In its first year of trading, Red Bee Media France has won subtitling contracts with four French broadcasters; M6, LCP, Public S_nat and the Canal+ Group. The company opened an office in France following the French Government setting the target of 100% of TV programmes being subtitled by 2010.
Pam Masters, CEO of Red Bee Media, said: “The French office was the first of four new international offices Red Bee Media opened last year. On its first anniversary we are very happy with the office’s progress. Red Bee Media France is now clearly established as a leading provider of subtitling in France, which is a quickly expanding market”.
The first contract of the year was signed with M6 in February. The national TV broadcaster chose Red Bee Media’s unique subtitling technique to solve the challenge of live subtitling. The solution enables hearing-impaired viewers, who currently represent up to 10% of the total French population, to access M6’s live national news programme twice a day.
Soon after, in May, Red Bee Media started working with LCP, the parliamentary channel. The parliament wanted to set an example to be followed by all broadcasters. In August, Public S_nat, the senate channel, joined M6 and LCP in their bid to make television more accessible and became Red Bee Media France’s third client. Finally, in November, the Canal+ Group signed up for their hard-of-hearing and translation subtitling requirements.
With over 1400 staff in London and its subsidiaries across the world, Red Bee Media is quickly expanding and opened offices in China, Singapore and Australia as well as France in 2007.
