Two Of France's Greatest Entrepreneurs Team Up To Create Molotov, A Spotify For TV

Pierre Lescure is one of the founders of Canal+, France's biggest pay-TV channel and movie & TV innovators (think HBO). Jean-David Blanc co-founded AlloCiné, France's #1 movie review and showtimes website and a huge traffic getter, and is also a well-known business angel in France.

Together they are announcing today that they are starting Molotov, a new TV distribution platform that aims to be for TV what Spotify is for music.

They argue that the youngest generation isn't watching TV. The reason isn't that the content isn't compelling. The reason isn't that Facebook is so much better than good TV. The reason is that the user interface is so atrocious. Cannel surfing may have been fun when there were 5 or 10 channels, but it becomes a joke when there are 200 or 500.

The user interface of TV is broken, they argue, and with competition from the internet, if that problem doesn't get fixed, TV will soon be all-but history. That is what Molotov, whose product hasn't yet been released, is setting out to fix, by helping with discovery and allowing people to access content when they want it and how they want it. They have just registered with CSA, France's broadcasting regulator, as a TV distributor, so they can own those rights.

What I find interesting here is the strategy. Instead of trying to disrupt TV by bringing it to the web, as Hulu or Boxee have been trying to do, instead it seems that they are working within the TV system. Their service won't include online video mixed in with "real" TV, as Boxee did, Jean-David Blanc told me, instead it will only be TV. In any case, as both a consumer and an industry watcher, I'm curious to see what they come up with.
