The threat to French public media
Kids content economics are in freefall. Big tech just committed to an AI infrastructure bet that makes the Apollo program look modest. We get into all three.
Something has been building in France for 6 months that most of the global media industry isn’t following closely enough. A biased right-wing parliamentary commission has spent that time going after France Télévisions, reportedly fed questions by the owner of competing commercial outlets across TV, radio, print and publishing who fuels disinformation in French Media.
The timing is pointed. France is a year from a presidential election with no political centre left standing, just competing extremes on both sides and the broadcaster best equipped to cover that election objectively is the one now being asked to cut deep.
France Télévisions isn’t sitting still. Their BVOD platform has been number 1 for 11 months in 2025, 4 months so far in 2026 with 43.2M monthly streamers. They launched on Amazon Channels last summer. A YouTube deal is taking shape, including nightly news going up same-day and we get into what this can actually deliver given that France TV’s commercial structure makes it a different animal from the BBC and given how resource intensive this deal will be.
The list (of essential moves made the group) goes on and yet the commission’s goal is to find 1B€ in annual savings and redirect the money toward clearing national debt and restoring historic buildings. To get there, France Télévisions would have to cut the things that actually justify its existence, nay its importance to French people: its ability to fight disinformation in an election year, reach younger viewers by shutting down France 4 (which reaches 3.3 million children every month) or Slash TV (aimed at GenZ viewers), reducing by 1/3rd its sports rights budget which threatens its free-to-air coverage of Roland Garros and the Tour de France, events that would move behind a paywall the moment France TV can no longer fund the rights.
That context is exactly what makes Evan Shapiro ’s kids content report with Common Sense Media land so hard with me. When he asked a dozen industry experts to describe the state of kids content production today, there was a word, a sentiment that kept coming up. The streamers have pulled back commissions sharply since 2022 and YouTube’s economics for kids producers are broken. Public broadcasters worldwide now carry more than half the weight of quality kids content production globally. They still step up because someone has to but pull that funding and the streamers and YouTube have already shown they won’t cover it when we are talking about the next generations of viewers for Pete’s sake.
If you’re reading this from outside France, don’t file it under someone else’s problem. France isn't the first, nor the last country to be threatened like this. Check what happened recently to public media in the US, Hungary or Slovakia.
I’ll be going deeper on this topic in the coming weeks but for now, this episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast is the place to start. If you care about public service media or work in public service media, don’t hesitate to reply to share your thoughts, I read and response to every email.
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