Leading French commercial broadcaster TF1 is to bring more production in-house and revise its acquisition strategy following disappointing financial results.

The broadcaster’s latest figures showed its profits had more than halved compared with this time last year to €41.7M (US$44m), although its revenues climbed 2.3% to more than €2bn.

It means TF1’s profit margin is just 6% of its revenues, compared with 25% at rival M6.

To increase its profitability, the broadcaster will look to TF1 Productions and the Newen Group, in which it acquired ^[1] a 70% stake at the end of 2015, to create more of its programming. Newen is currently developing a daily soap for the main TF1 channel’s primetime schedule.

The network said yesterday it also intends to negotiate prices down with third-party format and entertainment producers.

While total revenues improved last year thanks to the addition of Newen to TF1’s accounts, advertising revenues were down by 1.6%.

Flagship channel TF1’s audience share also fell by a full share point last year to 20.8% and has dropped below 20% since the beginning of 2017.

The group is also facing higher costs following the move of its news channel LCI off pay TV and onto a free-to-air DTT platform. As such, the channel no longer generates licence fee revenues from cable, DTH and IPTV platforms.

The programme budget for TF1’s five DTT channels will remain at €980m per year for the next three years in order to try and improve profits.