Origins In 1939, Charles Michelson obtained a license to operate Radio Tangier. The project was taken over by French authorities after
World War II to create Radio Impériale. On February 6, 1948, Michelson signed a five-year management contract for
shortwave radio at
Radio Monte-Carlo. The station was majority owned by
Sofirad and, through it, by the
government of France. The failure of retransmission experiments led Minister of Information
François Mitterrand to make a concession to Michelson. On October 22, 1949, he benefited from a "sub-concession option" for television in
Monaco from the company owning Radio Monte-Carlo. Ten days earlier, Sofirad president Jacques Meyer announced that the French government was abandoning
RTF television. in
Marseille. The decision gave the Monegasque station a
de facto television
monopoly in southeastern France. Michelson founded the Image et Son company under Monegasque law to develop a network of private television stations in France. To mollify
Pierre-Henri Teitgen, the new Minister of Information who opposed this incursion into the RTF monopoly, Michelson ceded all rights to
Prince Rainier III of Monaco on August 20, 1951. Rainier became a shareholder in Image and Son. The creation of Monegasque television was confirmed by the French public authorities on February 11, 1952, implementing the Télé Monte-Carlo option on March 21, 1953. France removed the right of extension by relays on French territory, limiting the new television channel's development. At the beginning of 1954, Michelson merged audio-visual equipment manufacturer RVB Radio-Industrie into Images et Son. The company supplied television equipment conforming to the new French high-definition 819-line standard, which was invented by
Henri de France.
The beginning: Image et Son (1954-1957) of Télé Monte Carlo in 1954, in high definition using the 819-line television standard Télé Monte-Carlo was inaugurated on November 19, 1954, (the
National Day of Monaco) by Prince Rainier with Charles Michelson and Henri de France. TMC was the second private television channel in Europe, after
Telesaar began broadcasting in
Saarland in February of that year. Antennas are jointly owned by the Ranier's company and Images et Son. The channel was temporarily headquartered at 16 Boulevard Princesse-Charlotte in Monte-Carlo, a TV studio with
telecine equipment designed by Henri de France. It broadcast in 50 kilowatts from a
panel antenna on
Mont Agel, oriented towards Monaco. VHF channel 10-H (using the 819-line standard assigned by the EBU) could be received on the
Côte d'Azur from Saint-Tropez to
Menton, parts of
Toulon, on
Corsica's northern coast, and in Marseille's upper districts. Coverage exceeded initial studies, allowing these French territories to receive television well before the arrival of French Radio and Television. To reach the deep valleys in which band I (41-68 MHz) propagates better than the higher frequency of channel 10 in band III, Monaco was authorized by the EBU to test on channel 2-H French (41.25-52.40 MHz) with the same power; the tests were inconclusive. The 1960 commission of RTF's Bastia transmitter on the same channel, risking interference from TMC's Mont Agel transmitter, ended TMC's dual broadcasts in bands I and III. TMC produced its first
Eurovision broadcast, the
wedding of Prince Rainier and American actress
Grace Kelly, in 1956.
Sofirad subsidiary (1958-1972) The company controlling Télé Monte-Carlo became a 32-percent subsidiary of
Europe No. 1 (controlled by Sofirad) in 1958, distinguishing itself from Radio Monte-Carlo (which belonged to Sofirad, the parent company). It operated Télé Monte-Carlo under a 1952 agreement with Radio Monte-Carlo, which held broadcasting rights in Monaco. Télé Monte-Carlo offered two 20-minute news bulletins (Télé-Soir at 8:00 p.m. and Télé-Dernière at 10:15 p.m.) and
Club Tintin, a children's program.
Denise Fabre began her career in 1961 as an announcer on the channel until December 1963. The channel
rebranded itself as TMC in 1963, with
Jacques Antoine director of programs until 1977. The game-show creator produced several game shows, including
The Mysterious Object (forerunner of
Schmilblick). The channel's schedule consisted of game shows, new series and evening films. Unlike French television, advertising was permitted except for tobacco and alcohol. Jean Frydman managed Télé Monte-Carlo's parent company in 1967, becoming manager of the channel two years later. Frydman envisioned a
Canal 10 project, a French version of the Monegasque channel, in June 1970. Although French President
Georges Pompidou seemed to favor new television channels, it remained at the project stage. Jean-Pierre Foucault, then a young radio host, made his debut on TMC in 1969. Frydman acquired a large catalog of films to fill the channel's schedule, intending to create France's first national commercial television channel at the beginning of the 1970s. The channel's economic model, inspired by Britain's BBC-ITV model, utilized a substantial television advertising market little used by the public-service
ORTF. Frydman's Canal 10 project, broadcasting TMC in UHF at 625 lines from southern France to Paris, was supported by French Minister of Finance
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. President Pompidou, a supporter of ORTF, opposed it. During a 1971 dispute about
PAL and
SÉCAM standards in Italy, French industrialists unsuccessfully urged to Pompidou to authorize TMC to broadcast from the ORTF transmitter in Bastia in Italian and in color using the SÉCAM standard towards Rome and the Italian coast to encourage Italians to purchase SÉCAM sets. Tests in SÉCAM color intended for Italy were made in June 1971 with the establishment of the 50-kW channel 35 UHF. TMC broadcast experimental programs in Italian on this channel in 1973, and it became Tele Monte Carlo the following year.
In color under Sofirad (1973-1987) On December 24, 1973, TMC first broadcast in color on the SÉCAM standard on VHF channel 10 (converted from the 819-line standard to the 625-line format, receivable from Saint-Tropez to Menton) and on the new UHF channel 30 (with receptionfrom Cannes to Menton). An
Italian version of Télé Monte-Carlo went on the air from Monaco on August 5, 1974. On January 15, 1975, the Télé Monte-Carlo board of directors decided to broadcast TMC in the
Milan region from a transmitter on
Corsica. In December 1976, Europe 1 (Images et Son) acquired 22 percent of the company operating Télé-Monte-Carlo from the magazine
Jours de France. Europe 1 then controlled 54 percent of Télé Monte-Carlo; the other shareholders were Publicis S.A. (27.5 percent) and the Principality of Monaco (18.5 percent). The principality was reluctant to approve the station's privatization.
Financial difficulties (1988–1993) TMC began a period of financial difficulties, and its broadcast day was reduced. Michèle Navadic was recruited as program director from RTL Télévision to rebuild the station's schedule. and TMC Sport. In March 1992, despite takeover proposals by Havas, Alcatel and NRJ, the Monegasque government indefinitely postponed the privatization of RMC and its television subsidiary, TMC. Since the beginning of the 1980s, RMC made increasingly-significant financial contributions to its television subsidiary. Monaco bought the RMC building for 385 million
Monégasque francs. TMC lost money, like all special-interest channels except Planète. According to Canal+ management, Monte-Carlo TMC (the southern channel) positioned itself as family-friendly with an eye to future satellite digital packages. In addition to its terrestrial and cable footprint in France, Monte-Carlo TMC was part of 80 percent of cable networks in French-speaking Switzerland. Its format, developed by Thoulouze, remained almost unchanged from 1993 to 2002. Before obtaining a national digital terrestrial license, its French transmitter network operated in
Marseille on channels 35 and 51; in
Toulon on channel 33; in
Avignon on channel 57, and in
Nimes on channel 58.
National channel (2002-2004) Pathé acquired 50 percent of Télé Monte-Carlo via Sofirad, which was
liquidated by France, in January 2002. Two months later, the
Canal+ group recovered the Pathé Sport channel after an exchange of shares with Pathé. The channel's (renamed TMC) new deputy general director and program director Gérald-Brice Viret envisioned it as a general-interest channel for the digital era. TMC moved to new studios in Quai Antoine-Ier, near the port of Monaco. Pathé applied for a national-channel license on June 17, 2002. On March 21, 2003, the channel was again rebranded. TMC Monte Carlo was selected by the
CSA on June 10 to broadcast unencrypted on national channel 10. Pathé sold its 80-percent stake in the channel on February 10, 2005 for nearly to the TF1 group (40 percent) and the AB group (40 percent); Monaco retained 20 percent.
TF1 management since 2005 TF1 Group bought AB Group's shares in 2010, and became sole shareholder of the channel in June 2016 after acquiring Monaco's shares. Since October 2022, TMC and the TF1 Group's free
DTT channels have been accessible
free-to-air via the Astra 1 satellite in almost all of continental Europe and North Africa. ==Programming==