To the Festa Democratica this evening to hear Giovanna Melandri [Partito Democratico], Claudio Petruccioli [Rai], Tom Mockridge [Sky Italia], Gina Nieri [Mediaset] and Giovanni Stella [La7] talk about the television of the future.
Petruccioli had two suggestions for Rai, but refused to go any further, pointedly noting that he’s already gone over his term as President of Rai, and it’s time for him to get back to being a normal viewer:
- removing the figure of the director-general, and appointing a managing director [amministratore generale], capable of taking more autonomous action, instead of the current situation where there are 150 bosses who can only be moved with the consent of the board
- ending the situation whereby the state directly owns Rai, which happened for the first time in 2004 with the passage of the Gasparri law [previously it was held by state holding company IRI]
The moderator was very kind about La7, talking about them as a third pole trying to plough the ‘quality television niche’(!), but it dawned on me, whilst looking through the latest Agcom report, that Sky’s presence is now much much bigger than that of La7 - they, not La7, are the terzo polo. Mockridge, incidentally, was extremely diplomatic, for the most part, but did make a reference to why News International in general preferred a free market in television, which for me implied that the current market was not free - but perhaps this is reading too much in to it.
Finally, Gina Nieri, in response to a comment by Melandri about the current state of the television market not being healthy, replied by inventing some figures about the UK television market, by claiming that the BBC had all of the licence fee, Sky had allof the pay-per-view market, and ITV had all of the advertising market - which, if it were true, would indeed make the Italian market look rosy.
Of course, it’s not true. ITV has around 40% of the television advertising market; Channel 4 has around 20%, and the remainder is split between Channel 5 and various others.
Had I not had to skip out, and had questions been allowed, I could have mentioned this. But so far at all events at the Festa that I’ve been too, no questions from the floor have been allowed. Boo.
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