RTL (CLT-UFA)

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 controlled by Bertelsmann and Pearson

     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.

UK media group Pearson has a direct 22% stake. Bertelsmann has a 30% stake with the Audiofina/Electrofina arm of Franco-Belgian investment group Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) and a further 37% through BWTV, of which it owns 80%. The Belgian financier inherited its equity from the French developers of Radio Luxembourg and its sister station Radio Normandie, trading most of its holdings for 25% of Bertelsmann.

     history

The group is a heterogenous mix of units. Its film and television production arm dates from 1917, when the UFA film studio was established by the German army and later absorbed by chemicals conglomerate IG Farben.

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.

     holdings

An indication of RTL holdings is here.

     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 95) and the overview in Raymond Kuhn's The Media in France (London: Routledge 95). Radio Luxembourg: The Station Of The Stars (London: Comet 84) 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 96) by Klaus Kreimeier.

The major French studies are Jean-Jacques Cheval's Les Radios en France: Histoire, état & enjeux (Paris: Editions Apogée 97) and Les Années radio: 1949-1989 (Paris: L'Arpentine 89) by Jean-Francois Remonté & Simone Depoux.





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