France mon Amour, the first French television channel in China, will be available on China’s Viva platform.
With the carriage agreement, the channel will reach 180 million subscribers including 40 million active subscribers each month, from December 18, 2018.
France mon Amour is a channel promoting the image of France and its products. “Attracting tourists, investors, researchers and academics, helping businesses to increase their share of the world’s biggest market, and providing each French city, town or region with the means to promote its image: that’s what France mon Amour is about,” explained Frédéric Pierret, former Executive Manager of the UNWTO (World Tourism Organization) and Director of Strategy at France mon Amour.
The channel’s schedule, planned by a French-Chinese team in France, will revolve around programmes that notably give cities, towns, regions, tourist destinations, art industries, luxury products, players in French cuisine, curators of natural and heritage sites, and technological industries visibility, enabling them to manage and develop their image in China.
Films broadcasted on France mon Amour will be short or series whose approach is adapted to Chinese viewer populations. They will rely on the appeal of France to educated audiences, routine users of tablets and smartphones with high disposable income.
“Programmes and films broadcasted on France mon Amour will be modern, entertaining and adapted to patterns of audiovisual-content consumption in China,” notes Frédéric Lepage, co-founder of the channel. “On VIVA, they’ll reach a wide audience mainly made up of ‘millennials’ from the highest socio-economic brackets. 76% of those users are in the 25-40 age group, 63% have been though higher education and 68% of them have a monthly income of over $5,000, 5.5 times the average Chinese salary.”
France mon Amour was founded in 2018 by Henry Han and Frédéric Lepage. Henry Han, Chair of Viva, is one of China’s Internet pioneers, known as the cofounder of AsiaInfo and China Netcom. Frédéric Lepage, novelist, filmmaker and producer of audiovisual programs with a worldwide reputation (France Télévisions, National Geographic, NHK, RTBF, ZDF, Discovery, RAI, etc.), is also an expert on China, where he is known equally for his productions and for his role in publishing, particularly the first guide to France written specially for Chinese tourists.