Vià (stylised as vià) is a French
television network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...
. It started as a southern regional network in 2010,
before going national in 2018,
and subsequently contracting again due to economic problems.
History
Origins
When its national network
Antennes Locales
Antennes Locales (later Cap Télé Groupe) was a French television network established in 2002 and closed in 2011. It aimed to become the country's first private national network by aggregating local stations, either pre-existing or created for ...
did not take off, Paris-based sold off its television stations to various regional investors.
In 2009
TéléMiroir, based in the southern city of
Nîmes, was sold to Christophe Musset and his associate Pierre-Paul Castelli, who had previously partnered with GHM in
free print publications.
In 2010, Musset founded an umbrella company called Médias du Sud
(), and acquired more stations in the southern cities of
Montpellier,
Perpignan
Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...
, and
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fran ...
(the latter went off the air in 2016). Consequently, Musset's stations adopted the common branding TVSud (), followed by the name of their specific submarket.
Musset also served as president of Télévision Locales de France, a trade association of French local televisions, between 2013 and 2017.
Expansion
In 2016 Musset proposed a new channel, tentatively named TVSud Toulouse and serving
the eponymous regional capital. To gain access to his largest market yet, he secured an investment in Médias du Sud from
:fr:Bruno Ledoux, leading shareholder in print magazine ''
Le Nouvel Économiste'' and local TV channel Télif (short for Télévision
Ile-de-France).
Shortly before the Toulouse launch in September 2017, the TVSud channels were rebranded as
ViàOccitanie (after the southern region of
Occitanie Occitanie may refer to:
*Occitania, a region in southern France called ''Occitanie'' in French
*Occitania (administrative region)
Occitania ( ; french: Occitanie ; oc, Occitània ; ca, Occitània ) is the southernmost administrative region of ...
where all four are based). Ledoux's Télif was similarly rebranded as
ViàGrand Paris.
Médias du Sud further expanded in May 2018 through the acquisition of Antilles Télévision (ATV), an embattled regional network consisting of three stations based in the French overseas
departments
Department may refer to:
* Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility
Government and military
*Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...
of
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe (; ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Gwadloup, ) is an archipelago and overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands— Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the ...
,
Guyane and
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island and an Overseas department and region, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of ...
. The channels were to be managed in cooperation with
martiniquais businessman Xavier Magin. In an effort to cut down costs, the financially crippled Guadeloupe and Guyane channels switched to simulcasting the Martinique broadcast, but they remained nominally separate entities, with a possible return to original programming at a later date. The ATV channels would transition to the Vià branding in October 2018.
National network
Ledoux and Musset's next step was the creation of ViàRéseau, a network that would aggregate their own channels with independent stations under the Vià brand to form a true national footprint, allowing for the mutualization of certain production efforts and advertising sales.
The business plan was viewed as ambitious, since local programming in France has historically been dominated by
France 3
France 3 () is a French free-to-air public television channel and part of the France Télévisions group, which also includes France 2, France 4, France 5 and France Info.
It is made up of a network of regional television services prov ...
(previously France Régions 3), a heavily subsidized
public network.
On July 4, 2018, the new network was officially launched, boasting a reach of 32 million potential viewers across 22 affiliates.
In March 2019, Médias du Sud and Magin opted to cut their losses in the
French Antilles market by officially closing down their offices in Guadeloupe and Guyane, rather than resuming their production of original content.
Later that month, Médias du Sud registered the trademark ViàGroupe, which would become the company's new name shortly after.
Aborted merger and contraction
In April 2020, French media regulatory authority
CSA
CSA may refer to:
Arts and media
* Canadian Screen Awards, annual awards given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
* Commission on Superhuman Activities, a fictional American government agency in Marvel Comics
* Crime Syndicate of Amer ...
approved a merger plan between ViàGroupe's five channels and
Altice's own nascent network
BFM Régions. BFM already held a minority participation in ViàGroupe's ViàOccitanie Toulouse.
In December 2020, Altice rescinded its merger offer, alleging that it had discovered unexpected liabilities while examining the network's financials in prevision of the merger. Days later, Ledoux's channel ViàGrand Paris went into receivership, followed in January 2021 by ViàGroupe.
Their respective assets were sold to separate investors.
ViàGrand Paris went to an alliance between daily newspaper ''
Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French Newspaper of recor ...
'', and
Lille
Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...
area media company Groupe SECOM. In early July 2021, it was replaced by Museum TV Paris, a local version of SECOM's national art channel Museum TV.
The ViàOccitanie channels went to Groupe La Dépêche du Midi, publisher of the
eponymous daily, although the Nîmes
broadcast licence was subjected to a new tender by the CSA, which La Dépêche du Midi won uncontested.
With ViàRéseau's national infrastructure in disarray following the demise of its founders' companies, affiliates ViàLMTV Sarthe, ViàMoselle TV and ViàVosges have reverted to their original identity.
Programming
The failure of previous French local television ventures has been attributed to a lack of recognizable properties like sports, a deficiency that Vià sought to address.
Rugby league
With most of France's top
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...
clubs based in the network's historic market of Occitanie, Vià has been a natural broadcasting partner for the sport.
The national ViàRéseau network broadcast
Team France games from the
2018 Rugby League European Championship
The 2018 European Championship is an international rugby league tournament that took place in October and November 2018. Four teams competed in the tournament, which forms the top tier of European international competition, and the first stage of ...
.
Coverage of domestic club competitions such as the
Elite 1 league and the
Coupe de France
The Coupe de France, formerly known as the Coupe Charles Simon, is the premier knockout cup competition in French football organized by the French Football Federation (FFF). It was first held in 1917 and is open to all amateur and professio ...
has typically been shown on the ViàOccitanie subnetwork.
Other sports
Vià's first sports broadcasting agreement was with women's basketball team
Lattes Montpellier, whose
Euroleague games have been shown on the ViàOccitanie subnetwork since its days as TVSud.
In May 2019, Vià broadcast volleyball's
Ligue A Masculine finals.
In the summer of 2019, the network expressed interest in a Game of the Week program featuring women's handball's
Ligue Butagaz Énergie
The Catholic League of France (french: Ligue catholique), sometimes referred to by contemporary (and modern) Catholics as the Holy League (), was a major participant in the French Wars of Religion. The League, founded and led by Henry I, Duke of ...
,
but the bid did not get past the preliminary stages and the broadcasting rights went to
Sport en France.
In 2021 and 2022, the ViàOccitanie channels broadcast live
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...
from
Montpellier's
ATP 250 tournament.
In 2022, ViàATV started broadcasting live stages from the
Tour de Martinique, a
road cycling race.
Other programming
Vià's flagship entertainment property was ''Bethewone'', a short-lived interactive
game show
A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...
using a
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on ...
, broadcast during the fall of 2017. It was hosted by
Julien Lepers, the former host of ''Questions pour un champion'' (the French version of ''
Going For Gold'').
ViàRéseau channel roster
Original channels, brought to the network by founding partners Musset and Ledoux:
*ViàOccitanie subnetwork
**ViàOccitanie Montpellier
**ViàOccitanie
Pays Catalan
**ViaOccitanie
Pays Gardois
**ViàOccitanie Toulouse
*ATV subnetwork
**ViàATV (
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island and an Overseas department and region, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of ...
)
**
**
*
Third-party channels that adopted the Vià branding and participated in ''viàfrance.tv'', a collaborative Internet news portal:
*Vià
Angers
Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution. The inhabitants of both the city and the pr ...
*ViàLMtv
SartheChannel name has since reverted to LMtv Sarthe
*ViàMATÉLÉ (
Saint-Quentin)
*Vià
Moselle
The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...
TV
*ViaTéléPaese (
Corsica)
*Vià
Vosges
The Vosges ( , ; german: Vogesen ; Franconian and gsw, Vogese) are a range of low mountains in Eastern France, near its border with Germany. Together with the Palatine Forest to the north on the German side of the border, they form a single ...
Channels that signed the network's protocol, but opted for a waiting period and did not transition to the Vià branding:
*Wéo
**Wéo
Lille
Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...
**Wéo
Picardie
Picardy (; Picard and french: Picardie, , ) is a historical territory and a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it has been part of the new region of Hauts-de-France. It is located in the northern part of France.
Hist ...
*Télévision Bretagne
**Tébéo (
Western Brittany)
**Tébésud (
Morbihan
Morbihan ( , ; br, Mor-Bihan ) is a department in the administrative region of Brittany, situated in the northwest of France. It is named after the Morbihan (''small sea'' in Breton), the enclosed sea that is the principal feature of the coast ...
)
*La Chaîne
Normande
*Télé
nantes
Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabit ...
*Télévision Locale du
Choletais
*Demain TV (employment and entrepreneurship channel)
References
External links
Official ViàOccitanie websiteOfficial ViàATV website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Via
2018 establishments in France
Television stations in France
Television channels and stations established in 2018
French-language television stations