Canal+ edges towards greater streaming focus with MyCanal move

French pay TV operator Canal+ is to give greater weight to streaming by offering the week’s movies on its premium channel all at once on its MyCanal catch-up service.

According to the pay TV operator’s second in command, Gérard-Brice Viret, interviewed by Le Parisien, MyCanal will now shift away from waiting for the week’s movies to air on the premium pay TV channel before it makes them available for catch-up viewing.

Instead, MyCanal will offer five new movies at a single time each Friday, enabling binge-viewing of movies over the weekend.

The move will make MyCanal more akin to a streaming platform in its own right, with the airing of movies on the linear channel following that on MyCanal rather than the other way round.

The change will take place in October, kicking off with the premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

In other Canal+ news, the pay TV service has so far failed to reach terms to carry the Téléfoot service provided by Spanish broadcaster and producer Mediapro that now airs the lion’s share of coverage of top-tier French football, as well as the UEFA Europa League and – for the coming year – the Champions League.

Julien Bergeaud, the former Eurosport executive now in charge of Téléfoot, told the Europe1 radio station that talks between the pair were currently “at a dead end”.

Mediapro has struck agreements with the other principal distribution platforms in France, the country’s big four ISPs – SFR, Bouygues Telecom, Free and Orange.