group. I'd like to see a trickle-down of this talent, on all platforms. I'd like to see a greater mobilization of overseas France. Today, we don't see much, especially in multilingual versions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be a Parisian president, as I've lived in Paris for so long, but that would go against my career path. I'll be holding a decentralized office in a local station, open to all staff and players in local life, and we'll be going out to meet high-school and middle-school students, notably as part of the Tour de France I mentioned. Every three months, I'd like the whole group to dedicate a whole day to a town, a region or a district, in partnership with APQR and the local media. It's France Télévisions' role to bring this multiple and diverse France to life. 24 hours of programming with a delocalized 8 p.m., followed by magazines, talk shows and what I've imagined as Les nuits blanches de France télévisions. These will be in partnership with the magazines and Ina, to rediscover the richness of a territory. France is also a flag without borders that shines throughout the world. I learned last week that the Canal+ group has entered into a partnership with the Air France group, and I hope that France Télévisions will do the same to reach beyond our borders. We have an exceptional linguistic heritage, with languages spoken in France and overseas France. It's a major cultural asset, but one that is sometimes overlooked or threatened. I want to create a multi-platform, multi-format magazine called mots d'ici. It will highlight a regional language. It will be embodied by the new generation from the regions, connected and committed. It will be a bridge between local cultures and digital uses. And to give even greater visibility to these languages, France Télévisions will become a partner of the "langues de France" truck, which travels the length and breadth of France to transmit these languages. It's in the regions that the future of democracy, cultural representation and international influence is played out. After accessibility, youth and territories, which are the foundations of our public service project, comes the central question of how to finance this ambition. How can we provide France Télévisions with the means to meet its commitments, without undermining its independence or its universal vocation? A budget in a public group is never neutral. It's a political act. It says what we're protecting, what we're developing, and what we're ready to transform. You don't run a public media company like a private enterprise, you run it like a public asset. It's clear that, by 2025, France Télévisions will have reached the end of a cycle. Should we slow down the transformation? No. We need to change the matrix. I'm proposing several levers today. The first is segmented advertising. In 2024, it accounted for 1.4 billion advertising dollars. With the arrival of Free, this figure will continue to rise. It's a more ethical, more responsible model, because it strengthens the link with local communities. It also improves transparency, and enables useful targeting and a better return on investment. The aim is to dubbed revenues from segmented advertising, while complying with all the constraints and laws governing advertising on France Télévision. By 2024, TF1 will have exceeded 146 million euros in advertising revenue. M6+, almost 100 million. France.tv remains marginal. It must become the central platform for the public service, with enriched replay, exclusive content, podcasts and reacts, as appreciated by the new generation. And for some of our programs, I'd like to see all the material we produce on primary diffusion. It's a 360° investment strategy, essential for extending and above all enriching the public supply. The third lever is to strengthen France TV studio. Today, it produces drama, programmes for younger viewers and special events. We need to develop much more content that can be uploaded. France TV studio must become a model for outreach and financing. Adding value to our content means adding value to our mission. The fourth lever is to invest in all screens: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, the new smart TVs. 95% of Samsung televisions will be fully artificial intelligence, so the battle is being waged everywhere, at all times. We need to be there with native formats, but also with new ones. This is not a time for timidity, it's a time for public boldness. And all this within the framework of the DSA, which Arcom and the Dgccrf are responsible for implementing in France. This will become an additional tool for guaranteeing reliable, secure and, above all, plurality-based access to information. The fifth lever is collective mobilization and responsible pooling. Public audiovisuel can no longer operate in silos. France Télévisions must propose a dynamic of reasoned mutualization with all its public partners. We need to pool our equipment, digital resources and logistical means wherever relevant. This will free up room for maneuver, which will be reinvested in the service of creation and audiences. I'm also proposing, and I'll say it here, that we pool certain areas such as communications, to be much stronger. Digital technology and accessibility are beyond us. We need to think about tomorrow, and it's urgent that we do it today. This shared effort will guarantee both budgetary efficiency and the editorial power of public services. Public services must be exemplary, more agile, more supportive, more strategic. The sixth and final lever is investment governance. Today, 86% of the budget comes from public resources. Our own resources have reached a plateau, and internal pooling remains too weak. As early as this summer, I would like to see a rigorous audit of each division, in order to readjust priorities and make the future budget a budget of refoundation, in order to outline the Group's major priorities. Every euro spent must be a euro invested in accessibility, in creation, in the regions, and in compliance with an ambitious eco-production environmental charter. Mr. Chairman, members of the Arcom board, ladies and gentlemen, public service is not an inheritance to be managed, it's an impetus to be renewed. I will carry out this mission with rigor and rigor, but also with fire and passion. Because I come from the regions, because I grew up with television as my window on the world. Because I know what a difference it can make to people's lives. I want a medium that speaks to all French people, in all regions. And I say to you with gravity and faith, if you entrust me with this responsibility, I won't just be a president, I'll be above all a fighter for public service, a president of action, of anchoring, of passion, for all audiences and all territories.

- Thank you very much for that introduction. We will now open the floor to questions from the floor. I'll start by giving the floor to Juliette Théry.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your presentation. I'd like to ask you a question about the public service supply distribution strategy you have in mind, in a world of multiple uses and screens, which also affects access to public service supplies for the youngsters. Could you elaborate on this? Knowing that habits change very quickly. And that the difficulty that can arise for public services is to have supply content, and not necessarily content that meets a demand on the one hand. And on the other hand, a program selection supply that doesn't necessarily respond to a habit of access to a very exhaustive supply. Thank you very much.

- Thank you for your question, Madame Théry. As I said at the end of my presentation, I'm not just going to be a president, I'm going to be a fighter. To fight for the survival of public service broadcasting, in all the areas I mentioned, you have to be on all the battlefields. I don't want to impose a warlike discourse, but to explain to you my clear vision of what the audiovisuel landscape is for me today. I was born in 1977, and experienced the end of black-and-white programming on Saturday nights on FR3. Today, I can talk to my TV and ask for an action movie, for example. The world has totally changed, and has taken several generations with it, all of whom have experienced the development of television differently. That's why today, for me, the France Télévisions group in all its diversity and richness, with the 8543 people who today make up the group's wealth, and of course the people who work in outside companies for the public service, we need to understand these generations. To understand them, we have to go wherever they are. I could just say, I'm only developing France.tv. And we're going to abandon all the logos that make up the public's reference points. I'm not interested in that. What I want is for all audiences to be able to find their way around public service programs in the future. For me, the creation and distribution of our programs must be native to the platforms we're targeting, and that's part of what public service should be, because we need to address all audiences. On the other hand, we mustn't leave it to others - I say others - to private players, who - and I'm not going to tell you this, because Arcom is working hard on this - have become so much stronger and bigger in the last 15 years, and have taken over the role of what public service should be. There's one point where I don't necessarily agree with you: there are programs on other channels, other groups that should be on public service. There are commitments to diversity, for example, there are commitments to the territories that are not on public service today, but are on TF1, Canal+ or M6. I worked as a producer with Canal+ on a program called lexique du dyslexique. Short programs aimed at children who live their daily lives with a form of dyslexia. Why is it on Canal+? It should be on France Télévisions. I'd like to win back these audiences, looking for one a year for all French people. And especially those who today think that public service is useless, that it costs too much and should be abolished. I'm reaching out to them. You'll find a diversity of programs that will also concern you on a daily basis. That's my philosophy on public service programming and distribution. I hope I've answered your question.

- Romain Laleix.

- Thank you for opening your strategic program with the budget issue. The budget was approved with a deficit of several tens of millions of euros. You've drawn up a balance with an increase in the company's commercial resources. Several questions. Firstly, do you think that the developments you envisage in terms of advertising resources are in line with France Télévisions' public service missions? And secondly, beyond the pooling of resources mentioned earlier, what avenues have you identified in terms of control and possible redeployment to resolve the company's economic equation? - You're quite right, from the statement of case the deficit is 41.3 million euros. This year, it has been reduced to 70 million euros. The year 2024 has been "distorted" by revenues from the Gaming Games. You could say that in 2024, France Télévisions was already in deficit without the Gaming. On the other hand, the public commitment which has been somewhat reduced this year, and on the other hand, which is legitimate in a company, the charges, the salaries which increase every year, I think it cost this year 40, 45 million euros. All this means that we're in a deficit budget, totally on a shoestring. The current management has taken out three loans, two structural loans, for the development of France 3 PACA, and a loan of 50 million euros to support cash flow. I don't know the ins and outs of these loans, or how many years they are amortized over. So, faced with all this, I'm not here to come up with miracle solutions. But I do want to start from scratch. Starting again from scratch, that's the refoundation budget I want to put in place following an audit, as soon as I take office in August, to understand, division by division, what the expenses are, division by division, what savings we're going to be able to make. This is very important to me. A euro of public service money must be a euro invested intelligently, in a way that is clear to all the public, with the three priorities I've given you: accessibility, all publics, all territories, and I've added the environment charter, which is normal. I have proposed a number of levers that are obvious to me today for all players in the audiovisuel industry. I gave TF1's figures for segmented advertising, which are considerable. They have announced a profit of 554 million euros in 2024, thanks in particular to exponential advertising on TF1 + and all platforms. Of course, France Télévisions has been subject to advertising restrictions since 2009. And on the France.tv platform, we're also constrained, as we can no longer show programmes forbidden to under-16s between 8pm and 6am. Some programs, such as programmes for younger viewers, are not allowed to advertise. I'm well aware of this, and I'm not asking you to change the law. Nevertheless, I've worked hard on it. How, with these legitimate constraints for a public service, can I get more outside money? It has to do with programs. Today, on France.tv, you have a very interesting supply, but for me it's not at all up to the level of what the other platforms are doing. We need to go further. We need to invest in certain areas of programming that we're not doing today. We need to talk to young people. France Télévisions doesn't talk to young people today. No one can name me a program aimed at the 15-25 age group. I don't know of a single one. That's why I mentioned France4: it's a very good lever for seeking additional budgets. Arcom's historic decision - and I say historic, not because I'm standing in front of you - but France 4, which was a magnificent idea from the outset, to reach out to young people, to culture - I defy anyone in the street to name a France 4 program. Maybe the parents who watch it. But there isn't one program that makes France 4. There are plenty of quality programs today that make up the France Télévisions brand and the success of the public service, but France 4 doesn't at all. By creating France4play, by going further, by addressing these youngsters and these generations, I hope it will be a success, with audience targets. And behind that, we'll be able to take advantage of advertising that will allow France4 to live, but also the whole group to move in the direction of budgets to be sought, of every euro to be sought. I'll just finish, I'm sorry, I used to be a journalist, I talk a lot. I used to run a production company, and I was director of broadcasting and programming at Public Sénat. I've been on both sides of a TV channel's budget, which has to be respected. Every euro must be respected, with the public in mind. But when I was managing director of a production company, we had to start from scratch every morning. Every morning you had to convince the broadcasters, find the talent to sign contracts, sign deals. So I've experienced both. And so, I'm aware of every euro. I say every euro, because that may sound almost philosophical in relation to France Télévisions' overall budget. But I want to be clear and legible to all French people to whom we owe something. In other words, I want to be clear about every euro spent. And I'll be that president. - If I may pick up on this point, without asking you to go into the details of the savings, the efforts in relation to a current deficit of around 70 million euros, and the costs that are developing, given that you're talking about France4, you want to reinvest in new programs as a source of revenue, but it's first and foremost a source of expenditure. Or we could do it instead of the animation programs on France4 today. Because the audience of 15-25 year-olds is not the same as that of children. So we have to invest less in animation to compensate? - I understand your question, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I'd like to simplify... I have a rather panoptic vision of France Télévisions, it's my job, I know the brands, the variations, the general public doesn't understand anything today. Culture box, France4, plus France4, formerly France O, we don't understand a thing. That's why I wrote about the need to rethink the brand for the public. I want to allocate a specific budget to France4, a budget of 35 million euros a year. Investment in accessibility should be 100 million euros over 5 years. I'd like to issue European invitations to tender, as France Télévisions is obliged to do, in order to talk to start-ups and all those working on accessibility. And through this call for supplies, find solutions for the Marshall Plan I mentioned. I prefer to be precise about the figures. How am I going to find the 35 million, the 20 million for accessibility? In fact, I tried to find the figures for France Télévisions' commitment to disability, but they don't even exist. I'm going to look for this money after the audit on the refoundation budget. Today, I know France Télévision's major budgets. For example, I know that I won't touch the fact that 30% of the regional budget is allocated to overseas France. I consider this to be normal for territories that are often abandoned in our audiovisual and media world. On the other hand, I would like to renegotiate all contracts linked to major sporting events, for example. I need to know how much the Tour de France costs and what the ROI (return on investment) is. One euro spent on the Tour de France, what do I get in return? Obviously programs. But behind that, I have to manage a budget, so a euro spent on the Tour de France, what's in it for me? For the Coupe de France? For Roland Garros? I'd like all budgets to be presented to me, and I'll demand that all France Télévisions teams make an effort. And this will be done with them in a rich social dialogue, but with the understanding that the public service today is in a kind of impasse. And I'm also saying - and I think I'm going to be the only candidate to say this - that I won't touch the 80 million euro cinema agreement. Cinema for France goes beyond France, it's part of our culture, our heritage, and I want to encourage independent creation, bearing in mind that we're keeping 20% for France Télévisions. And I'll tell you about the 440 million euros. 5 years ago, I heard the current president of France Télévisions say before you, before the college: I had made provision for 480 million, I'm going to give you 500 million. I was astonished. How can you make provision for so many years, and sustain a budget for so many years, at such a level for outside productions? 20% remains for France Télévisions, but over 400 million euros goes to other production companies. Of course we have to support these production companies - I'm not going to say otherwise, I used to run one. But I would demand an effort on their production costs. I've directed documentaries, and I know how difficult it can be to complete a documentary on a budget. But when it comes to live broadcasts, I know that... I'm aware of the economies of production companies, and I'll be asking them to make a major effort.

- Laurence Pécaut-Rivolier.

- Thank you very much for your comments. You devoted a large part of your written and oral presentation to this Marshall Plan for accessibility, which stands out a lot. The first is that France Télévisions is already well ahead in terms of accessibility, particularly subtitling. What are the priorities for taking this accessibility further, beyond subtitling? You mentioned audio description. I'd like you to tell us what you think the main shortcomings are. And secondly, in terms of the representation of people with disabilities, there's also a subject which is highlighted by the Arcom diversity barometer every year. What can be done about it, and what are your proposals?

- Thank you for this question, which goes beyond my own professional commitment. For me, the Marshall Plan for accessibility is first and foremost a personal commitment that I've made in my professional life over the past 28 years. And today, I believe that a public service that wants to look itself in the eye every morning, proudly bearing the national flag of the audiovisuel public service, is not the one I know today. We're way behind when it comes to accessibility. We can pride ourselves on having 100% of our programs subtitled. With my phone, in ten seconds, with an application, I can subtitle a 52-minute documentary. We need to go further, and take into account all disabilities. It's essential, because a public service that doesn't speak to all audiences is a public service that isn't up to the challenges. In the future, for example, for people with motor disabilities, some of our fellow citizens will find themselves in situations where, faced with a television set or screen, they cannot operate it without the intervention of a third party. With eye-tracking, someone with a severe motor disability will be able to use his or her eye on the platform to change the program, for example. Tomorrow, when the sets of France 3, France 2, France 5, and all the sets of producers who wish to continue working with France Télévisions are not accessible to disabled people, we will no longer work with them. It's simple: I'm putting a moral contract on accessibility. It's not normal that in certain regions of France, guests with motor disabilities can't be invited on set, or on a game show set. It's not at all in keeping with my idea of public service. On the subject of method, today there's this revolution - and we can talk about it - of artificial intelligence, this monster which is both dangerous and must be contained, and at the same time used as a formidable tool for accessibility throughout the country. Many start-ups are now working on accessibility with a power they didn't have before. Today, we can enable people with Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia - there are six of them - to understand programs. These people are invisible, and they don't express themselves, they keep this handicap as a double punishment. That's 10% of the French population. Their second handicap is that they have access to, but no understanding of, the programs. And for me, that's not possible, I couldn't be this President, I want to speak to every single French person, whatever their disability. This is essential for the future of public service.

- Thank you, Catherine Jentile.

- I wanted to ask you a question about information. You began by quoting the journalist who said that the journalist is the barrier against tyranny. In a context where there's a lot of interference and fake news, and on France Info, which is one of the channels you'll be in charge of, how do you deal with this?

- I was lucky enough to start out as a camera operator. I accompanied journalists, and I was also lucky enough to be a reporter, which enabled me to travel the world and its difficulties, and to try to shed some light on them for those who are in front of their television, their screen. For me, news is one of the essential pillars of public service. It's both a responsibility and a burden. And today, in the face of fake news, we at France Télévisions have a vital role to play. On the one hand, we have to reach out to those who can't tell the difference between fake news and real news. They're on social networks, and that's why I want to invade social networks with France Télévisions' news strike force. The great work done by journalists in France, in the territories, and abroad with correspondents. I want to talk to all those people who don't understand fake news. On the one hand, invade social networks, all platforms. On the other, to create the Check application for France Télévisions programs. On the other hand, it's going out into the field. France Télé visions has abandoned the field, not for the journalists, but for its public service role. Public service isn't just about screens. Our role is to explain our profession, to make it more understandable. We need to reach out to youngsters and the not-so-youngsters alike, for example with the truck I mentioned. I've been following the Lumière sur l'info association, which is a multi-media association that already has a truck that goes out into the field. I'd like to follow them with France Télévisions' means. We've got great OB vans, so we can go out into the field and explain our job, make people dream in a neighborhood, in a town, and bring our local journalists to explain how they work, to break down this false information. Explain the daily routine, how a journalist gets up, reads the press, takes risks too. Taking risks, going into war zones, conflict zones, forbidden zones. Today, there are some very good programs on France Télévisions, but we have to make them understandable in the field. For example, "complément d'enquête" is doing very well, with 2 million viewers. That means there are 60 million French people who didn't watch the show. Maybe that's a bit presumptuous, but I think we can do it. I don't think it's inevitable. I think we can succeed, and that we can speak to all French people, even those who can't stand France Télévisions, who can't stand public service and think it's pointless. That's who I want to talk to first, to show them how we work, who we are, and that public service in a democracy is an essential pillar.

- Bénédicte Lesage

- Thank you, I'd like to come back to your commitments under the provisions of the ecological transition. You allude to this in your dossier. Could you describe the means you intend to use to significantly reduce the company's carbon footprint, your CSR policy, and what you intend to set up or enhance as a program to inform, raise awareness and mobilize citizens to take part in the ecological transition, in a period that is not necessarily favorable today on this subject.

- You're right, citizens are no longer interested in it on a day-to-day basis. There are some totally committed citizens who have made it a political act, but it's no longer a priority for the French. All the more so in view of two major elections, the municipal elections and the presidential elections. When I ran this production company, I signed the eco-production charter. For me, it's essential in the context of our professions, which are highly polluting. Television is polluting, cinema is very polluting. So what do we do about it? Either we greenwash, like other international companies, or we consider that we need to get to the root of the problem and find solutions for the years to come. There are many solutions I'd like to propose. The first is the grid I want to impose - and I do mean impose - on all our programs. This grid is both financial and a production mechanism. The two go hand in hand. For every euro spent on a new program, I want to know whether it is fully accessible. A grid of territories. I'd like to impose, we won't say a quota, but that the representation of territories be more accentuated throughout the group. You might say that France3 is the regional channel. Very well, I'd like France 2, France 4 and France 5 to be regional channels too. And on the other hand, I want to impose this France Télévisions environmental charter in this schedule. Because we are the public service, we must take the lead and be exemplary. There are several elements in this charter. The first is how to do better on shoots. I'll be asking crews to make small efforts, such as using trains instead of planes, and staying in local hotels instead of the big ones in the big cities. These are the small steps that will help us move forward. I mentioned the on sets. I was lucky enough to see the birth of TV Monaco. The set is 100% eco-friendly. It's 100% recycled material. I hope that within 5 years, all work linked to France Télévisions sets or structures, for example the new France3 PACA, given that a loan of 25.3 million was taken out to build it, will be eco-production from the outset. We can no longer continue to have over-air-conditioned premises, with printers running constantly...

- There are about 4 or 5 minutes left.

- These are all small steps that I want to impose on all programs produced by France Télévisions and external partners. As far as programs as such are concerned, today on France Télévisions, you have one or two programs on the environment, but they're not totally dedicated to the environment. You have some great documentaries that highlight major societal and animal issues, for example. I saw that a major award was going to be launched for the 140th anniversary of the SPA next week. That's a step in the right direction. But I'd like to come back to the issue of runoff: ecology and sustainable development have to be part of all our programs, both in terms of understanding the world we live in, and above all in terms of the small steps we all have to take. Above all, there must be no punitive ecology. As we've seen, that's a turn-off for the public. We need an ecology, a sustainable development that appeals to the public and takes them with us.

- Benoît Loutrel

- I'd like to come back to information and social networks. You say you're invading social networks. You mentioned YouTube. We're starting to see longer formats there, so we can transfer certain formats. But that's the exception rather than the rule. If I look at TikTok, Snapchat and Discord, we're talking about very short formats, or live content all the time. So, do we need to develop new incarnations, make public service tangible with public service influencers, with the ethics that go with it? Should we redesign our programs? Do we need to develop new scripts? How can we occupy this terrain and invade it with a public service supply?

- Thank you for your question. When I listen to Samuel Etienne, two weeks ago, talking about his tremendous sense of freedom at France Télévisions, it makes me a little sad. And I see that his greatest success is on Twitch. I'm sorry that France Télévisions didn't support him in his great success on Twitch, because he's a talented presenter who defends the values of public service. I want to brand France Télévisions programs on these platforms with the France Télévisions raison d'être. We have a responsibility, and I don't want to produce just any program. But I want to address all territories, and there's a social network territory. I want to go there with France Télévisions programs that are natively designed for all platforms. I can't accept that a euro spent on a program has not been designed for all platforms. A 52-minute documentary can be a capsule of a few seconds to refer back to the documentary, but also to inform. I want to move in this direction on all platforms, with a sense of responsibility. We're not going to do just anything. On embodiment...

- We're almost at the end of our time.

- As far as incarnation is concerned, today there is very little incarnation of France Télévisions by the new generation. I regret that. And when we go looking for a talent - I've forgotten his name, and yet I've worked with him - who is one of the precursors of news on social networks, we put him in a totally classic news programme on France 2. So we're losing the appeal of what he's been working on for years. I know, I've worked with him, we did a program on French senate. For me, it goes in the opposite direction.

- Thank you for your answers. We've used up the time allotted for the filmed part of this hearing, and we're going to move on to the exchange of views in camera.