📺 Free TV breaks the box

France’s boldest telco just dropped a free streaming service for everyone, no set-top box required.

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🏟️ A sports bundle built for superfans

After adding Ligue 1+ last month, L’Équipe just folded Eurosport 1 & 2 into its platform. For €10.99 a month, subscribers get a single destination for French and international sports, from the Australian Open to the Tour de France.

This move turns L’Équipe into more than a publisher: it’s now a fully fledged sports streaming gateway selling access and editorial in one.

🧭 Discovery fatigue is real but fixable

Viewers now spend 10 minutes per session searching for something to watch. Many give up entirely.

Media Distillery’s new Decision Fatigue E-Guide shows how smarter metadata, semantic search and AI-generated previews can cut that time in half.

Discovery isn’t UX polish, it’s a retention engine.

📺 TF1’s YouTube puzzle

17 channels, 12.5 million subs, 6.7 billion views, yet TF1 still plays YouTube like television. Uploads follow broadcast rhythms, titles read like EPGs and thumbnails recycle key art.

The fix? Learn the platform’s grammar: faster openings, tighter metadata and shorts that fuel discovery. Once TF1 does, it won’t just post to YouTube, it’ll program for it.

→ Read my 10 fixes in this week’s YouTube deep dive.

🇩🇪 Another broadcaster warming up to Amazon

After ITV, RTL Deutschland has launched RTL+ as an add-on channel on Amazon Prime Video in Germany and Austria.

For €12.99/month, subscribers get full access to RTL+’s video catalogue, including linear channels (RTL, VOX, ntv) and on-demand series, sports and entertainment.

💬 RTL Deutschland CEO Stephan Schmitter summed up the move:

“Strong partnerships are more important than ever. Our goal is to be as broadly available as possible.”

It’s a bold distribution play, one that flips the usual rivalry between local broadcasters and global platforms into collaboration. For Amazon, it deepens the “Channels” ecosystem. For RTL, it’s a shortcut to reach new viewers without fighting for app installs.

RTL+ is no longer competing with Amazon, it’s using Amazon to compete.

🎥 Welcome to the pull era

At MIPCOM, Filmhub and Vortex Media spelled it out: success no longer follows windows, it follows audiences.

Discovery now beats exclusivity and creators who sell directly to fans are rewriting the distribution playbook.

→ LISTEN and/or WATCH in full here: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE

🏁 Who’s kicking off Stream TV Europe?

I am!

On the 1st day of Stream TV Europe (April 13th, 2026), I will curate a half-day program (from 9am-12pm) focused on how to own the living room in 2026 and beyond.

Telecoms, Pay TV giants, streamers, broadcasters, CTV platforms, YouTube and social media, are all vying to be the entry point to our big screen time. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, but to win viewers over one needs to solve urgent pain points: smarter bundling, anti-churn tactics, a frictionless entertainment experience, monetisation models bringing the best of TV and digital, discovery that works and localisation that resonates.

This half-day of sessions convenes every constituency (operators, streamers, broadcasters, device makers, technologists and regulators) to swap best practices and share growth tactics.

Expect solution-driven case studies, practical playbooks and technologies that cut through complexity instead of adding to it.

Want to be part of the conversation? Ping me at contact@thelocalact.com.

📺 Free goes free

On October 21, Free launched a new free television service called Free TV, replacing its 2020 app, OQEE.

Open to everyone (Free subscribers or not), the platform brings together 170 live channels, including 16 from the TNT, 25 000 on-demand programs, Free Ciné (strong of 500 films and 1 000 series episodes available in AVOD). For more content and more channels, you can upgrade to Free TV+ (0.99€ a month 😲) or become a Free subscriber (i.e. with a set top box).

💬 As Free founder Xavier Niel puts it:

“Watching TV in 2025 is a nightmare, you have to download an app for every channel and create an account for each one. We decided to change all that.”

But Free TV isn’t just a new interface. The fact that the offer comes without a set top box is a BIG deal especially for the French market which has historically seen a solid take up of telco set top boxes bundled with internet, mobile and TV. In parallel, Free has partnered with VOD Factory and Viznet to launch 27 ad-supported FAST channels.

Free has always been the French telco pushing the boundaries (back in 2012 they entered the market with a 2€ mobile subscription). This move could signal that to grow one must go OTT.

🗳️Poll time:

RTL+ is now available as an add-on channel on Amazon Prime Video. Smart move or loss of control?

• Smart: visibility beats exclusivity

• Risky: Amazon owns the customer relationship

• Necessary: it’s the only way to scale

• Too soon: broadcasters should stay independent

Respond in the comment section below.

That’s it for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium.