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17 Mar 08
Country: France
Topics: Broadband content, Video-on-demand (VoD)
Source:
Online Services/Intelligence/Broadband/Updates
French commercial broadcaster M6 is to launch an online catch-up TV service on 19th March 2008. The service, branded M6 Replay, will offer shows on a free-to-view basis with each video preceded by an in-stream ad. Shows will be available online an hour after broadcast and can be viewed for up to 7 days. The service will offer 200 programmes at launch, including local French content and US series. In addition to the PC service the broadcaster is in the process of developing catch-up services for IPTV and mobile platforms.
M6 Replay will exist alongside M6 Video, the broadcaster's transactional online service which offers movies and some TV content for paid download.
Our take...
By launching an online catch-up service M6 is aiming to capture a portion of the revenues from a rapidly growing online television market – Screen Digest estimates that the French online TV market will be worth €30m in 2008, with ad-supported services generating almost three quarters of this revenue.
As traditional television audiences become increasingly fragmented broadcasters need to make shows available on demand across multiple platforms to maximize eyeballs. TF1and Canal Plus already offer some ad-supported local TV content online but in both cases US shows are only available on a paid basis. M6 have not released a list of shows that will be available through M6 Replay but the US content included on the service is likely to be limited due to rights issues.
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