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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile looks at European broadcaster RTL.
It covers -
introduction
RTL (formerly CLT-UFA) is Europe's largest television
and radio group. It operates 40 radio and TV stations
throughout Europe and production and rights trading businesses.
Operations include RTL Television in Germany, RTL Radio
in France, HMG in the Netherlands, Channel 5 in the UK,
RTL TVI in Belgium and UFA SPORTS. The group is now a
Bertelsmann subsidiary.
The RTL corporate site is here.
An indication of RTL holdings is here.
the group
RTL claims to be "Number 1 in TV and Radio Broadcasting
in Europe" (with 18 radio stations and 24 TV channels
in 10 countries), a global leader in content production
with up to 200 programs produced in 35 countries (including
the Grundy game show and sitcom group) - some 10,000 hours
of programming per year - and the largest independent
film/tv distribution operation outside the US. Its sports
licensing arm rivals that of Kirch,
now in receivership
UK media group Pearson held
a direct 22% stake. Bertelsmann had a 30% stake with the
Audiofina/Electrofina arm of Franco-Belgian investment
group Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL)
- inherited its equity from the French developers of Radio
Luxembourg and its sister station Radio Normandie - and
a further 37% through BWTV, of which it owned 80% and
German publisher WAZ owned 20%.
In December 2001 Bertelsmann acquired Pearson's
22% in RTL and subsequently acquired the WAZ stake in
BWTV. Acquisition of the remainder of RTL involved Groupe
Bruxelles Lambert (controlled by the Frère-Bourgeois
group and Desmarais' Power Corp)
gaining 25% of Bertelsmann. That was mooted as a precursor
to listing of the group on the major exchanges and further
diluting ownership by the Mohn family and the Bertelsmann
Foundation. In 2006 Bertelsmann instead acquired the GBL
interests for €4.5 billion.
history
The group is a heterogenous mix of units. Its film and
television production arm dates from 1917, when the UFA
film production, distribution and exhibition group was
established by the German army and later absorbed by Hugenberg's
Scherl publishing conglomerate.
English-language content production includes the successors
to the studios established by UK commercial television
channels (and the Australian Grundy
company) brought together by Pearson and competing with
the Carlton and Granada
groups prior to amalgamation with CLT-UFA.
The latter resulted from the merger of Bertelsmann's film
production, licensing and radio units with Compagnie Luxembourgeoise
de Télédiffusion (CLT), the Luxembourg-based commercial
radio and television broadcaster whose transmissions went
over the border into France, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany and the UK from the 1930s onwards. For most of
last century Radio Luxembourg was Europe's most powerful
shortwave station: the 'borderless world' long predates
the internet.
Havas, now a subsidiary of Vivendi,
held a stake in CLT for several decades but sold much
of its holding when privatised in 1987 and swapped the
rest for equity in GBL during the establishment of RTL.
In July 2005 UBM announced the
sale of its 35% stake in UK Channel Five Television to
RTL for £247 million. Five was founded 1997 as Channel
5 Broadcasting, winning the licence to run the UK's fifth
television channel with a £22m bid. The consortium's
initial members were CLT-Ufa (29%), Pearson
TV (24%), Warburg Pincus (18%) and UBM (29%). Warburg
Pincus sold out in 2000, with Channel 5 valued at £1
billion. UBM and CLT each paid £61m to take their
stakes to 35.37%. Pearson spent £51m to raise its
stake to 29.25%. As noted above CLT and Pearson TV subsequently
merged, taking RTL's stake to 65%.
studies
There are no major English-language studies of CLT
or the RTL group. For a French perspective see Richard
Barbrook's lucid Media Freedom: The Contradictions
of Communications in the Age of Modernity (London:
Pluto Press 1995)
and the overview in Raymond Kuhn's The Media in France
(London: Routledge 1995).
Radio Luxembourg: The Station Of The Stars (London:
Comet 1984) by Richard Nichols is a pop treatment centred
on 'Lux' as Britain's leading 'pirate' radio channel.
For UFA's early history see The UFA Story: A History
of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945 (New
York: Hill & Wang 1996) by Klaus Kreimeier and the detailed
bibliography on the UFA note elsewhere
on this site.
The major French studies are Jean-Jacques Cheval's Les
Radios en France: Histoire, état & enjeux (Paris:
Editions Apogée 1997) and Les Années radio: 1949-1989
(Paris: L'Arpentine 1989) by Jean-Francois Remonté &
Simone Depoux.
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