Yves Bigot: “We have a very specific mission of promoting the French language”

In 2020, at one of the heights of the pandemic, French company TV5MONDE took advantage of the peaks in consumption that streaming was registering to launch its own platform, TV5MONDEplus, a global AVOD offer which aims to give users the possibility of discovering francophone programs. In fact, all shows in the service are in French, although they are subtitled in five languages (French, English, Spanish, Arabic, and German).

“We launched our streaming platform 18 months ago. It was a project we actually had before the pandemic, but we managed to launch it during it. The idea behind it is to make sure we reach all different demographics; that includes cord-nevers and cord-cutters. Basically, as a public service, our goal is that our programs are watched by as many people as possible,”  Yves Bigot, CEO of TV5MONDE, told Señal News.

Generalist and cultural, TV5MONDEplus’ catalog includes films, series, documentaries, and the best of TV5MONDE's associated channels: France Télévisions, Radio-Canada, Télé-Québec, TV5 Québec Canada, RTS, and RTBF. At the same time, the platform offers its own TV5MONDE productions, African co-productions, and even podcast shows.

With presence in practically the entire world, the platform varies its content according to the territory. In the United States, for example, it incorporates a solid offer of sports content, while in Africa, on the other hand, one of the pillars of the programming is a daily news show which covers the whole continent, which is where most of the French group’s audience comes from. “On the 24 countries where we are able to count our audiences, we know we have 62 million weekly viewers, and 50 million are from Africa. We are a huge player in this territory,”  Bigot assured.

At the same time, one of the main goals of the project is to promote the French language and its learning, so TV5MONDEplus also aims to become a useful resource for consumers to learn and teach this dialect. “We have a very specific mission of promoting the French language. That is part of who we are,”  Bigot concluded.