Rai and Mediaset, with five multiplexes each, will have to pay the State a contribution of 13 million a year each, much less than they pay now, as will Telecom Italia Media and Gruppo L'Espresso. Urbano Cairo, owner of La7, will pay nothing for twenty years. Among the small ones, if they are only TV operators they are not taxed, but if they own frequencies, they will pay for the use of a public good which until yesterday was free. For its part, the State frees itself from the business risk it shared with the publishers: if the advertising business went well, the Treasury collected, otherwise it didn't.
The new rules on the contributions of television frequencies that Agcom, the communication authority, has just launched are causing turmoil among the protagonists. And they completely redesign the TV market. Who cries out for favoritism, who begs for a discount, who foresees the growth of a two-headed big brother, Rai and Mediaset. While the polemical noise grows, it is better to do some clarity.
Meanwhile, the new rules shift the burden of the tax from content providers - and therefore "publishers" - to network operators. Second, they shift the tax from the value of corporate turnover to the "value" of frequencies.
On the first point, the scenario has changed completely with the digital terrestrial revolution. Until the advent of digital technology, the two activities – publisher and network operator – were combined in the same subject, since to be a television entrepreneur it was necessary to have the frequencies, conquering which one obtained a sort of "qualification as a TV editor". With the transition from analogue to digital, the roles have split in two, it being understood that some entities such as Rai, Mediaset, la7 have a company in which they integrate both. Others, like Sky with the Cielo channel, or Discovery channel, or Disney channels, on the other hand, are just publishers, hosted on other people's channels to which they pay a ticket.
Agcom has regulated the economic burden for those who have frequencies: the so-called multiplexes (because they can host up to six channels each). On the other hand, it lifts the publishing business from any tax, which until yesterday had to pay the State the "pike" of one percent of its turnover (essentially advertising revenue and sponsorships). A system that has shown its limits in recent years. While in 2011 one percent of TV turnover produced 50 million contributions, more or less 28 from Rai and 25 from Mediaset, already in 2012 the crisis had dropped it to 35 million and the same amount was collected in 2013.
To change, the starting point was to establish what the value of the frequencies was. Easy: the law provided that the last auction should be taken as the benchmark, i.e. the one that assigned its digital space to Cairo last year. An auction with a single competitor and no beauty contest (that is, a real competition), by decision of the government of the time, led by Monti and with the competent minister Corrado Passera. The result was a real bargain for Cairo, which took away the loot for 31 million which, listen, also include the fees for twenty years of use. So La7 is keeping quiet today, because for her, nothing really changes with Agcom's decisions.
The Cairo effect, however, was to keep the baseline frequencies low for everyone. And for that the operators should be grateful to him. From Cairo onwards, a multiplex with six channels is worth 2 euros. To translate it into a contribution, Agcom took a while. We have to understand it, because it found itself having to build an algorithm capable of responding to two requirements. First of all, don't reduce the collection for the State, then cancel market distortions such as the hoarding of frequencies that are not actually used to make us television, given that up to now this had no cost.
Result? A series of parameters that modulate the value of the frequencies in relation, for example, to how many they have (the base-value increases by 5 percent for the second multiplex, by 10 for the third, by 15 for the fourth and by 20 for the fifth); discounts of up to 30 percent for those experimenting with new technologies (it's hard to imagine that the Rai and Mediaset flagships don't do them); a gradual mechanism in the full application of the new tax (it was five years, now there are plans to extend it to a maximum of 8 years). The advantages of this set of "switches" will in any case be halved for the big names in viale Mazzini and Cologno. As for La7, it remains always excluded and armored by its old agreement made at the time of the transition to Cairo.
Now the ball passes into the field of the Ministry of Economic Development. It will be there, on the basis of political-financial criteria, that the decision will be made on how to use the levers developed by Agcom. Do you have to pay for everything immediately or dilute over time? Grant the discounts, or get as quickly as possible to the expected figure when fully operational, i.e. 55 million a year? For the 20 national networks plus the local ones, the game of lobbies is now open. Whether they manage to get a soft take-off or whether the treasury wins will be seen immediately, because the new tax must start now, by 2014.
