It has been published in recent days an important document on the topic Rai by 'sBusiness Observatory established at the Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering of theLa Sapienza University, coordinated by Professor Riccardo Gallo, former Director General of the Ministry of Budget and Vice President of IRI. It is a job that falls precisely in a very complex and delicate moment that affects the radio and television public service and its near future.
The next Rai service contract
First of all, political crisis permitting, the debate/comparison on the guidelines of the next Service Agreement, which will go into effect starting next year and which will define the path that Rai will necessarily have to pursue in application of the provisions of the Concession Agreement with the State which will expire in 2027. The same Service Agreement, currently in force also provides that the Company must adopt a Three-year industrial plan (together with an editorial one) with which the operational management and the perimeter of the editorial offer defined in turn by the Service Contract itself will have to be articulated in detail. So, as we have dealt with previously on FIRSTonline, the three levels of intervention on Rai (Service Contract Concession and Business Plan) are deeply intertwined to converge in the same direction: to provide the Company with a sufficiently broad and detailed regulatory reference framework.
The Act of Address
The report appropriately recalls that the Presidency of the Council announced on 18 May the address deed for the definition of guidelines on the content of the Service contract 2023which will now have to converge with those that AgCom has already drawn up last March and which are expected to be definitively approved by the end of the month to then form the "work outline" on which Rai and MISE will write a draft which will subsequently have to be stamped under Rai supervision and arrive at the final document, which will finally be approved by the Rai board of directors and the MISE. Therefore, it is still a long and complicated path, if only because of that passage in the Rai Supervisory Commission where the issue was often at the center of the attention of parliamentarians.
Goodbye to the fee in the bill
the document of theBusiness Observatory is of great value and accuracy and is richly accompanied by a careful analysis of the economic management of the Company which has led it to a worrying state of crisis which affects the current accounts but even more the finding of the resources necessary for future investments . The problem is always the same: it is difficult to imagine a development path if there are no certainties about resources, as Rai CEO Carlo Fuortes has repeatedly underlined. The report then recalls that European competition law will require that the Rai license fee it can no longer be collected through the electricity bill as is the case now, but in a new and different way which has not yet been defined by the Government and which at the moment no one is able to anticipate (a connection with the car tax or with the 'use/ownership of a home). The "French" model should also be mentioned, which provides for the abolition of the license fee.
More debts or higher rent?
To deal with the economic uncertainties and technological challenges regarding the future of Rai, the report in the introduction advances two hypotheses as suggestive as they are demanding: the first consists in the possibility of “borrow more”, as Prof. Gallo wrote, while the second seems to be much more complex: “The easiest solution is for the government to decree by the end of 2022 a sharp increase in the rent”. It is worth dwelling on this aspect due to its social and political relevance.
The Rai fee has often been defined as "the tax most hated by Italians”, so much so that before his method of collecting bills, the level of evasion had reached worrying levels, estimated at around 30%. Now, precisely as revealed by the same report on the profound changes that have taken place in the audiovisual market, on the new ways of using digital products, it seems very difficult to suppose that Italians can willingly accept such a possibility. The same parties that make up the majority of the government, at different times and through the mouths of authoritative political exponents, have even spoken out either for its abolition or for its revision. While the age-old still remains unsolved issue of the extra revenue from the fee withheld by the State for other uses than when the Law provides for the allocation of the Rai license fee. It is therefore a matter of particular institutional delicacy, which falls just before the opening of the next electoral campaign, where it is presumable that no one will be willing to propose to their constituents an increase in the much-hated tax.
Hence the intertwining of the Service Contract and the Industrial Plan highlights all its complexity where the few choices on which to operate are revealed which, roughly speaking, can be summarized as follows: with the same resources, reduce the scope of commitments or increase resources for support commitments that are expected to be fulfilled. In this second hypothesis, it is a question of tackling two very challenging perimeters: new products for new platforms where the investments to be found are very significant.
The remaining stake in Rai Way
The report then devotes a chapter to the "vexed question" on sale of the residual share of Rai Way still in the hands of the majority shareholder Rai. In this regard, the minister Giancarlo Giorgetti (Mise) was very clear: first he declared last March that "the problem, however, is that if Rai drops from 64% to 30% and nothing changes, and does so only to bring home some money, pay off debts and keep making more, then this must not happen”; then, recently in Supervision, he added that "to maintain public control over the structure, and to channel resources into Rai, formulas have already been experimented throughout history with the intervention of subjects who in any case have public control even though they are not public bodies, such as CdP". The game is completely open but the results do not seem at all obvious, given the complexity of the current political crisis. The contribution of the Business Observatory remains as an analysis and reflection document of great interest which must be duly taken into account.
