His first experience with the Hollywood set cost Canal Plus more than $25m (pounds 15m) as his partners, Carolco, crashed and burned in the mid-1990s through budget mismanagement It was an expensive lesson. His ambition is to make Canal Plus a "major" in the Hollywood sense of the word. Lescure was not about to have his rival so close to "the heart" of CanalSatellite.Before taking the top job at Canal Plus, Lescure was the programming director. When Canal Plus's rival TF1 began purchasing shares in Pathe, Lescure and Vivendi stepped in, buying nearly 30 per cent of Pathe's shares. TF1 maintains it was only making a friendly alliance with Pathe, but it also controls TPS, CanalSatellite's rival.

Although some said the price tag was high, the deal extended Canal's presence in several key markets, namely Scandinavia and the Benelux countries, and gave Canal a minority stake in Tele+.That same year Canal Plus also did a little horse trading with Kirch, selling Kirch its stake in Premiere, and buying Kirch's 45 per cent stake in Tele+, thereby giving it control of the Italian pay-TV operator.Last year Vivendi, the water-to-media group formerly known as Compagnie Generale des Eaux, took direct control of Canal Plus when it increased its stake in the advertising group Havas, which has a large stake in Canal Plus. At the time observers wondered if Lescure's powers would be undermined by Vivendi's aggressive and driven CEO, Jean-Marie Messier.However, when Lescure perceived a threat to CanalSatellite, which Canal Plus owns with partners, French producer Pathe and US giant Time Warner, Messier was quick to pitch in. In other European countries, Canal Plus has tried to replicate the French model, with varying degrees of success. But all of its non- French operations are set to break even over the next three years (see chart).In Spain, with publishing powerhouse the Prisa Group, Canal Plus has had a rough time juggling shifting government rules that form the background to on-again, off-again merger talks with its rival, Via Digital, controlled by the former state-owned telecom operator Telefonica.Early in 1997 Canal Plus achieved a real coup by acquiring its biggest pay-TV competitor NetHold - owners of the FilmNet film channel - from the luxury goods company Richemont. But Canal Plus's roots - and for the time being its profits - are in its flagship terrestrial service. Today 75 per cent of its 4.5 million French subscribers pay 179FF (pounds 19) a month to receive just the one-channel service.

Twenty- two of these channels have been developed with the former international arm of Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) Canal also owns about a third of Eurosport. Many of the Canal channels are localised and exported to the company's non-French services.Canal Plus was quicker to introduce digital television than Sky. Partly this was due to competitive pressure in France from a rival service called TPS, controlled by TF1.

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Since launching its CanalSatellite digital service in April 1996 Canal Plus has signed up 1.2 million subscribers in France TPS counts about 610,000 subscribers. The company also has invested in 30 different thematic channels, from a documentary channel, Planete, to a 1950s US cult TV channel, Jimmy, named after James Dean and Jimmy Hendrix. Under its government licence, Canal Plus puts 20 per cent of its revenues into acquiring film rights, and has traditionally invested in 90 per cent of the films made in France. The company holds exclusive pay rights to French football league games until 2001.

Its core channel, called Canal+, has been up and running since November 1984 and mixes exclusive sports, movies and entertainment, much of it locally produced. Shortly after this fiasco, Murdoch came calling in Paris.Lescure undoubtedly matches Murdoch with the extent of his ambition. Each controls a different end of the spectrum - Lescure has Europe, not the world, while for Murdoch the situation is reversed. Canal Plus is a big name in France, but Lescure wants to be taken seriously by the English- speaking world. When he was first invited to the Allen & Co annual gathering of the world's media elite at Sun Valley, where the likes of Barry Diller, John Malone, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Murdoch himself rub shoulders, Lescure was thrilled.