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overview
This page considers the Amaury family of France.
It covers -
introduction
The Éditions Philippe Amaury group - controlled
by the Amaury family (75%) and armaments, autos and media
conglomerate Groupe Lagardère
(25%) - has a turnover of €1 billion as of 2006.
It encompassed book, newspaper and magazine publishing
along with television interests in France and management
of events such as the Tour de France cycle race and the
Paris-Dakar motor rally.
the Amaurys
The Éditions Philippe Amaury group was founded
by Emilien Amaury (1909-1977), who had been active as
a christian democrat publicist prior to 1940. After distinguished
service in the French army he escaped from a German prisoner-of-war
camp and established a resistance group based in the Rue
de Lille in Paris. With Claude Bellanger (1910-1978) he
founded the daily Parisien Libéré
- later Le Parisien - in 1944 after the liberation
of Paris.
Amaury subsequently founded Marie-France magazine.
In 1965 he gained control of sporting daily L’Equipe,
which powered expansion under his son Philippe Amaury
(1940-2006).
At Emilien's death he left his publishing empire to his
daughter Francine. After a six year legal battle the siblings
agreed to to divide the business. Francine gained the
magazines Marie-France and Point De Vue Images
Du Monde, with Philippe Amaury gaining the newspapers.
Growth of L’Equipe saw that title become
the largest selling daily in France, complemented by L’Equipe
Magazine and the L’Equipe television
channel. Le Parisien had struggled in Emilien's
declining years, partly because of the proprietor's disagreements
with the Fédération du Livre printers unit
and other arms of the communist-dominated Confédération
Générale du Travail. Amaury radically changed
its editorial line and content, with a wider editorial
appeal. Its sales as of 2006 were around 338,000.
Amaury added other papers and magazines by start-up or
acquisition, including L’Echo Républicain,
Aujourd’hui En France, France Football
and Vélo magazine. Expansion into theme
parks was less successful, with acquisition of the Futuroscope
park near Poitiers costing him €35 million over three
years.
Amaury disdained France's tradition of a political press
(evident in subsidisation of titles by figures such as
Coty and Boussac), famously commenting that "every
business must make a profit". As a peer of Rupert
Murdoch in the UK he sought
to free publishing from the stranglehold of the print
and distribution unions, successfully establishing his
own distribution and printing networks. That success was
arguably enabled by access to revenue from the group's
events arm - Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) - which managed
the Tour de France cycle race, Paris-Dakar motor rally,
Paris Marathon and the Open de France golf tournament.
L'Equipe
Sporting daily L'Equipe traces its origins to
L'Auto, a sports daily founded in 1903 by right-wing
journalists Henri Desgrange (1865-1940) and Victor Goddet
with support from industrialists such as Édouard
Michelin, Adolphe Clément and Comte de Dion. That
title gained mass readership (at its peak over 850,000
copies) in association with the Tour de France
cycle race - launched by L'Auto in 1903 - the
Paris-Brest race and other sporting events.
L'Auto was suppressed in 1944 as a collaborationist
publication; Jacques Goddet (1905-2000) managed to establish
L'Equipe in 1946. One journalist quipped that
General
de Gaulle is the president of the French eleven months
out of twelve. In July, Jacques Goddet.
Emilien Amaury gained a controlling stake in L'Equipe
in 1965.
studies
There is no major English-language biography of the Amaurys.
The major French works are Roger Lancry's La saga
de la presse: D'Emilien Amaury à Robert Hersant
(Paris: Lieu commun 1993). For the Goddets see Jacques
Goddet's circumspect autobiography L'Équipée
Belle (Paris: Laffont 1991), Christopher Thompson's
exemplary The Tour de France: A Cultural History
(Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2006) and The Tour
de France, 1903-2003: A Century of Sporting Structures,
Meanings and Values (London: Cass 2003) edited by
Hugh Dauncy & Geoff Hare
Perspectives are provided in the five volume Histoire
Générale de la Presse Française (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France 1969-1976) by Claude Bellanger, Jacques Godechot,
Pierre Guiral & Fernand Terrou and in Medias et
journalistes de la Republique (Paris: Editions Odile
Jacob 1997) by Marc Martin.
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