The leading French television personality and producer Nagui was awarded a contract worth 100 million euros over three years by public broadcaster France Télévisions, Mediapart can reveal. The deal between the Egyptian-born star and the state-owned company, which is largely funded by the obligatory television licence paid by the French public, highlights how much public broadcasters are prepared to pay to keep their star names.
The terms of the three-year deal between 2017 and 2020 will also raise questions after France Télévisions, under pressure from its shareholder the French state, started a cost-cutting exercise in 2019 to save 400 million euros over three years out of its overall budget of 2.5 billion euros.
In May 2019 the broadcaster's management and trade unions signed an agreement that allows for up to 900 voluntary redundancies over a three-year period. Nagui, whose full name is Nagui Fam, and who hosts a series of popular shows, was not affected by this deal. One reason was that in May 2017 the president of France Télévisions, Delphine Ernotte, signed a “confidential letter” to the TV star guaranteeing his services over three years. Ernotte is hoping to be reappointed as president of the broadcaster when her current term ends, with a decision due to be announced on July 24th.
In the meantime discussions over the renewal of Nagui's contract with France Télévisions, which have been delayed by the Covid-19 epidemic, are currently “under way” said the broadcaster, which admitted that the current economic and jobs climate will “obviously” have a bearing on those negotiations.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The original three-year deal from 2017 was negotiated between Nagui and his company Air Productions by Delphine Ernotte in person, as she was keen to keep the producer and presenter at the public broadcaster until the end of her term. Air Productions, founded and chaired by Nagui, is owned by the powerful French production and distribution group Banijay, in whom the presenter has a 5.3% stake.
Ernotte chose to offer a multi-year contract covering several of the shows produced and presented by Nagui, the main ones being the daily game show 'Tout le monde veut prendre sa place' ('Everyone wants to take his/her place') and 'N’oubliez pas les paroles' (the French version of 'Don't Forget the Lyrics!'). As part of this package she gave him numerous guarantees and a substantial payment; according to Mediapart's calculations this was 100 million euros over three years.
This sum includes Nagui's salary as presenter and also all the services sold by his production company, such as concepts, production teams and so on. But what proportion will end up in the presenter's own pockets? According to business magazine Capital, in 2017 Nagui earned between 750,000 euros and 1 million euros in salary for his contracts with television station France 2, part of France Télévisions. To this can be added his salary of 120,000 to 150,000 euros a year for his show 'La Bande Originale' on France Inter radio station, which is also a public broadcaster as part of Radio France.
When contacted by Mediapart Air Productions declined to comment on these figures. However, Nagui himself had confirmed to Stratégies magazine that these figures “mustn't be far off”. Air Productions said that Nagui “received no dividend” from Banijay over the period (see the full list of questions and answers, in French, under More).
“As this is charity work you can't speak of salaries, it's expenses,” he said ironically in 2016 in reference to his pay at France Inter. The joke was turned against Nagui the following day by the station's humorists who launched a mock 'Naguithon' charity fundraiser and joked about setting up their own 'Fondation Abbé Nagui', a reference to the homeless charity Fondation Abbé-Pierre, set up by the well-known Catholic priest Abbé Pierre.
Questioned about the size of its deal with Air Productions, France Télévisions said that “this partnership is an undeniable success for France Télévisions, built around the programme 'N’oubliez pas les paroles'.” (See the full list of questions and their answers, in French, under More.)
“This quality entertainment corresponds precisely with our public service mission. It enables a broad-based public to come together each day, one that is particularly young and diverse, which corresponds with the objectives of public television,” said the public broadcaster.
France Télévisions also said it was “particularly remarkable” that the advertising revenue that these daily shows attract – the public broadcaster runs adverts, though under a law passed a decade ago not after 8pm - is more than the production costs.
“Nagui brings in more money than he costs,” a France Télévisions official told Mediapart in a telephone conversation. However, one TV professional that Mediapart spoke to had a different take: it was only to be expected that these programmes were profitable, as they occupy the most lucrative slots in terms of advertising revenue.
France Télévisions points to Nagui's value as a television presenter and producer and the risk of him going to work for rival commercial channels. But this again is a question of how one approaches the issue. What would Nagui's standing be without public service television, on which he has built much of his career and where he has enjoyed much of his biggest success?
The presenter went through a lean period in the early 2000s having tried his luck in commercial television, before becoming box office again in 2005 on France 2 with the comedy game show 'Intervilles'.
This debate about the extent to which public broadcasters help popularise presenters and producers, to the point where they become dependent on them and distort the market, did not start with the current case involving Nagui. It has been a regular source of tension since 1995 when the Member of Parliament Alain Griotteray, from the centrist UDI party, used his powers as special rapporteur on the National Assembly's finance committee to examine for the first time the relations between France Télévisions and several of its TV stars.
The French Parliament discovered the extent to which pay had gone up in the contracts of well-known presenters and producers at the public broadcaster under the presidency of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. The overall bill for these contracts went from 200 million francs (about 30.5 million euros) in 1993-1994 to 640 million francs (about 97.5 million euros) in 1995-1996, out of a total budget of 4.8 billion francs (731 million euros). Griotteray unearthed the huge salaries earned by TV stars such as Arthur, Mireille Dumas, Michel Drucker and Jean-Luc Delarue, and the astronomical profits made by a handful of producers who dominated the market.
A show sold for 500,000 euros – even though its content was not agreed
The satirical puppet show 'Les Guignols de l’Info' on satellite station Canal + used to mock TV presenter Jean-Luc Delarue's craving for 'patates' – which means potato but is also slang for 10,000 francs. His contracts with France Télévisions guaranteed him a turnover of 142.8 million French francs for the year 1996-1997, which is just under 22 million euros. The broadcast group's boss Elkabbach himself ended up resigning in May 1996 even though he was not facing any legal action following the revelations. “The licence paid by television viewers guaranteed several stars some of the highest individual earnings in France,” said MP Alain Griotteray.
France's audit body the Cour des Comptes later looked into the case and stated that as a result of a policy “carried out under the personal responsibility of the president of France Télévisions [editor's note, in other words Elkabbach]” the “contracts agreed with some presenter-producers, a practice that grew from the start of 1994, evaded the control of the state shareholder and was accompanied by a lack of balance in legal and financial relations between contracting parties, to the detriment of France 2”.
At the time Nagui himself was also cited in the press as a beneficiary of this system, even if he was not one of the main figures. “Some people's desire to cause harm has fuelled deliberate attacks with no reflection on the reality and the way our contracts are compliant,” Air Productions say today. The Cour des Comptes nonetheless considered that in signing a contract for the programme 'N’oubliez pas votre brosse à dents' ('Don't forget to brush your teeth'), France 2 had “granted Air Productions a freedom which constituted for it [France 2] a major loss of income”.
More generally, the Cour Des Comptes was astonished that “programme content mattered so little”. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach retorted that the presenter-producers had “brought youthfulness to France 2 and boosted advertising receipts”. In a new report twenty years later, in 2016, the Cour des Comptes stated: “France 2 finds itself in a situation closer to that of a dispenser of grants than a company in commercial negotiations with its suppliers”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The question arises as to how much public money should be spent on such presenters and producers, even if they are popular with television viewers. And when it concerns public money (and not a contract with a private station such as that of television and radio presenter Cyril Hanouna on satellite channel C8) ought there not to be some discussion about how such payments compare with those of journalists, or even a government minister or the president of France Télévisions? The issue of limits over how much entertainment show presenters are paid should also be a question for the candidates to be the public broadcaster's next president.
Since the 1996 scandal new internal control measures have been brought in at the public broadcaster to constrain the president's decisions. Contracts valued above 10 million euros now have to be approved by an advisory sub-committee that reports to the broadcaster's main board of directors. This sub-committee can also audit the production companies' accounts in order to monitor their profit margins. This is an issue when it comes to Air Productions, a company which does not file its accounts, even though it is supposed to under the law, and which has not been obliged to do so by France Télévisions before signing a deal.
Yet despite these internal rules, in the agreement framework signed for three years with Nagui on May 24th 2017, the group's president Delphine Ernotte made commitments about several programmes without having first consulted the advisory sub-committee. “The letter that you refer to is a stage in the negotiation between France Télévisions and Air Productions which lists all the envisaged ways of working,” said Christian Vion, managing director for management, production and resources at the public broadcaster. However, a legal expert who has seen the letter says it has all the hallmarks of a contract. In its response to Mediapart Air Productions, too, spoke exclusively of a “contract”.
Christian Vion said that in practice the projects had to be approved one by one. This was done in a CIP – a committee that oversees investment projects – or in an SCE, which is the advisory sub-committee. “If it is not approved, the project can't go ahead,” said Vion, who added that “at every stage the procedures were respected”.
Nevertheless, members of the board, who did not have access to the contents of the framework agreement involving Air Productions, were not informed of the scale of the concessions agreed by France Télévisions in its negotiations with the presenter.
For example, in her letter of May 24th 2017, Delphine Ernotte agreed, in addition to the programmes already in place, to commission from Nagui in 2017 a prime time show whose as yet undefined content was to be “determined by common agreement between the parties”. Only one point was clarified about this unknown show: it could cost up to 500,000 euros.
Delphine Ernotte also promised in the framework agreement to “make our best efforts in order to co-produce or pre-purchase documentaries and dramas from Air Productions or one of its subsidiaries documentaries and dramas”. France Télévisions told Mediapart: “No French drama production was made and just one documentary during the period of the agreement.”
Nagui also obtained strong guarantees about the programmes that were already being made. A “change of format” for 'N’oubliez pas les paroles', which is broadcast daily in the early evening on France 2, was only envisaged if the programme's audience share fell below 12% of the “4+” audience. This level is below the chain's average viewing figures for that slot.
Why was the threshold set so low? “An audience clause never establishes the targeted audience share. The audience level targeted is always higher than the clause, which is the subject of negotiations and which represents a lower limit which allows France Télévisions to break a contract unilaterally,” said Christian Vion.
In this case the framework agreement signed with Delphine Ernotte provided that if there were a change of format it would be “in consultation” between France Télévisions and Nagui, without changing the number of programmes ordered or their individual cost. This meant that the presenter was guaranteed three years of programmes on the same terms, even if there were to be a financial crash. There was also additional security in case the programme 'Tout le monde veut prendre sa place' did ever fail: the boss of France Télévisions guaranteed Nagui that he could also present any replacement programme.
This agreement undermines the arguments made by Nagui when he has been interviewed about his pay: he accepts that he is well-remunerated but says this is because “it can all stop from one day to the next”. In fact, the deal he had with France Télévisions gave him guaranteed returns over three years, whatever his results.
France Télévisions also allowed Nagui to present his radio show on France Inter at the same time as 'Tout le monde veut prendre sa place' went out on television, though this was on condition that “it doesn't cause a negative reaction among viewers and listeners”. How exactly these “reactions” were to be evaluated is not clear. France Télévisions did not respond, simply stating that it was “natural to facilitate the presence of a presenter on a public service outlet”.
Air Productions said that “in parallel with the efforts asked of employees of FTV [France Télévisions]” the company had “continually accepted price reductions for the same programmes for ten or so years, contract after contract”. The production company also said that it “created numerous jobs and sends out more than 500 payslips each month for the programmes presented by Nagui”. It added: “Without Nagui, none of these jobs would have been created.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter