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Media Landscape - Italy

INTRODUCTION

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Located in the European south, on the Mediterranean sea, Italy is a founding member of the European Union. The territory is about 300,000 square kilometers and population is 58 million inhabitants, according to the last census. Its GDP is higher than the average of the 27 EU countries but its growth was rather slow during the last years.

The structure of the country is a parliamentary republic, with a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate. It is divided in 21 regions, 5 of them with large autonomous powers. Its official language is Italian, although in some of its communities near the Alpine border other minority languages have an official status as well.

Between 2001 and 2006, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi was at the same time the prime minister of Italy and the owner of Mediaset, the group controlling the three most important commercial TV networks. In 2007, the Italian media landscape will go through significant shifts, as a result of the defeat of the governing centre-right coalition at the general elections of April 9-10, 2006. The Prodi cabinet, swore in May, has already proposed media legislation in order to put some limits to media ownership, now regulated by a 2004 law conceived to protect Mediaset’s interests.


1. WRITTEN PRESS

The newspaper readership remains very low compared to most of EU countries, and has not varied substantially in the last decade. A rather recent development is the birth of several free dailies. In Milan, Rome and some other medium cities, people can find “Leggo,” “City,” and a chain of free local newspapers created by maverick publisher Nicky Grauso (each one take the name of the city where it is produced, like “Il Firenze” in Florence). So far, the Italian free press can boast 2 million readers per day but it is not yet gaining real commercial strength.

One reason of the long-term weakness of the daily press is its meager share of advertising revenues: in Italy the advertising market is dominated by TV, and the written press command only a third of it. There are about 150 daily newspapers, the most important of them owned by publishing trusts. Italy does not have tabloid daily newspapers, the popular dailies are the sport papers like “La Gazzetta dello Sport”, whose circulation on Mondays exceeds that of all newspapers but “Corriere della sera” and “Repubblica”.

“Corriere della sera” and “Repubblica” compete for the top spot, leaving competitors rather far in the ranking by paid circulation. While “Corriere” still is a broadsheet, “Repubblica” adopted since the beginning the so-called “berliner” format, a larger than usual tabloid. They both publish their own weekly magazines. The main newspapers seem not able to increase their circulation but maintain important revenues thanks to product distribution (books etc.). The magazine market is growing, with an important segment of “gossip” magazines.


2. AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

Television


Italians can choose from eight national TV free channels: RAI1, RAI2, RAI3, Canale Cinque, Rete Quattro, Italia Uno, La Sette and MTV. There about 800 local TV channels. Two groups control 85% of the audience and 90% of advertising revenues: Rai and Mediaset. Rai, a public company, started broadcasting in 1954 and quickly became immensely popular. While a strict preserve of Italian government main political party, the Christian democrats, it allowed many leading left-oriented intellectuals to work there at one moment or another: authors Umberto Eco and Andrea Camilleri, journalists Furio Colombo and Enzo Biagi.

Mediaset has the three other channels, and about half of advertising revenues. Mr. Berlusconi was extremely skilful in gathering large audiences to lure advertising contracts to Mediaset. Mediaset's commercial stations tilt towards entertainment and advertising, but the three evening news (Tg5, Tg4 and Studio Aperto) are competitive with the public television information.

Pay TV was introduced by two organisations: “TELEpiù”, owned by Canal Plus-Vivendi, and STREAM, formerly owned by Telecom Italia and Rupert Murdoch. The merging between the two of them gave birth to SKY, which has now established a monopolistic position, supported by the rich market of football matches. Telecom Italia sold its part, and Rupert Murdoch is now the only owner. However, it is not clear whether this situation could last, and which shape Pay TV may take in Italy in the coming years.


Radio


In Italy there is no stagnation of radio: listeners are up, and advertising revenues grow even faster: 10.6% more in the first seven months of 2006, reaching for the first time a 5% share of the global advertising market. The Italian radio is led by two public stations, the divisions of RAI RADIOUNO and RADIODUE (first and third in the ranking of most-listened stations) but the larger share of the audience belongs to the private networks.

Among these ones, the clear leader is Radio Deejay that belongs to “L’Espresso” group (5.8 million listeners on the average day), followed by RDS (4.8 million) and RTL (4.2 million). All these are “music” radios, while three “talk” radio with culture and information are Radio Capital (“L’Espresso” group) with 2 million listeners, RADIOTRE (RAI), with 1.9 million and RADIO24, (“Il Sole-24 ore” group) with 1.7 million. * In addition to these networks, there is a great number of local radio stations in FM.


3. DIGITAL MEDIA

A pillar of law n. 112/2004 (see below, section 7) was the support to digital broadcasting that should be complete by year 2011, like in France. Mr. Berlusconi’s cabinet promoted the introduction of decoders that allow old TV sets to receive digital broadcasting, offering € 250 millions of subsidies to families buying the decoders. Nevertheless, digital broadcasting reaches today only 3, 8 millions of Italian families.

As of yet, there is a modest amount of digital broadcasting. RAI has a few channels, the most important of which is RAI-sport, and Mediaset has its own. Italian passion for football notwithstanding, penetration of the decoders needed to receive digital services remains nevertheless slow. Much depends on the policies adopted by Mr. Prodi’s government, that will decide soon whether to continuing support for the switch from analogical to digital broadcasting, or not.


4. ONLINE MEDIA

Italians have been slow in embracing the Internet, even if 60% of families are now online. The most visited websites are those created by “Repubblica” and “Corriere,” which are rather traditional in their design and contents. Both are stuffed with offers of travel, merchandising and the like.

Real online newspapers have been scarcely successful, so far. However, some blogs like the one proposed by former TV entertainer Beppe Grillo are enormously successful.


5. NEWS AGENCIES

Italian leader in this field is ANSA, a cooperative among Italian newspapers born in 1946. It used to be important in Latin America, but in the last years it lost its rank as a medium-size world news agency. Smaller outlets are Radiocor, that specializes in economic news, Adn-Kronos, and ASCA.

ANSA is constantly losing money, even if it tries to enter the rich business of providing contents to various media, from free press to cell phones, and it is heavily subsidized by the government.


6. MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

The most relevant professional organizations in Italy are the Italian Publishers' Association (FIEG), and the Federation of Television Broadcasters, both powerful lobbies. There is also UPA, the association of advertisers, and is a large journalists' union, Federazione della Stampa Italiana (FNSI).

Journalists must be members of a professional corporation (“Ordine dei giornalisti”), established in 1963, to which one is admitted by showing that he works as a full time employee in a newspaper, radio or TV, and after an admission examination. There are also several schools of journalism that allow access to the corporation.

The existence of the Ordine dei giornalisti is threatened by the wave of deregulation in the area of professional corporations promoted by Mr. Prodi’s government, but no immediate changes are forecast.


7. NATIONAL MEDIA POLICIES

In the 1980s and 1990s, Italy's media landscape has been shaped by a number of laws, and Corte Costituzionale (Italy’s Supreme Court) decisions, which reflected a discontinuous approach, partisan considerations and private interests. There has never been a bipartisan plan to shape the Italian electronic media vis-à-vis the challenges of globalization. The turbulence in the political system, the lack of government clear-cut programs, the strong lobbying by major operators, and a general short-sightedness of the Italian political parties in this field, are the reasons of the present state of uncertainty and fogginess in the media landscape.

The law n. 249/1997 reformed the audiovisual and telecommunications system, creating a broadcasting frequencies blueprint. It divided broadcasting frequencies between three public channels (RAI1, RAI2, RAI3) and eight national commercial networks including the most important three ones: Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4, all by Mediaset. There were about 800 small to medium-size independent private local television stations, too.


8. ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

The law n. 249/1997 created an independent authority to look over the communications sector (“Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni”. This is a collegial body with a president (appointed by the government), a council of eight members (elected by Parliament) and two committees (one for networks and infrastructures, another for services and products). This authority extends its control over the telecommunications sector, the electronic media and the publishing industry.

Its political origins, however, made it a rather timid and ineffectual regulator.It holds important control powers over the telephone market, but it has shown little capacity to effectively regulate the TV system. There is a Parliamentary Board to supervise RAI, too. It was introduced in 1975, and it is a political authority, made up of 41 MPs from all parties. This body has only jurisdiction over the activity of the public broadcasting company, RAI, but it was given the important role of electing its President by the 2004 law.

The Ordine dei giornalisti claims for itself a role of ethical watchdog over its members, but it has been particularly inefficient in this activity. Periodically, scandals created by reporters’ conflicts of interests surface: in 2006, some RAI journalists were named as accomplices in a sport furor over Juventus football club manipulation of referees. More headlines were created by the cooperation between the deputy editor of “Libero,” Renato Farina, and Italian intelligence in a dubious operation of political skulduggering against then-opposition leader Romano Prodi.


9. RECENT MEDIA DEVELOPMENTS

News and games available on your mobile phone: this seems to be the future of Italian media. The reason is the exceptional penetration of cell phones in the Italian market, where owners of mobile phones outnumber citizens with house phones. Italians elected the cell phone as their favorite media already many years ago, almost taking over from Finland the world record.

The process started with the liberalization of the telephone market in 1998 that changed dramatically the domestic telecommunication system. Former public operator Telecom Italia was privatized, and in 1999 it was taken-over by Olivetti. Since 2001, the control is in the hands of Pirelli, led by financier Marco Tronchetti Provera. Residential, long-distance and mobile telephone services are now offered by several competing operators, all offering internet access, too. The main service providers are the following:

Telecom Italia, Vodafone (formerly Infostrada), Wind (owned by Egyptian financier Naguib Sawiris), Fastweb, Albacom (owned by British Telecom), Tele2 (Swedish group Tele2 AB), Tiscali (Italian industrialist, and now politician Renato Soru).


10. REFERENCES

Figures and statistics about audiences and circulation figures can be found at the Internet sites of Auditel, which is a Joint Industry Commitee created by advertisers and broadcasters (http://www.auditel.it). The equivalent sources for the press and radio are Audipress (http://www.audipress.it), and Audiradio (http://www.audiradio.it). Information about the legal framework of the communication sector can be found at the Internet site of the Authority for Communications (http://www.agcom.it).

There are a number of trade publications. A comprehensive one is the annual report “L'industria della Comunicazione in Italia”, published by the Istituto di Economia dei Media of Milan (http://www.fondazionerosselli.it/). About the written press, a useful report is “Il grande Libro della stampa italiana” published by “Prima Comunicazione,” a monthly trade magazine (http://www.primaonline.com).

Finally, each broadcasting and publishing organization have their annual report (see for example: http://www.rai.it; http://www.mediaset.it; http://www.mondadori.it; http://www.feltrinelli.it; http://www.rcs.it).


11. AUTHOR

Fabrizio Tonello is a Professor of Public Opinion Studies at the University of Padua. His last books are “Il giornalismo americano” (2005) and “Il giornalismo francese” (2006), both by Carocci, Rome.


12. MEDIA RESOURCES

Newspapers

Audio/Visual Media

Media Institutions

Blogs/Civil Media

Excerpt from EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE: THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com).

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