Groupe Canal+

Groupe Canal+ (Canal+) is a French film and television studio and distributor. It is owned and controlled by Vivendi and has a film library in excess of 5,000 films. Vivendi has sold some parts of Canal Plus to private investors which are still using the name of Canal Plus. It is headquartered in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the suburbs of Paris.[3]

Groupe Canal+
Subsidiary
IndustryMedia
Founded1983 (1983)
Headquarters
Issy-les-Moulineaux
,
France
Key people
Jean-Christophe Thiery
(President)
Maxime Saada
(Chairman & CEO)
ProductsPay TV
Television production
Film production & distribution
Revenue€4.71 billion (2010)[1]
Number of employees
7,707[2] (31 December 2017) 
ParentVivendi
SubsidiariesStudioCanal, Canal, OCS (33%), Canal 8, Canal Star, Canal News, M7 Group
Websitecanalplusgroup.com

Canal Plus is "the French film industry's biggest financial backer, beloved by French cineastes".[4]

The fact that it is a major source of finance for domestic film production, participating in the financing of the vast majority of films produced in France is a major source of Canal Plus' strength. It has even created its own subsidiary companies with direct involvement in film production.[5]

StudioCanal, one of these subsidiaries, spends €200 million a year on movie production establishing as the first port of call outside the U.S. for intelligent upmarket movies like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which is fully financed.[6]

Corporate divisions
  • Canal+ (100%)—Premium Television; Metropolitan France, Caribbean, Africa, Southern Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Vietnam
    • Canal+ Cinéma—Premium Television devoted to movie
    • Canal+ Sport—Premium Television devoted to sports programmes
    • Canal+ Family—Premium Television devoted to family programming
    • Canal+ Séries—Premium Television devoted to series
    • Canal+ Décalé—Premium Television, delayed broadcast of programmes from Canal+
    • Ciné+—Set of six thematic cable television channels
    • Clique TV—Cable Television
    • Comédie+ (formerly Comédie!)—Cable Television devoted to humorous programs
    • CStar Hits France—Cable Television devoted to musical programs
    • Foot+—Cable Television devoted to soccer
    • Rugby+—Cable Television devoted to rugby football
    • Golf+—Cable Television devoted to golf
    • Infosport+—Cable Television News channel devoted to sports
    • Piwi+ (formerly Piwi)—Cable Television devoted to children programs
    • Planète+—Cable Television devoted to documentaries
    • Planète+ A&E—Cable Television devoted to documentaries from A&E Networks channels
    • Planète+ Crime+Investigation—Cable Television devoted to crimes documentaries
    • Polar+—Cable Television devoted to movie
    • Seasons—Cable Television devoted to documentaries
    • Télétoon+ (formerly Télétoon)—Cable Television devoted to animation
    • Teletoon+ (formerly Minimax)—polish Cable Television devoted to animation
    • MiniMini+ (formely MiniMini)—polish Cable Television devoted to animated series for children from 3 to 8 years
    • CNews (formerly i>Télé)—National News channel
    • C8—National channel
    • CStar—National channel
    • MyCanal—Free streaming service for Canal+ subscribers to stream the channel's programming live and on-demand
    • CanalPlay—Streaming and on-demand service
    • Canal+ International—International French premium channel featuring programming from Canal+ and its various other channels
  • Canal+ Régie—Advertising network for the group channel's and the cinema operator UGC
  • CanalSat (100%)—pay-TV provider
  • StudioCanal (100%)—film producer and distributor

Canal+
Main article: Canal+

Canal+ has operations in France and Poland, through its flagship brand Canal+. It is encrypted for most of the day, and viewers who wish to watch the channel's more popular programming (new-release movies and live sport) must subscribe to the service. Previously this involved the hire of a decoder to decrypt the signal, but increasingly Canal+ is being offered as part of a multi-channel satellite or cable television package (known as CanalSat in France.).

Former operations

Canal Plus came to the Nordic countries in 1997, acquiring the two FilmNet-channels and renaming them. The Nordic part was sold in October 2003 to the Telenor-owned Canal Digital, and the Canal+ brand was used under license until 2012, when the channels were re-branded C More Entertainment.

Canal+ has previously also been present in several other European countries; but as of 2016 it is only active in Poland and France.

Canal+ Hi-Tech was a private television channel in France dedicated to the broadcasting of films in 16:9 aspect ratio and HDTV Canal+ 16/9 changed its name to Canal+ Hi-Tech in March 2005. Through this change, the channel offered the latest technological advances in terms of image and sound, especially with high-definition programs. The channel was deleted when switching Canal+ to the 16:9 format.

Canal+ 3D was born on June 10, 2010, to broadcast some matches of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in 3D. It regularly broadcast films or sporting events of Canal+ in stereoscopic 3D format.

It stopped broadcasting on January 24, 2012.[7]

StudioCanal
Main article: StudioCanal

StudioCanal is a production company created in 1999, associated with NBC Universal until 2009.[8] Nowadays, StudioCanal is operating in several countries such as Germany, Japan, or Australia.[9] For the movie industry, it is a major player at the European level [10]

CanalSat
Main article: CanalSat

Formerly Canal Satellite Numérique, a pay satellite and IPTV distributor (as CanalSAT DSL). CanalSat is a satellite TV package launched in 1992.[11] A merger between CanalSat and TPS started in 2007, and finally canceled by the Competition Authority in 2011.[12] With CanalSat, the utilization of the card pairing (QEV) technology allow access to many channels such as, Eurosport, Paris Premiere or LCI.[13]

Thema

Thema is a Canal+ Group company that oversees distribution of Pay TV services in various countries, and is the parent company of channels including Novelas TV and Nollywood TV. Thema was founded in 2005 by François Thiellet, and acquired by Canal+ in 2014.[14]

International versions

As Canal+ was launched in new markets the brand has been used in several countries. When launching additional channels the channels were usually given colour-coded names, such as Canal+ Blue, Canal+ Green, Canal+ Yellow and Canal+ Red. Many of these subsidiaries have been sold and as of 2007, only the Spanish and Polish Canal+ were partially owned by French Canal+.

  • Canal+ Spain, now known as #0. Launched in 1990 in Spain by Sogecable as an analogue pay channel, similar to the French and Polish version. In 2015 The largest Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica received the approved and closed the acquisition of Canal+, now renamed Movistar+.
  • Canal+ Flanders, became Canal+ when FilmNet was bought. Later sold and is now known as Play More (Telenet, a subsidiary of Liberty Global).
  • Canal+ Belgium, now known as BeTV. It shares many common programs with the French channels. It is owned by VOO, a public telco in Wallonia.
  • Canal+ Netherlands. Filmnet was rebranded as Canal+ in 1997.[15] Canal+ sold the channels later on. In 2005, the channels were bought by Liberty Global and renamed them to Sport1 and Film1 in February 2006.[16] Sport1 changed its name to Ziggo Sport Totaal in November 2015.[17] Film1 was sold to Sony Pictures Television in 2015.[18]
  • Canal+ Poland. The channel is called Canal+ Premium, the satellite platform Platforma CANAL+
  • Canal+ Scandinavia, launched as Canal+ in 1997 with the integration of the FilmNet channels. The company was sold and renamed C More Entertainment, although the brand Canal+ was still used. It was purchased by the SBS Broadcasting Group in 2005, which was merged with ProSiebenSat.1 Media in 2007. In 2008, an agreement was made to sell the channels to TV4 Group. Since 2012 it is called C-More.
  • Tele+ Digitale, the Italian branch sold in 2003 to News Corp. and fused with Stream TV, the direct competitor. Now, it is called Sky Italia.
  • Premiere, a German premium television channel and platform launched in 1990, was founded by Canal+, Bertelsmann and Kirch. A few years later, Canal+ sold its share of Premiere. It is now known as Sky Deutschland and is owned by the UK's Sky plc.
  • Movie Network, an Australian premium television service launched in 1995, was founded as a partnership between Canal+, HBO (a subsidiary of Time Warner), The Walt Disney Company, MGM/UA and Village Roadshow. A few years later, Canal+ dropped out from the partnership.
  • The Brazil version of Canal+ in 1989, not the own version, retransmission of American ESPN. Ended transmissions due to launch of the Brazil cable providers in 1991.
  • In May 2009, K+ founded by Canal+ and VTV was launched. K+ serves Digital and Satellite Paid Televisions in Vietnam.
  • Canal+ Horizons, launched as Canal Horizons in 1990, is the channel in Africa.
  • Canal+ Myanmar: originally launched by Forever Group as 4TV in 2006, it became a joint venture with Canal+ Group in 2017, and was rebranded as Canal+ in February 2018.

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-12-13. Retrieved 2011-11-29.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. Vivendi 2017 Annual Report, 2018, Wikidata Q55162519
  3. "Mentions legales Archived 2010-03-27 at the Wayback Machine." Canal+ Group. Retrieved on 5 March 2010.
  4. Journal, John Carreyrou and Bruce OrwallStaff Reporters of The Wall Street. "Vivendi Turmoil Rises as Messier Ousts Popular Canal Plus Chief". WSJ.
  5. Kuhn, Raymond (January 4, 2002). "The Media in France". Taylor & Francis – via Google Books.
  6. London, Tim Adler in; London, Tim Adler in (September 29, 2011). "Studiocanal Raises More Film Financing: Says It Won't Have To Borrow To Fund Slate".
  7. "Canal+ abandonne sa chaîne 3D". ozap.com.
  8. "StudioCanal Sues Universal Claiming Millions in Working Title Film Revenue". The Hollywood Reporter.
  9. Hopewell, John; Hopewell, John (July 17, 2012). "Studiocanal buys Hoyts Distribution".
  10. "Vivendi". webzine.vivendi.com.
  11. Camexport. Archived 2014-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
  12. "France : Merger of TPS and CanalSat: Competition Authority Pronounces Injunctions". merlin.obs.coe.int.
  13. "CanalSat to offer short-term subscriptions". Broadband TV News. September 24, 2009.
  14. Dziadul, Chris (October 29, 2014). "Canal+ buys Thema". Broadband TV News.
  15. Fransen gaan Nederlanders vermaken, Trouw, Dorien Pels, 26 July 1997
  16. "Cookies op AD.nl - AD.nl". Ad.nl. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
  17. "Ziggo Sport". Sport1.nl. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
  18. SONY PICTURES TELEVISION CLOSES FILM1 DEAL Sonypicturestelevision.com, Retrieved on July 26, 2015
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.