A week after the announcement of the liquidation of the Melchior Group, owner of the newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, a project for a new daily newspaper could rock the archipelago’s media landscape. This title would complete an offer which, in addition to the France Télévisions network, includes a local television station (Caledonia, in which the islands, the southern and the northern provinces are the majority shareholders), two weekly newspapers owned by private groups and four radio stations. “The project is well advanced and could be completed within a few weeks,” hopes Yann Milin, director of Rezo Media, which publishes the weekly Actu.nc and edits it daily. His editorial line will be that of Actu.nc, “a little less liberal and loyalist,” he says. The Chair is expecting public support from the Ministry of Culture for press support and has requested local support from Promosud, the mixed-business company in the Southern Province. At the same time, the liquidation of the Melchior Group could give rise to several plans to acquire certain assets. Without having positioned themselves publicly, local groups have expressed interest in the site, a 100% digital edition that replaced the paper format on December 31st.

The main New Caledonian media rely on substantial subsidies paid to them by the local authorities. This applies to the three major radio stations, Radio Rythme Bleu (RRB), a non-independent station, its independent counterpart Radio Djido and Océane FM, which is less politically pronounced. The latter, the newest Caledonian radio station, recently received financial backing from Didier Leroux, a powerful Caledonian entrepreneur and brother-in-law to businessman Vincent Bolloré. This former elected official is a clear supporter of the non-independence coalition led by Sonia Backès, President of the Southern Province and Secretary of State for Citizenship. “I borrowed the money because I didn’t want Océane to disappear or fall into anyone’s hands,” Didier Leroux told AFP. His support has enabled the radio to invest in audiovisual production tools.

Océane FM is at the heart of another project: the creation of a television channel, NC 9, which has received broadcasting authorization from audiovisual regulator Arcom and could see the light of day from here by the end of the year. The funding of this channel is based on a significant support from the Southern Province, of the order of 800,000 euros per year. Editorially, NC 9 plans to combine RRB Radio and Océane FM. “If we can have a channel NC 9, supported in particular by RRB and Océane, it will offer a great deal of information and perhaps a little political balance,” explained the President of the Southern Province in the JT of October 16, 2022 from NC The premiere . “This will provide a lot of information and maybe a little political balance,” hoped Sonia Backès last October, who boycotted the French television station for a few days with other officials who were not elected independently in December 2020. In an often conflicting local media context, the disappearance of the New Caledonians is very bad news for Etienne Dutailly, founding director of Blue Dog, the territory’s satirical newspaper. “The Loyalists were just waiting for them to have their own means of communication,” he says. “Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes has opened its columns to everyone. Politicians don’t want a medium, they want an instrument to back up their propaganda, which this newspaper wasn’t,” analyzes the head of the Blue Dog. A “bipolarization of information” symptomatic of a fractured territory as the state has been trying for more than a year to bring together separatists and non-separatists to negotiate its future status. Three referendums rejected independence, the last one being contested by the pro-independence camp.