Media timeline record stalls, Netflix grows impatient

If you have recently asked yourself the question “but why can’t I see Avengers: Endgame Where Frozen 2 on Disney + “, the answer is in three words: media chronology. Unlike Canal + or OCS, subscription streaming platforms (SVoD) such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney + must respect a period of 36 months before being authorized to broadcast a film released in theaters in France. A purely hexagonal specificity which is supposed to evolve this year.

But everything is in the “supposed”. On June 23, the SMAD decree (for “on-demand audiovisual media services”) appeared in the Official Journal. It defines new financial obligations for foreign platforms in European creation, and in particular French, in exchange for a new, more favorable place in the media chronology. If the first part of the deal was implemented on July 1, the second part is still pending.

Behind the scenes, streaming services are getting impatient, Netflix in the lead. The Los Gatos firm is at the forefront as the biggest platform by number of subscribers. At the end of August, she therefore split a letter sent directly to the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot. One way to kick in the anthill again and force the government’s hand, while the discussions flounder.

Canal + is blocking

It must be said that the different actors involved in the affair do not all have the same interests, far from it. The main opponent of American platforms is, as often, Canal +. Since the first data or rumors on the new media chronology – 20% of turnover injected into French creation against 12 to 14 months of waiting before the screening of a film released in theaters – the encrypted channel has gone up several times in the niche. Until then, its window of 6 to 8 months guaranteed it a huge advantage over its new competitors. But with Netflix and others on its heels, Canal + is worried about seeing its privileges shattered, especially since it spends much more money than them in French production. So much so that he even threatened to abandon his status as a channel to concentrate on his platform, MyCanal, and thus to put himself at the level of investment of his rivals.

According to Figaro, the letter from Netflix would open a period of two additional months in discussions between the platforms, Canal + and the industry. But Roselyne Bachelot would already have at hand a decree imposing unilaterally the new media chronology, if ever the debates were to drag on a little longer. But the strong position of the encrypted channel in the financing of French cinema seems to force all the interlocutors to have to walk on a thread to spare the goat and the cabbage.