The press market in France

The originality of the French press market stems from the highly contested yet very real concept of «the French cultural exception». Although similar production techniques and increasingly globalised management and marketing methods tend to tone down any specific aspects of the national model, the weight of the traditions of «French-style» journalism and French peoples’ reading habits still greatly influence market structures and practices.

Historical background
Whereas in 1914, the French press was the most thriving in Europe, its vitality was crushed by the Great War. The 20s and 30s were years of virtual stagnation. In liberated France, a ruined country, the status of the press was completely transformed by a series of orders, laws and regulations which made the State the agent and guarantor of its renaissance, without compromising freedom of expression. A thorough shake-up removed any companies or newspapers compromised by submission to the Vichy authorities. To prevent a concentration of publications endangering pluralism, companies could not own more than one daily paper. Sales prices and the paper market were strictly controlled. The State awarded financial aid for newspaper distribution and granted press companies an advantageous tax status. The working conditions and wages obtained by employees of the book trade and distributing services were a great drain on editors’ pockets (as they still are today). The news market was dominated by a press agency with an ambiguous status, mainly financed by public money. France is the western country whose press receives the greatest amount of direct or indirect aid from the State, estimated at some10% of its global turnover. One of the most serious handicaps holding back the French press (since its creation in the 17th century)arises from its traditionally low advertising resources. Whilst the press in the United States obtains almost 80% of its turnover from advertising, and the British and German press approximately 65%, advertising in France only covers 42% (in 2004). The disinterest of inhabitants of Metropolitan France in classified adverts is highly typical. Adverts only cover 20% of advertising revenue compared with around 50% in Great Britain or Germany. Given the rapid growth of the free press, the situation is unlikely to improve.

The press groups
After the liberation, the legislator’s desire to guarantee a pluralistic press and prevent the formation of over powerful groups or American or German-style newspaper chains undeniably hampered the development of French press groups. Those that do exist are not as powerful as their English or German counterparts. Typically, it is magazines, rather than daily papers, which represent the bulk of its power. The Lagardère group is a holding which controls a good part of the book publishing market, including the Hachette booksellers, large magazines (Paris Match, Elle, Télé 7 jours, etc.) and some provincial newspapers. It also dominates the distribution segment and owns points of sale for press, books and records. The Dassault aeronautics holding recently acquired part of the heritage left by Vivendi Universal’s magazines together with the Figaro in 2002 and 2003, taken over from Soc- presse, part of the Hersant group. The latter still controls a dozen provincial dailies. Bayard presse, an older Catholic group, edits La Croixas well as a large number of magazines. A mini-group has grown up around Le Monde, comprising La Vie, Télérama and the daily papers in the midi region of France. Besides publishing Le Parisien and L’Equipe, the Amaury group also organises sports events such as the Tour de France. Two foreign groups, Prisma presse, a subsidiary of the German holding Gruner+Jahr, and the British company EMAP have gained a foothold on the French market for magazines and specialist publications.

Reading habits
After being the most avid newspaper readers in the 19th century – 250 copies per 1000 inhabitants in 1914, 260 in 1939, 220 in 1960 and 164 in 1980 – the French are now less than 20th in the world, with 145 copies in 2004. The number of daily papers dropped from 320 in 1914 to 300 in 1939 and 66 in 2004, 10 of which were in Paris and 56 in the provinces. «National» papers only distribute a low percentage of their print runs in provincial France and find most of their readers in the Paris region. The ten greatest print runs consist of 6 provincial daily papers, including the great Rennes regional paper, Ouest-France(760.000 copies). French dailies don’t go to the extremes of the demagogic, vulgar formula of the British tabloids or German «Boulevardpresse». The French may not read many dailies, but they make up by being the greatest magazine readers in the world, with an average of 1360 copies per 1000 inhabitants. There are several ex- planations for this situation: a distrust of journalistic information in a country with no political consensus, the price of newspapers which long remained excessive to offset low advertising income, the much greater role played by the radio in informing French people of the news in the morning, the lack of «large» working-class, lower-priced media, andthe remarkable vivacity of the editors of illustrated periodicals, the management of which more easily escapes the technical constraints and wage requirements imposed by employees of the book trade and anti-concentration regulations.

Press distribution
The specific conditions for press distribution in France are another reason for the weakness of the daily paper market. Until the mid-19th century, newspapers were distributed almost exclusively by subscription. Copies were taken to the homes of subscribers in the publishing town and entrusted to the postal service for the rest of the country. The post office even had an exclusive monopoly on distribution outside the publishing town. The birth of an apolitical press, first weekly, then daily, with the creation of the Petit Journal costing one «sou» (5 centimes) in 1863 completely transformed newspaper distribution. This new form of press, working-class in both content and readership, was sold by the issue in shops or in the street via street-peddling and disregarded the subscriber system. Distributing services were rapidly set up in Paris to distribute bundles of newspapersto shops and street peddlers. From 1853, the authorities and railway companies gave the Hachette booksellers exclusive rights to operate «station bookstalls». There it sold books and knick-knacks, and very soon newspapers as well. It gradually expanded its activities to include press distributing services and, by buying out its competitors, had a virtual monopoly on the national press by the 1920s. In the provinces, local and regional newspapers were responsible for their own distribution and their sales networks were connected with those of Hachette. After the liberation, Hachette regained its dominant position in the Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne (NMPP), of which it controls the operational management and 49% of the capital. The rest is supplied by several publishing cooper- atives, obeying the law dated 2nd April 1947 which stipulates that all distributing services must be cooperative. In extending the supremacy of the NMPP, this system reinforced the universe of newsstand sales distribution, which thus remains the essential characteristic of the Frenchmarket. In 2004, newsstand sales still represented 62% of overall income from French press sales. For many years,the NMPP has relied on the support of the Messageries de la Presse Lyonnaise (MLP), to distribute periodicals. MLP distributes close to 2000 national journals and magazines, i.e. over 15% of the market. Local and regional newspapers generally take care of their own sales network.

Challenges
This system is highly efficient technically speaking – each of the some 30.000 points of sale to which the NMPP distributes can meet individual requests from a customer for a particular title at very short notice – and it is also extremely expensive.By their very nature, newsstand sales leave a lot of unsolds. In 2001, these represented waste equivalent to 19.6% of the total value of the copies printed. Publishers are making everyeffort to overcome this difficulty. Instead of encouraging subscription, they are building up door-to-door distribution, which is progressing well in provincial towns but is hard to establish in the Paris region. Declining points of sale are another distribution hurdle. Shops and newsstands are suffering from a lack of space in which to display the huge range of publications and from the difficult conditions imposed on traders, such as working time and responsibility for dealing with unsold copies, etc. In 1994, lengthy negotiations between the NMPP, publishers,wholesalers and retailers led to agreements reducing the cost of using distributing services to 8 or 9% of the sales price, increasing vendors’ commissions to 15% (or even 18%) and revising wholesalers’ commissions by 8% or 7%. However, these agreements are the subject of various disputes in relation to the law on distributing services, under which the latter must treat all publications equally. Consequently, it is the publishers alone who share their products out between the points of sale of their choice.

Author: Pierre Albert, Author of «La presse française», Paris, 2004