The free operation of Canal + and Canal + Séries, launched at the start of confinement, will stop Tuesday evening, as expected by the chain. Canal + and Canal + Séries must switch to encrypted overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. The channels Canal + Family, Canal + Cinema, Canal + Sport and Canal + Décalé had already become encrypted again on Saturday March 21.
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A jump in audience in March
With this unprecedented exposure, the main channel of the Canal + group saw its audiences increase in March, reaching 1.6% audience share (+0.4 point over a year). Canal + Séries, for its part, proposed an unpublished marathon in the clear of the "Bureau des légendes" before the broadcast of season 5 of the series, scheduled for early April in encrypted format. "In this period, we did not necessarily favor the commercial aspects, but we favored national solidarity," assured the management of Canal +.
Regarding the evolution of subscriptions, "it is a bit early to determine the commercial impact of the virus because half of the sales channels (Fnac, Darty, telecom shops, editor's note) have fallen, and on the other half (the boxes of operators), we offered Canal + ", says the same source.
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A planned end from the start of the operation
The group had announced this unprecedented operation on March 17. "We must remain united and united in the face of the Covid-19 crisis," wrote Gérald-Brice Viret, director of antennas and programs for Canal +, on Twitter, adding that the channel would be broadcast "exceptionally in the clear for subscribers boxes for the next two weeks ", until March 31. The CSA had taken note of the will of Canal + to pass temporarily to the free service but had called it not to prolong the operation beyond the duration envisaged, so as not to "alter the balance between the paying chains and the free channels ".