A monstrous French giant, a friend of Borja Prado, devours Sálvame and La fábrica de tele

Save me passed away on Friday, June 23, 2023, the second anniversary of the death of Mila Ximenez and 70th birthday of Paul Vasily. The program has been devoured by a gigantic corporate monster, a friend of Borja Prado, and has chosen the Night of San Juan for the the cobbler And now, a little more seriously:

A French billionaire friend of the current president of Mediset had to pay back the owner of L’Oreal, an elderly woman with dementia, 143 million euros, after her heirs took her to court. We are talking about the French businessman Stéphane Courbit (Crest, April 28, 1965), owner of the Banijay Group, is the magnate who has devoured Save me already The TV Factory after converting, along with Ana Rosa Quintana, in Mediaset’s main content provider, despite having DeAgostini, a reference shareholder of Atresmedia together with Planeta, as a partner.

Paul Vasily He had his producers banned but the Roman came out ‘feet first and shortly after leaving, the French billionaire entered Fuencarral like an elephant in a china shop. Indeed, we are talking about a giant of monstrous dimensions, a colossus of worldwide audiovisual content production called Banijay.

The name does not mean much to the general public. But if we say that this giant produces spaces like Masterchef (on TVE), the island of temptations, Big Brother, and from now on survivors, We are understanding the dimension of this company that has had a snack together with that of Ana Rosa Quintana to La Fábrica de la Tele, owned by Mediaset.

They are actually the ones who have devoured Save me, the program that says goodbye this Friday, and its entire universe, including the Deluxe. In fact, Banijay is responsible for the replacement of Save me during the summer, This is life, the afternoon magacín presented by Sandra Barneda, and also The last night (the one that will replace the Deluxe (no string confirmation).

This company, banned from Mediaset until less than a year ago by Paul Vasily, is the owner of Gestmusic, and with them Mediaset makes There you. Con Shine Iberia (Masterchef), also from Banijay, make I slip; and with Zeppelin, also inside Banijay, they will carry out the VIP Big Brother that will present Martha Flich.

But if with Paolo Vasile the Banijay group doesn’t know I used to eat great thing in the Fuencarral chain, now it is present in Mediaset through several of its production companies. Quartz is the company responsible for the island of temptations y This is life, the program that replaces Save me In the evenings. It will also be in charge of producing the new space for prime time which will take the place of Deluxe and which has as its provisional title The last night. Also, it’s behind what a vacation, he reality presented by Lujan Arguelles, which will be one of Telecinco’s entertainment offers for this summer. Also, from 2024, Cuarzo will be the producer of survivors.

As we said, the production company also belongs to Banijay Shine Iberia, until now banned in Mediaset by Paul Vasily. In Berlusconi’s company wet French: it did bill on La 1 and Antena 3. But now, after Vasile’s departure, this company returns to the group through it slips me, a contest that will present Lara Alvarez. For its part, Gestmusic, which had not worked for Mediaset for years, will do so again with There you, the contest that will once again be led by Jesus Vazquez. They say that the producer is also preparing a late night for Telecinco, and that they have touched Xavier Sardá y carlos latreto make a kind of revival of Crónicas Marcianas, although sources close to the management of Gestmusic strongly deny it.

Zeppelin, also from the Banijay group, is already working on the return of VIP Big Brother for September. He reality He has been separated from the Mediaset grid for four years for the Scandal of the sexual abuse of Carlota Prado in the edition that aired in 2017, but it already has the green light to premiere its eighth season with Marta Flich. They also own other production companies such as Diagonal.

The end of Save me and the start of This is life as a bridge program until it arrives Ana Rosa Quintana with TardeAR on September 25, advanced by Informalia, they indicate a change of cycle in Mediaset Spain, which strikes down La Fábrica de la Tele, now pushed to an ERE after the cancellation of its star formats.

The volume that the producer of Save me redounds in favor of Unicorn Content (Ana Rosa’s program) but especially in Banijay (This is life), which until a few months ago suffered the veto imposed on it by Paolo Vasile.

Vasile snatched from Cuarzo in 2018 the production of Ana Rosa’s program to give it to Unicorn (the journalist’s producer) and canceled them in 2022 Live life, but his replacement as CEO of Mediaset Spain, Alessandro Salem, has changed his purchasing policy.

Banijay, the audiovisual empire where the sun never sets

Spain was the empire on which the sun never set in times of Felipe II and something similar happens to the French giant Banijay, established as the largest independent producer in the world and now reigning in the main operators in Spain, including Mediaset after the departure of Vasile.

Banijay shelters some of the main production companies in Spain: Shine Iberia, Gestmusic (Triumph operation), Quartz (the island of temptations o Speaking clear), Zeppelin (Big Brother), Diagonal TV (Love is forever o the gypsy bride) o DLO-Magnolia (The hunt o The inmortal). Banijay is also a shareholder of Portocabo (Rapa or the extraordinary Iron) and maintains a collaboration agreement with Pokeepsie Films (30 coins).

The main assets of the next season will carry the signature of Banijay, who will be in charge of the three main realities from Mediaset Spain (Big Brother VIP, The island of temptations y survivors), those of TVE (Masterchef Celebrity y Masterchef) o Prime Video (Triumph operation).

Mediaset will entrust him this summer What a vacation!, Such is life, and The last night, three o’clock Quartz, and for the next season, Big Brother VIP, there you, the island of temptations, o survivors. For Antena 3 it will carry out Dreams of liberty that according Everything, will relieve love in troubled times in after-dinners, and for Netflix the thriller 1992, who will lead Alex de la Iglesia.

Whose is this monster called Banijay?

This conglomerate was born in 2008 by the hand of Stephane Courbit, who opted to create a major european. This executive, who enjoys a fortune of around 800 million euros, came from Endemol, producer of Big Brother, from which he also snatched several managers such as his current boss, Marco Bassetti.

Banijay is controlled by LDH, whose majority shareholder is Courbit’s financial arm, LOV Financial, and which counts as a partner the Italian group DeAgostini and Fimalac, the investment company of Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. The rest of the group is in the hands of Vivendi, one of Prisa’s shareholders.

To fuel his birth of the group, Courbit relied on some of the most colossal fortunes in France (Groupe Arnault, owner of the LVMH luxury goods group) and Italy (Agnelli, from FIAT, and De Agostini), and North America ( AMS Industries). It should be remembered that De Agostini is a reference shareholder of Atresmedia, since it shares 41.7% of its share capital with Planeta, which gave Vasile a weighty argument to block purchases from Banijay.

the scandal of Liliane Bettencourt

More sinister was the irruption in Banijay of the millionaire Liliane Bettencourt, who before dying, in 2017, and advised by the audiovisual group’s lawyer, Pascal Wilhelm, invested 143 million euros in the audiovisual mastodon. Liliane Bettencourt’s daughter, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, took the operation to a Bordeaux criminal court, which in 2015 fined Courbit $250,000 and forced him to reverse the operation after illegally obtaining 143 million euros from the elderly heiress to L’Oréal cosmetics. The sentence states that Liliane Bettencourt invested after receiving false information when her mental capacity was diminished due to the Alzheimer’s she suffered. Stéphane Courbit had to return the 143.7 million euros that he took from the L’Oréal heiress for his companies.

Borja Prado and Nicolas Sarkozy, intimates of the owner of Banijay

He Caso Bettencourt uncovered the illegal financing enjoyed by Nicolas Sarkozy, close to Courbit and Borja Prado, president of Mediaset Spain, who a few weeks ago dined in Madrid with the former French president and with Jose Maria Aznar. This scandal left a bad light for Courbit, whose life inspired a “ruthless” and “ambitious” character on whom the French novel is based. Reality show, that two years ago swept bookstores in the French country by the hand of its author, Aurelien Bellanger.

Banijay was released without luck in Spain in 2008 after a failed purchase of The Terrace in Andreu Buenafuente, who ended up buying back his company the following year. It was then that Banijay reached an agreement to take over Quartz, of Ana Rosa Quintana, with which she would end up battling in court (she left the company and set up Unicorn Content). This French emporium continued to grow with the acquisitions of the French Zodiak in 2015 and in 2020 of the historic Dutch company Endemol, that in 1999 revolutionized world television with the emblematic Big Brother, which in Spain began producing Zappelin.

Marco Bassetti, CEO of Banijay, expressed his satisfaction: “Endemol brings us an incredible assortment of industry-leading talent, world-renowned brands and high-quality content. By combining the resources of these two companies we are strengthening our position in the global market, and our capabilities across any genre make us the leading producer of world-class original content in the world.”

Courbit was done like that with Big Brother (which accumulates almost 500 editions in 70 countries) and started a giant that today has 120 companies, a catalog of 130,000 hours and a bookstore with some of the main formats in the world: Survivor, Big Brother, Peaky Blinders, Temptation Island, MasterChef, Wallander, The Kardashians, Mr Bean, The Wall, Hunted, Black Mirror, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition y Deal or No Deal.

Banijay, directed in Spain by Pilar Blasco (who has executives of the stature of Tinet Rubira, José Manuel Lorenzo or macarena king) has become one of the largest international content creation and distribution groups in the world. We wonder if Banijay has joined Mediaset because Vasile has left or if Vasile left Mediaset for Banijay to join. Were the boys from La Fábrica de la tele or their Roman friend going to prevent these French friends of Borja Prado from entering Mediaset? My God!