Seagram has merged with Vivendi and Canal Plus to create the world's second biggest media group.
Were it not for the support of its parent, Canal Plus would probably have gone bust.
On his first day at Canal Plus, protesting staff tried to stop him entering the building.
In Paris, Mr Meier's Canal Plus head offices are downriver from Mr Gehry's now-empty American Centre.
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"Perhaps it was the bitterest night I have had at Barcelona, " he told Spanish Canal Plus television.
Last year Canal Plus made an operating loss of euro374m and drained euro500m of cash from Vivendi.
In France, Canal Plus, a subscription-based channel, wooed its audience with a formula of football and films.
That is what Canal Plus believes, and why it is trying to take on the American studios.
Watch a movie from any European country these days, and you will usually see Canal Plus's name attached.
The writedown of Canal Plus leaves it worth euro6.5 billion on Vivendi's books.
"We wouldn't have taken this player, " Lyon club president Jean-Michel Aulas told Canal Plus after his signing was completed.
Mr Lescure was too close to his baby to take the hard-nosed decisions needed to turn Canal Plus round.
But Canal Plus came up against the hostility in Europe to cross-border mergers.
Yet the history of Mr Murdoch's relations with Canal Plus suggests that making this merger happen will not be easy.
"It's a positive result because if we score there it will make it difficult for them, " Malaga winger Joaquin told Canal Plus.
TPS, the French competition authorities have frozen the euro480m deal secured late last year by Canal Plus to show first-division French soccer.
Only two years ago Vivendi paid an astonishing euro12.5 billion to buy the 51% of Canal Plus that it did not already own.
"My priority is Arsenal, but there are other clubs, " the Moroccan, who has also been linked with Sunderland, Fulham and Tottenham, told Canal Plus.
Germany's Kirch and Italy's Mediaset agreed to form an alliance in European television, which they hope Canal Plus of France, and others, will join.
At that time, Canal Plus was loss-making and had around euro2.8 billion of debt, so it seems Vivendi paid a frothy price to begin with.
Outside France, Canal Plus is losing money, above all in Italy.
"It was the bus carrying our baggage which was in front of us which they fired on the most, " he told French TV channel Canal Plus.
After toying with an investment in the television operations of Leo Kirch, a German media mogul, and with Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest, Mr Murdoch wooed Canal Plus last year.
Pierre Lescure, Canal Plus's chief executive, was excited by the prospect of a deal with Mr Murdoch, partly because he dreaded the prospect of a fight with him.
These crucial bits are copied, with one set going to the old scrambler, another going through a new scrambler built by a Sony partner such as NDS or Canal Plus.
As part of the merger, Vivendi agreed to drop a lawsuit filed by its Canal Plus division accusing NDS of hacking Canal Plus' security codes and distributing them in Italy.
The study, led by the former CEO of French pay-TV channel Canal Plus, Pierre Lescure, proposed a total of 75 measures to "protect the cultural exception in the face of digital innovation".
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"A host of negative results have come together in a short space of time, " Madrid sporting director Jorge Valdano told Canal Plus television after his side's first home league defeat in 11 months.
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