Maybe it was the fact that tens of thousands of really cool and smart people were conducting business meetings at poolside cabanas at Cannes Lions wearing beachwear and flip flops. Maybe it was the fact that open bars and late night stops at Le Pizza were creating a vibe that put just about anything in the best possible light.
Because why else would so many trade and mainstream publications in the U.S. covering media be making such a big deal about an announcement that didn’t affect a single American household?
Heck, the freaking NEW YORK TIMES’ Nicole Sperling was practically oozing with excitement when she dropped her story midway through the global festival last week:
Netflix is getting into the old-fashioned TV business.
The streaming giant announced a deal on Wednesday to show live and on-demand programming from one of France’s television networks, TF1. The partnership, the first of its kind for Netflix, means that the company’s subscribers in France will have access to TF1’s broad array of programming, including game shows like “The Voice,” as well as live sporting events and soap operas without leaving the service.
“By teaming up with France’s leading broadcaster,” Greg Peters, a co-chief executive of Netflix, said in a statement, “we will provide French consumers with even more reasons to come to Netflix every day and to stay with us for all their entertainment.” Mr. Peters flew to Cannes, France, this week for a large annual advertising festival to announce the partnership with Rodolphe Belmer, the chief executive of TF1.
It’s considered a breakthrough in France, where traditional pay TV is still relatively strong compared to Netflix. As DEADLINE’s dynamique deux of
And it’s not as if making popular linear channels available on a streaming platform is a strategy that necessarily boosts adoption and engagement. The fact is in the U.S. the VMVPD component of practically all platforms is at the moment nominally penetrated. Quickly Google how many subscribers the more prominent multichannel providers have as a percentage of their host platform. Per data reported at the end of 2024, the 75-channel Hulu Plus Live TV reached less than nine percent of the 54 million Hulu subscribers–between 4.6 million and 4.8 million subscribers depending upon which source you choose to believe.
And while YouTube TV reaches roughly 75 per cent more homes that does Hulu’s array–an estimated 8 million per VARIETY!–that’s out of a universe of roughly 107 million penetrated HHs, or a mere 7.5 percent.
Based on this hard data, on the surface this partnership doesn’t seem to be one to do the kind of jumping jacks about that the press assembled in the South of France was spewing out. At least right now. But if one gazes into the future, that’s where the true potential of this being a seminal moment becomes apparent. Whittock and Goldbart delved head first into it:
Ampere Analysis called the deal “a perfect example of ‘diagonal’ integration and co-operation,” which effectively means where one player with “a declining market opportunity” such as TF1 leverages the “reach, power and growth of a global, streamed production and distribution platform” like Netflix. UK-based Ampere released a report earlier this year coining the “diagonal” term and predicting such dealmaking was in the cards. Prime Video has been aggregating rival services for years, but the Netflix agreement marks the first time a major broadcaster and global streamer have agreed to such an extensive pact.
Prime has apparently made inroads on building out its offerings,–per an August 2023 piece from CORDCUTTING’s Lareign Ward:
“Amazon Channels”…is a streaming perk for members of Amazon Prime. It acts as a sort of subscription hub for other streaming services. It lets you choose and subscribe to different services within the Amazon Channels program: You can pay for the services (or “channels”) you want, ignore the ones you don’t, and access everything through the same Amazon Video app. You can use the hub to subscribe to services like Max, Showtime, Cinemax, BET+, PBS Masterpiece, Paramount Plus, Shudder, and Boomerang. And that’s only a partial list!
As a result of that a la carte approach, a bottom line penetration level is practically impossible to calculate, and Amazon has done its best to avoid putting out even a hint into any searchable article. But they are apparently significantly enough penetrated to warrant a partnership of their own that made its own bit of news in Cannes, as fellow DEADLINER Dade Hayes reported:
In a milestone agreement, Amazon Ads and Roku are teaming on a new advertising initiative that will give media buyers access to more than 80% of U.S. connected-TV households. The new offering is expected to hit the market by the fourth quarter of 2025. Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP) will be used to place ads on top-viewed platforms like the Roku Channel and Prime Video along with other services available via Roku and Fire TV operating systems.
In early trials, the integration has yielded strong results, according to the companies. Ads placed via the new setup reached 40% more unique viewers without any additional cost to the buyer, and reduced the frequency of how often ads were shown to the same person by almost 30%. That outcome equates to triple the value for the same ad spend compared to previous options.
Amazon has a sizable advantage over Netflix in ad-receivable homes as they have designated the ad tier as the default, not the opt-in, status for its subscribers. But Prime’s viewership pales in comparison to Netflix’s–less than half as of Nielsen’s May 2025 GAUGE, making the need for a wider array of channels to incorporate into its walled garden all the more necessary. And that seems to be the motivation that’s driving Netflix’s desire to go back to the future, as Sperling alluded to.
And Whittock and Goldbart report that as time and tech take their toll this looms to be a much bigger deal than it may be at the moment:
Netflix’s deal to distribute French network TF1 could open the floodgates in other territories, leading media analysts are predicting. Ampere Analysis and Enders Analysis have both suggested it is now a matter of when, not if, Netflix strikes more aggregator-style deals after the agreement in France, as it seeks to attract linear audiences and legacy players hope to leverage the power of its global streaming platform. Taking to LinkedIn, NBCUniversal Creative Products Director S.J. Mckenzie said the move “should have every U.S. media exec on alert,” writing: “While U.S. teams are still stuck optimizing bundles and measuring ‘attention’, Europe is building the next evolution of streaming.”
And while signs point to these floodgates opening quicker outside the U.S., particularly in territories where the gap between Netflix and terrestrials is all the more significant, when one takes a peek at the May GAUGE and sees how Paramount+ is performing, it’s not a huge leap to think that there could be immediate mutual benefit to something similar being struck once the Skydance team is in place. Theres already a pre-existing relationship between broadcaster and streamer in France, as Whittock and Goldbart further observed:
Tom Harrington, Enders Analysis Head of Television, pointed out that Netflix and TF1 have had a close relationship for some time.He noted that TF1 boss Rodolphe Belmer used to sit on Netflix’s board and that the two companies are working on Tout Pour La Lumière, the streamer’s first daily drama series, or soap, in France, which was itself branded game-changing when unveiled late last year.
CBS was Netflix’s production partner on its two record-breaking NFL live telecasts last Christmas Day.
And it’s hard to not imagine that the likes of Versant or the newly-formed Warner Brothers Discovery Global Channels wouldn’t covet a non-exclusive way to reach a far wider swath of potential viewers than the alliances with their once full partner streaming HQs have given them. And if you had that many more options under one roof without needing to navigate between apps, you might be all the more likely to stay within the Netflix walled garden–and, of course, watch more of their ads.
So I guess in the context of planting seeds, a doozy was indeed dropped into the fertile French soil last week. And as anyone bringing back suntans and cabanawear home this week can attest, it’s damn good weather this time of year to do that.
Until next time…