Being a historical event, the launch of TV Monaco marked the first time that a Monaco National Television Channel it’s been created it started when Prince Albert, (Head of State), decided that the country should join TV5MONDE and since December 2021 became the sixth funding country of this, positioning TV Monaco and a shareholder alongside Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, and France.
In an interview with Prensario at the second day of MIPTV, Salim Zeghdar, CEO, talked about the launch and the prospection, of the first Monaguesque National Television Channel.
‘The national television channel will be officially launched on the 1st of September 2023 at 7:15 pm with the news’, started Zeghdar, who stressed that the idea is to create a ‘transgenerational’ channel, for both young and old alike. ‘It is a 360-degree channel, both linear and digital, so we are also launching a digital platform, that’s why we are also focusing efforts heavily on the digital side. It will broadcast 24/7, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day’.
The channel, it’s a Monaco-based broadcast with international distribution through TV5MONDE, with programming, as well as satellite and international broadcaster and cable operators. It is a channel based on four pillars, according to Zeghdar.
The first one will be the environment: ‘We can make this a reference channel for international environmentalism by taking what the Principality of Monaco and the Prince and Princess of Monaco have done in terms of environmentalism and also to open up internationally with regards to this theme.
The second pillar will be current events: ‘It’s not about the news but an information channel about social issues and topics that may interest you, like what is chat GPT or the war in Ukraine, without talking about the war itself, but focusing on the related social issues, or how we live when we are ill or how it works with domestic animals, etc. We will cover plenty of social issues’, explained.
The third pillar is sport: ‘Talking about all sports and also talking, with a main focus on our disciplines, and also on disability sport because disability sport is only talked about it during the Olympic Games. We believe that sport is also a value and example that usually brings solutions to social issues, so we should talk about all sports, not just football.
The fourth pillar is Lifestyle and the art of living in the Principality on the Riviera: ‘Today we are staying in a hotel, so the idea is to show the rest of the world that it is dynamic in terms of environment, that it is dynamic in terms of events, dynamic in terms of sports, culture, heritage, work, gastronomy, tourism, etc’.
Zeghdar commented that as a Monegasque entrepreneur that comes from the TV Industry, he did not want to miss the opportunity to promote a truly local channel: ‘I led the negotiations to get Monaco into TV5MONDE, then the Prince of Monaco and the government offered me to take the direction of the channel, and I asked myself what TV do I want to see, what TV do my children want to see, what TV do my friends want to see, and I realized one thing, that even when I watch the news today, I don’t understand anything, when I watch tv sometimes it lacks story, it lacks emotion, it lacks storytelling. For this new channel, we hired scriptwriters who work under the direction themes specific content producers and the angle and the story we want’.
