Antoine Bayet

Since 2007, Antoine Bayet as worked as a journalist and Editor in chief for various media such as France Info and Europe 1. He is now Head of the digital media at the french National Audiovisual Institute (INA) and continues working as a journalist and a trainer for prestigious schools. 

As Head of the digital media at INA, he leads a team of 40+ digital content producers who craft, edit and publish content from archives, and broadcast them on a wide variety of support, from social media to proprietary platform or SVOD.

Between 2017 and 2019, he was Editorial head of digital for the infotainment magazines of Mondadori France, running two audience-oriented websites, and led a newsroom evolution to digital first for 100+ journalists.Antoine Bayet graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme (Superior School of Journalism) in Lille, France in 2008.

Description of the speech

On March 18th 2020, INA has launched its new streaming platform called Madelen, an educational “Netflix”, with human recommendation for all TV archives lovers, but also students and the youngest.

Available in app stores and on a dedicated website, this platform offers more than 13,000 video and audio programs, selected from the millions hours of archive of INA catalogue. Madelen operates as a streaming platform, with themes such as series, fictions, documentaries, concerts and shows, debates and “cartes blanches”. On mainstream platforms, people quickly find themselves locked up by algorithms. It is true that if you have such style of series, then you will only be offered this type of series. On Madelen, on the contrary, behind each content is a librarian, an archivist, a journalist who editorializes the content. 

Madelen has been designed following several axes;

  • An increased editorialization around a tightened offer: a logic aimed at favoring relevance over abundance, around programs selected for their audience or editorial interest. 
  • Content enriched with bonuses and decryptions, articles revealing the backstage of a program… 
  • Cartes blanches to personalities: they transmit their favorites programs and archival content.

Launched at the early French lockdown period, Madelen has first been accessible for free during three months to accompany the French citizens in this difficult period. INA’s unlimited streaming service has recruited 60k subscribers on the very first weeks of its launch.

The service aims at prioritizing relevance over abundance, around programs selected for their audience or their editorial interest. 

On the user side, we now have an offer that adapts to all screen sizes (tablets, pc and TV, with the CAST function) and a dedicated app (iOS and Android) offering downloads for viewing offline programs. Navigation and ergonomics are in tune with the times, meeting streaming standards in 2020.