RTL9
In 1995, RTL TV marked their 40th anniversary with great ceremony in the grand auditorium of Villa Louvigny and officially renamed the channel RTL9 at the end of the night. The official reason for the change of name was a new youth focus to the channel (RTL9, c'est neuf !), but the CLT stated that the move was to avoid confusion with the Belgian channel, RTL-TVI and the German channel RTL Television.
In 1997, the CLT joined with the German audiovisual group UFA and so controlled production, broadcast, and rights for programmes. Faced with their Belgian and German cousins in direct competition in their countries, and with the increasing success of M6 in France, CLT-UFA faced questions regarding their audience in Lorraine and on French and Swiss cable. The new German-Luxembourger group was less attached to the heritage aspect than to the economic aspect of the company and urgent cost-cutting measures were undertaken. In December 1997, the group cut staff at the channel for economic reasons (RTL9 showed a loss of 50 million French francs) and on 3 March 1998, 65% of the capital of the channel was sold to AB Groupe, with CLT-UFA keeping the remaining 35%. A number of viewers deserted the channel, as did some of the key figureheads of the channel, led by Marylène Bergmann, who had been a presenter at the channel since 1977. Only Jean-Luc Bertrand, director of programmes, remained at the channel.
Reaching 650 000 homes on terrestrial channels in Lorraine and Luxembourg, 2.1 million homes via cable in France and Switzerland, 1.5 million via satellite contracts on the TPS satellite package, and via the CanalSat package, RTL9 is the number one channel in terms of relative audience for cable and satellite for the past ten years, and is the third most watched channel in Lorraine. Due to this, AB Groupe proposed that the channel should move to digital terrestrial television in France on 1 July 2002. The CSA refused, since the channel was a foreign channel, and therefore, it was not subject to the same obligations as its French rivals in terms of the broadcast of films and adverts, leading to unfair competition.
In 2005, RTL9 celebrated 50 years of broadcast with archive footage from between 1955 and 2005, but mostly from the RTL9 period, including a musical spectacular from Olympia in Paris presented by Jean-Luc Bertrand. In contrast to RTL-TVI which broadcast a documentary in March 2005 tracing the history of Télé-Luxembourg and the independence of the Belgian channel, or RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg which showed a documentary at the end of 2005 about the "T" in RTL, RTL9 did not show a similar programme, due to the loss of records when they moved offices in 1995. Instead, for the last week of December 2005, the programme of Jean-Luc Bertrand, Bienvenue chez vous, was taken over by former stars of the channel: Michèle Etzel, André Torrent, Jean Stock, Georges Lang and Marylène Bergmann, specially brought in to talk about their professional memories of the history of RTL Télévision.
Since 4 September 2006, RTL9 has renewed its graphic without changing its logo. The new graphic is 3D, created in-house, using the colours and the three shapes which form the channel's logo. A second event took place at the same time: the return of Marylène Bergmann after nine years away, to take over presenting duties on RTL-TVI, two days per week with her old co-presenter Jean-Luc Bertrand, on Bienvenue chez vous on RTL9 Lorraine.
From its foundation as the station of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the RTL empire is still growing now shown in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe, covering 38 television channels and 29 radio stations in 2007.
In May 2008, AB changed RTL9, changing the regional name RTL9 Lorraine to RTL9 Est accompanied by a dedicated website.
In February 2009, AB rejuvenated the website of the channel with an emphasis on video content and the prominence of various departments of AB Groupe.
Since 16 September 2009, RTL9 have a Swiss feed with local ads.
On 1 June 2010, RTL9 passed in 16:9.[2] On 13 May 2014, RTL9 went on high definition on the Canalsat bouquet and in 2015 on Numericable and SFR. The channel is no longer broadcast in standard definition from this date on Astra.[3]
On 21 July 2017, Mediawan, through its audiovisual company AB Groupe, bought the 35% held by CLT-UFA and became its sole owner.
