There are at least four open tables – for this year – between Rai and the Government (through the MISE) which, once concluded, will radically mark the future of the Public Service. The first, which began last November, refers to the drafting of the new Service Agreement which is due to enter into force next year; the second concerns the new business plan (provided for by the same Contract in article 25) which, as the CEO Carlo Fuortes declared in recent days in Rai Supervision, should be concluded by next June; the third should take care of the "Grounding" of that part of the old business plan already approved by the previous Foa/Salini board of directors on restructuring by gender and, lastly, the fourth table should invest the governance reform of Viale Mazzini, currently under discussion at the Senate Transport Commission where they would like to reunify the current 7 proposals advanced by almost all the parties.
Rai's new mission
On all of these then weighs a transversal unknown that refers to resources on which Rai can count to trace a possible path of investments and development. Let's see in order and synthesis how the different themes on the table are being prefigured starting from the original documents we have and how they then agree in their implementation time schedule. The Service Contract, derived in turn from the 2017 Agreement between the Ministry and Rai, is the fundamental text on which all the obligations that the Rai Concessionaire is required to follow (in exchange for which it receives the fee) for the next 5 years starting from the punctual definition of his "mission". Already on this first and fundamental point, the critical issues that will need to be addressed emerge. In the introduction to the document Draft Guidelines CdS 2023-27 of 11 November last, we read that "The new Service Contract was born in a very different context from that of 2017.
The difference lies in a few numbers that encompass the new digital life of Italians: the unitary data traffic per SIM goes from 2.23 GB/month in March 2017 to 11.62 GB/month in March 2021, with an increase of around 50% from year to year and 200% in 4 years (mobile data)". There new "mission" of Rai therefore it will have to be calibrated in a context of profound changes in the market, technologies and viewers/consumers in rapid evolution in the methods of use of new audiovisual products.
The debate is entirely centered on the precise sizing of this "new era" of the Public Service which will certainly have to find a new and more efficient legitimization of its presence on the market where the advance of streaming continues impetuous. It is a question of defining "what and how" Rai can/should do in exchange for what it receives (license fee) and how much it "earns" (advertising). The theme of the "mission" will therefore be the pivot around which everything else will necessarily revolve, starting with the resources that Rai is assigned to carry out the tasks indicated in the Contract. The cited document then traces the "path" of the new Contract where "In this new context, the role of the Public Multimedia Service starts from 4 ambitious adjectives: relevant, inclusive, sustainable, credible”. It's a very important bet and it won't be easy to win at all and the obstacles are already around the corner. The first refers precisely to the license fee and the breezy and plausible threat of returning to collection through the Post Office bulletin. If this hypothesis is verified, a massive return to evasion of the so-called "tax most hated by Italians" is expected, with damages estimated at tens of millions of euros.
The Industrial Plan of Rai
It is important to keep the Service Contract well separated from the Business Plan and their respective timing. The latter is fully included in the detailed list of duties and commitments required of Rai, so much so that it is provided for by a specific paragraph of the aforementioned article 25, let.u, where it states that "Rai is required to submit to the Ministry, within six months of the date of publication of this Agreement in the Official Gazette, within six months of the date of publication of this Contract in the Official Gazette, a three-year industrial plan which, based on the definition of adequate resources, made available by the portions of the fee destined for the public service, for the performance of the activities referred to in this Contract, provides - in line with the provisions of the Agreement - interventions aimed at achieving ... etc. etc". At this specific point, a legitimate objection arises: one should proceed first with the sharing/approval of a new Service Contract and, subsequently, with the drafting of a consequent Business Plan and not vice versa as it appears to be happening instead.
In fact, as far as we know following the hearings of the Supervisory CEO in recent weeks, it would seem that we are proceeding in the opposite direction. In recent days, two important meetings took place in Viale Mazzini: the first with ADRAI (RAI executives association) and the second with the USIGRAI (RAI Journalists Union) where the guidelines of the new 2022-24 Business Plan were presented. Except that, the Industrial Plan that is now being debated is the one that emerges as a constraint from the previous Contract still in force (2018-2022).
The question is therefore how to agree a new Industrial Plan with a Contract that has yet to be set up? The risk of a lag is strong: there could be a Plan that does not take into account a new Contract which, hopefully, will have to be signed next year. In fact, as far as we are able to report, the guidelines of the new Plan are mainly oriented towards limiting its range of action within the limits of available resources which will be, as we read in the exclusive documentation in our possession: "... a decisive element in definition of the future for industry 2020-2024" and the Plan "... will be conditioned in a decisive way by the possibility of accessing consistent financial resources, human resources with up-to-date skills and adequate regulatory instruments".
With this approach we go back to the starting point: with which “mission” and with which ones economic resources (and perhaps also regulations, which we will see later) can a new Industrial Plan be supported which is not yet known what (onerous) obligations it will have to meet with the new Contract?
The reorganization by genres
We now come to the third "table": the grounding of that part of the previous Plan drawn up and approved by the Foa/Salini board of directors. Of all that project, articulated and complex as well as considerably demanding, a part has been extrapolated: the so-called "reorganization by genres" with which it was expected to update and overcome the structured model for networks and titles. With the arrival of Carlo Fuortes this track was resumed and is now in the implementation phase: 10 new directorates divided by gender have been approved and the relative directors appointed:
- Prime-time entertainment, Stefano Coletta
- Antonio Di Bella day-time entertainment
- Culture and education Silvia Calandrelli
- Fiction Maria Pia Admire yourself
- Sports Alessandra De Stefano
- Cinema Francesco Di Pace
- Deepening Mario Orfeo
- Kids Luca Milan
- RaiPlay content. Elena Capparelli
- Documentaries Fabrizio Zappi
The Report case and the new NewsRoom
On this new organizational structure, as far as we have been able to verify, the problems are just beginning and, not surprisingly, they are having an impact on one of the most delicate fronts of Rai's role: information.
In recent days, the case Report when the intention of Mario Orfeo, director of the in-depth news genre beyond Tg and Gr, was made known to review the information spaces of Rai Tre with all the related controversies. It should be taken into consideration that, still speaking of Plans, the previous one contained the "Rai 2019-21 Information Plan, Annex 4" which later remained a dead letter despite containing important reflections on the quantity/quality of news disseminated by the Public Service and envisaging the its most significant innovation: the creation of a NewsRoom the only one able to manage all the more than 1.700 Rai journalists in an organic and coordinated way divided into 8 mastheads between television, radio and the Web with a cost (2018) of over 320 million euros excluding Rai Sport and Gr (source PI Rai, March 2019 ). Now, the new managements will have to compete with each other to grab spaces, skills and responsibilities as well as the related allocation budgets and, as far as possible to imagine, it may not be a painless and quick transition.
The reform of Rai
Finally, the fourth table is arranged in a much more complex way and with times that are difficult to predict, it refers to the reform of Rai starting from its governance system. Currently, eight proposals are under discussion in the Senate, all aimed at overcoming the much-discussed Law 220 of 2015 which ratified the almost total dependence of the mechanism of appointment of top management of the company under government control. The various parliamentary initiatives focus on overcoming this regulatory vulnus to move towards the definition of a third party body (a Foundation) capable of guaranteeing independence and autonomy from "politics". The current state of the works is hinged on the search for a possible convergence between the various texts deposited with the aim of arriving at a proposal capable of garnering the broadest possible consensus. But, as is known, the background to this debate is all placed in this complicated finale of the political season where the next ones are already on the horizon electoral consultations at the beginning of 2023. Perhaps, as our sources tell us, there is little time left to hope for an appreciable result and it is very likely that the new Parliament will take care of this "table".
The conclusion of this overview of the four working tables cannot be exhausted without taking due account of what could happen if the adoption of the EU directive on competition proceeds where it is expected that the companies responsible for supplying electricity will no longer have to collect charges or fees not deriving from their specific activity. The date is set: by the fourth quarter of 2022, as a Commission spokesman recently stated. This means the return to direct payment of the fee, through the classic postal bulletin. We can see a massive return to fee evasion, estimated at tens of millions of Euros. The four tables all have one element in common: the "fee resource paw" and if this wobbles, the others can also be affected. If then to all this we add what is being implemented following the adoption of the DL 208 of last November which implemented the new indications on the TUSMAR (Consolidated Text of Radio and Television) where new advertising crowding limits have been set, certainly not in favor of Rai, the picture seems complete to make 2022 a year of particular interest for the future of the Public Service.
