Paris (AFP)

Announced a little over a year ago, Salto, the response of France Télévisions, TF1 and M6 against the rise of Netflix streaming giants, will be launched in the first quarter of 2020.

The project received Monday the green light from the Competition Authority "under conditions" - the respect of a series of commitments - last step necessary to its creation.

On-line and subscription-based platform, Salto will offer live channel feeds, catch-up programs as well as video-on-demand services.

It is also a way for groups to respond with one voice to the rise of the SVOD (subscription video on demand services) in France, with 5.5 million daily users, especially among the most young people, according to Médiamétrie's figures.

This unpublished alliance was initially presented to the European competition authorities, who decided to send the file to the French regulator, thus lengthening the validation process.

A delay that had annoyed the French leaders, while Netflix continues to win subscribers on the territory (he crossed the threshold of 5 million subscribers at the beginning of the year, just over four years after its French launch) and that Amazon Prime advance his pawns.

In the United States, the giants Apple, Warner and Disney are also preparing to launch their own subscription video offers, before a likely deployment in Europe.

- "French Audiovisual Team" -

"We can finally build this team of French audiovisual that I called my wishes," welcomed in a statement Delphine Ernotte, the patron of France Televisions and initiator of this project.

"The launch of the platform will soon give us the means to play on our territory, facing international players, and the French and European creation will find a new way to meet its audience," she said.

TF1 boss Gilles Pélisson hailed on his side "a very positive signal" that "demonstrates the awareness of the Authorities of the need to support and support industry players in the innovative developments needed to address new challenges ".

"The channels of our groups are appreciated by the French, our content is attractive and our technology is very advanced: so many reasons to celebrate the forthcoming launch of a joint and ambitious offer like Salto," commented Nicolas de Tavernost, head of M6 group, which manages the technical part of this new offer.

The proposed transaction will involve the creation of a company jointly owned by the three television groups.

In its communiqué, the Competition Authority said that the groups will be subject to a series of commitments, aimed in particular to prevent any risk of "coordination" in the acquisition of rights, particularly French programs.

Thus, the conditions of supply of Salto will be framed, "so that the ability to supply exclusive content of Salto to its parent companies will be limited," says the regulator.

Salto will also have to pay its parent companies at a rate set by two independent experts and the groups will have to "limit the possibilities of cross-promotion between their channels and the Salto platform".

The CSA, which also gave the green light to the project, underlines that it will make it possible to make profitable the investments of the groups in the programs "while the television advertising market is under tension because of the strong competition of foreign digital actors , unregulated and very powerful, like Google and Facebook ".

This is an unprecedented step for France Télévisions, TF1 and M6, three groups with different statuses (two private and one audience) and who fight each other daily to capture the viewers.

This project echoes British initiative Britbox, a platform driven by the BBC and ITV and focused on UK series, which will be launched in the UK in the fourth quarter of 2019.

© 2019 AFP