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Canal+ axes cabsat trio

Canal+ is planning to close three of its cabsat channels, 24-year-old network Jimmy, along with lifestyle stations Maison+ and Cuisine+.

The group announced the news to the channels’ staff yesterday, according to local reports. Instead, Canal+ said it wants to invest more in its children channels (Teletoon+, Piwi+), its Planète+ documentary channel, and on laugher Comedie+.

Jimmy, originally called Canal Jimmy, was once a flagship cabsat destination – the first to be focused on series.

But Canal+ now runs the dedicated Canal+ Séries channel, with Jimmy becoming less of a priority. The latter’s audience share has fallen to 0.1% lately. Meanwhile, Maison+ and Cuisine+, devoted to home renovation and cooking, had even narrower audiences.

The documentary and kids markets have recently become more competitive in France, especially kids, which is a major target for SVoD services, including Canal+ rival Netflix. As a result, Canal+ needs to reinforce its position.

It’s also a bad time for cabsat channels in France in general, with business models in trouble due to falling licence fees from cable and Canal+’ DTH platform CanalSat, following the rise of rival IPTV triple-play offers.

TF1 is axing its lifestyle channel Stylia, while TF1 and M6 are closing their joint-venture channel TF6 at the end of the year. The two groups are also considering closing their respective LCI and Paris Premiere, after regulators decided not to grant them a free-to-air DTT licence.

TF1 has been appealing this decision and announced to LCI staff that it is going to implement significant redundancies and turn the news channel into a less prominent one. TF1 still needs approval to do this, however.

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