On the cover of Reflets Mag #156, Bruno Patino (E90) looks back over his career as a media editor, including spells at Le Monde, InfoMatin, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Télérama, France Culture and France Télévisions, and he explains how his unique television channel is thriving despite the difficult economic and geopolitical climate.  Here is a free preview of his interview… Subscribe to get the next issues (in French)!  

Reflets Magazine: How is Arte faring?

Bruno Patino: If I had to use an image, I'd say that Arte is a small boat holding its course in raging seas. We're doing well, thanks to the strategic decisions we took a few years ago to embrace eclectisation, platformisation and Europeanisation. We’re making our programmes more eclectic in terms of the range of subjects they cover, whether films, series, cinema, animation, video games or VR, while remaining true to Arte's editorial policy. Ten years ago, it would have been inconceivable to offer a documentary on Britney Spears alongside a recording of Pierre Boulez, for example, and that’s perfectly fine with me. That's what we're looking for, even if we approach the documentary series on Britney Spears in the traditional Arte style – with substance. But we are also more eclectic in terms of form – witness the animated mini-series Samuel, which was our biggest success last year. We’re therefore making every effort to renew forms, to offer modern, different narratives that run alongside each other. 

RM: Platformisation constitutes the second pillar of your strategic plan, well ahead of the other players...

B. Patino: Yes, a year after my arrival in 2015, we cancelled Arte+7, which was the replay service, in order to move towards platformisation ahead of all the others; and today, 65% of the programmes on the arte.tv platform have not been shown on TV. Our two biggest successes of 2024: Samuel and the documentary series DJ Mehdi, were not designed for linear TV, which is completely counterintuitive for a traditional channel. In reality, we offer three different but coherent means of editorial expression: the traditional channel, the platform and our social channels – YouTube, Twitch and Instagram – where our 28 million subscribers make us a major player in this field, and for which we have created special formats and specific magazines, ranging from intellectual life to cinema, literature, science and music. This amounts to an entire editorial field that the people who watch us on TV don’t even know about, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

RM: This brings us to the final pillar: Europeanisation... 

B. Patino: We started out with two languages, French and German. Today we have six, and if you visit our platform, you'll see that we offer series co-produced with a host of European countries, in Icelandic, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and Danish. We have become the go-to media channel for European co-productions, high-quality series and, of course, arthouse films. So, to sum up, we're doing very well because, quantitatively speaking, whatever type of indicator you use – linear or non-linear audience, viewing time, and so on – 2024 was the best year in the channel's history. The second-best year in our history was 2023, and the third was 2022, which means that in quantitative terms, we have managed to ensure that each of the last three or four years has been the best year in Arte's history. Qualitatively speaking, the feedback we are receiving is extremely good, and we are regularly perceived as the channel with the highest quality and earning the greatest trust. When polling institutes carry out surveys on France's favourite platforms, we always come third behind Netflix and Disney. And as far as awards are concerned, we currently have three films in competition at the Oscars; we won the screenplay prize at the last Venice Film Festival with I'm Still Here by the Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, and we've won several Palmes d'Or at Cannes over the last five years. 

RM: Why do you allude to “raging seas”?

B. Patino: Because, on the one hand, we’re in a bewildering geopolitical context and, when you’re a television channel that was founded on the basis of a European utopia, European togetherness and European creation, the waves are currently 27 metres high and the winds are not in our favour, so our role has never been as important as it is today. On the other hand, there's the context of the audiovisual industry, platformisation, social networks, the arrival of AI, a whole range of things that, in my view, will make 2025 a year of even greater upheaval than the previous two, in terms of the players, practices and agents involved, because I believe that we are in the process of moving from the era of platforms to the era of agents. On top of this comes the public broadcasting context in Europe, where governments obviously have fewer budgetary resources at their disposal, which further complicates matters. All this makes for a stormy context that is hitting us hard, and although I have said that we’re a small boat that is faring well, there is no room for complacency or triumphalism, even though I'm very fortunate to be working with some extremely talented teams.

RM: The birth of Arte was an extremely powerful symbol of the Franco-German relationship; could it now be considered one of the last remaining functional links in this relationship and also at European level?

B. Patino: One of the things I hold very dear is that we were born out of a sense of political urgency. When the channel was created by a joint decision of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, and then launched by Jérôme Clément, it was born on the eve of German reunification, at a time when people were wondering what this process of reunification would mean for the future of Europe. At the time, there were serious questions about Germany's desire to remain attached to Europe. This channel was therefore born of both a sense of urgency and a shared utopia. Europe is a shared space with a common history that has not always been a happy one, but in the end it is something profound that connects us. I think that today, the sense of urgency to maintain links between Europeans is absolutely essential, and here at the channel, I think we’re all driven by this utopian ideal. Let me remind you that our founding treaty gives us a mission, which is, I quote: “to bring the peoples of Europe closer together through culture”. This is clearly a tall order given our modest capacities, but we can at least make a contribution. And when, in the media, you’re lucky enough to be entrusted with a mission, it sets your course, and in this context of urgency and utopia associated with a European project that is currently not in great shape, we try to be the keepers of the flame.

RM: You describe Arte as a narrative channel: what do you mean by that?

B. Patino: I'm often asked what makes Arte different. When the channel was created, it had no chance of becoming a TV channel, for one extremely simple reason, marked by a paradox: because it was bi-national, it needed to be bilingual and had pledged to broadcast the same things simultaneously in France and Germany, which meant that it was unable to do two things: firstly, live broadcasts, because at that time it was technically almost impossible to do live translations, and secondly, studio programmes because, once again, bilingualism prevents you from doing that. As Arte could not do television in the traditional way, it chose to do “stock” TV, with the emphasis on documentaries, narratives and fiction. That’s how it became a narrative rather than a conversational channel, adopting a long-term perspective, including with regard to information. This shift in how we approach things, taking the time to reflect and gain perspective, sets us apart from the other players, a difference that is greatly appreciated by our viewers, including those on YouTube.

RM: How is the partnership between Arte France and Arte Germany working?

B. Patino: It's really a marriage rather than a partnership, . If the expression “Franco-German couple” were to be used to describe a reality that does not exist on the other side of the Rhine, then this would be it. It's hard for me to tell you how it works, because it's so intrinsic to our existence. Our organisation is based on building a consensus. I always say this about Franco-German relations: Franco-German relations are much more difficult than anything you can imagine, and much more important than you think. It’s not a particularly natural process: consensus building is hard work. But it's our mission and we learn a lot while doing it. In other words, Arte without its German partner would bear no resemblance to what you see today, and vice versa. At all the posts in Strasbourg where the EEIG (editor's note: European Economic Interest Grouping) is based, you sometimes have the No. 1 who is French and the No. 2 who is German or the other way round, and then the situation changes. There’s a rotation every four years, which shows that it is far from a pyramidal power structure. When you're the president or vice-president of the EEIG, you work together with a shared vision, despite our cultural differences. When you're involved in a Franco-German relationship, you also become aware of the commonality of Europe. In other words, “European culture” does not exist in its own right, but it does exist in all of its forms, which enables us to find a common component.

RM: Following the death of Christophe Deloire (E94) last spring, you chaired the steering committee of the General Assembly on Information, whose report stated that protecting and developing the right to information is a matter of democratic urgency. What are the threats to this right to information?

Interview by François de Guillebon, Chief Editor at Reflets Magazine

Translation of an excerpt of an article published in Reflets Magazine #156. Read the issue exceptionally in free access. Get the next issues  (in French).

Picture: © Arnaud Calais