Canal+ is a major French television company, best known for the eponymous premium television channel. Over the years, the company has built up an impressive amount of thematic channels. Aside from the Canal+-branded channels that are a part of the the Canal+ premium "bouquet", there is also a bunch of channels in lower price-ranges that don't use the Canal+ name. They include a bunch of movie channels called CinéCinéma, four documentary channels called Planète and further thematic channels for news, sports, sports news, comedy, kids programmes, programmes for toddlers, television series, food programmes etcetera.
These channels have all had independent identities, but now it seems that is about to change. Canal+ is rebranding its thematic channels to include plus signs in their names and giving them all consistent logos. The CinéCinéma channels will be known as Ciné+. The other channels will simply add a plus sign at the end of the name, so Planète becomes Planète+, Comédie! becomes Comédie+, Télétoon becomes Télétoon+ etcetera.
I haven't found any info from Canal+ about this, so I don't know what their rationale behind this rebranding exercise is. It links together many TV brands with different origins that until now have had different target audiences and distinct identities. It is common to use an existing TV brand when launching a new TV channel, but it less common to impose a master brand on already established independent brands. There is a strong trend in Europe to link back to one corporate master brand in channel names, especially among state broadcasters and other broadcasters with a strong public connection, but there are some moving in the other direction (UKTV in the United Kingdom, for example).
It seems like this was first discovered by a vigilant user on the French media forum Lenodal called "jyheme", who reported about a bunch of trademark applications that had been filed to the French intellectual property office in early March. So far, I have seen very little other coverage about this, but it appears the new names will launch on May 17.
The recurring element in the new channel logos is a (usually grey) rectangle with the channel name written with Canal+'s adaptation of Futura. Canal+ has used a similar rectangle logo since 1995. The rest of the execution differs, and most channels carry over elements from their previous identity.
The new logos that have been discovered so far are displayed below with most of the previous logos. The group also the news channel i-Télé, the food channel Cuisine TV, the hunting/fishing channel Seasons and the TV series channel Jimmy.
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