France: CSA issues pay DTT call
March 4, 2020
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
French TV regulatory body CSA has launched a call for bids for a national HD DTT pay-TV service to be broadcast on a frequency currently used by Canal+, whose license ends December 5th 2020.
The channel will be broadcast on multiplex R3. Candidates must apply to the CSA before April 4th. The authorisation will be delivered for a ten-year period. Canal+ has confirmed that it will be bidding to keep its DTT frequency, which attracts around 400,000 subscribers.
A January 2020 impact study from the CSA explained that issuing a new authorisation to Vivendi’s subsidiary would maintain the presence of a pay DTT programming offering based on movies and sport. According to the regulator, neither the diversity of operators nor the free DTT market would be impacted by such a renewal.