* New channel Orange Cine Star available to all operators
* Commitment to maintain French content, preserve jobs
(Adds CEO comments)
PARIS, Jan 19 (Reuters) - France Telecom announced a movie channel joint venture with Vivendi unit Canal Plus on Wednesday, part of the French telecoms group's broader shift towards content partnerships.
France Telecom, also known by its brand name Orange, said in a joint statement with Canal Plus that the companies would merge two of their channels into one called Orange Cine Star that would be available to any operator.
The statement also said the companies would maintain their commitments for French-focused content and would preserve jobs linked to Orange's bouquet of movie channels, which include Orange Cine Happy, Cine Choc, Cine Novo and Cine Geants.
France Telecom Chief Executive Stephane Richard said the joint venture was a "new illustration" of the group's content partnership strategy. It is being presented to worker representatives and competition authorities for approval.
France Telecom has spent 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion) on content in the past five years.
Richard's move away from a go-it-alone content strategy is intended to reduce that budget and allow it to focus on building communication networks and serving customers at a time when new players like Apple and Google are grabbing more of the mobile and Internet value chain. Richard also said France Telecom would not bid for the French football rights in 2012 when they come up for renewal, which accounts for the largest chunk of its content spending.
"We will not be candidates for the TV rights for the football," he said.
The new channel will have an annual budget for content of 100 million euros, Canal Plus CEO Bertrand Meheut told a news conference.
"Both activities that we are merging were losing money on their own today," Meheut said.
The joint venture with Canal Plus and the decision not to bid for the football rights "will eventually have a non-negligible impact on Orange's P&L", France Telecom's Richard told the news conference.
France Telecom's head of growth businesses said in November it was also in talks with potential partners for a sports channel venture. ($1=.7425 Euro) (Reporting by Lionel Laurent and Leila Abboud; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)