With the approval by the Rai Board of Directors of the “Organizational Model for Genres”, which took place last week, the Public Service could have officially entered a new era that is very complex, delicate and with far from certain prospects. The conditional is a must because the new address launched from Viale Mazzini is none other than a partial revision of the Industrial Plan voted in April 2019 by the previous Board, chaired by Marcello Foa and by the CEO Fabrizio Salini, at the conclusion of a long debate that began when they took office at the top of the Company at the end of July 2018 and passed through the approval of the Commission Supervisory Parliamentary and the Ministry of Economic Development.
To fully understand the scope of this update of the Plan, it is useful to remember how the Rai Board of Directors came to vote for this passage, in what context it is placed and what prospects it offers a glimpse. Foa and Salini they find the project on their desks as soon as they take office and, of course, before approving it they have to ask for a "break" of knowledge and deepening. Months pass before reaching the attention of Parliament and the Government for the "competence assessments" and we arrive at the Guidelines formulated by Rai supervisory authorities in November 2019 which "... commits ... the RAI Board of Directors to: - with reference to the Unified Newsroom as well as the creation of a single direction of in-depth information to which all the talks belong, implement all appropriate and adequate measures so that the centralization of editorial functions does not jeopardize pluralism, starting from the moment of selection of the news up to that of the presentation of the same; – in relation to the new horizontal directions, holders of budgets, and the consequent decision-making centralization on content, to implement every measure aimed at preventing a flattening of the television offer according to a single sensitivity; – adopt all appropriate and adequate measures aimed at preventing the introduction of new managements, in addition to and not replacing the existing ones, from causing an overlap between the various functions and an increase in costs".
A few months later, dramatically, the pandemic arrives, and the Piano is “frozen”. Pay attention to the political context of reference: the plan was born in the past Conte government 1 to then be approved in the next phase, Conte 2 Government, to finally be resumed in this political phase (Draghi Government).
The document, of which we have written several times on FIRSTonline contains (because formally it is still valid) the guidelines which should inspire the Company's development path: the much desired Media Company. It should also be noted that these same guidelines are a direct expression of what is foreseen in the Service Contract which is still in force and is being renewed for 2023.
So the three elements Contract, Plan and Organizational Model, are strongly linked to each other and precisely in this regard, exactly on 14 October last year, the company structures were informed that a work table will be set up which will include the main departments involved.
We come to the present day, with the appointment of the new Board of Directors, chaired by Marinella Soldi and Carlo Fuortes as managing director, which took place last July. Only a few days after their inauguration, on August 4, the CEO is summoned to the Supervisory Department where he announces two courses of action: the first is all aimed at restoring the balance sheet and the second at revising the corporate organization model which, in fact, largely incorporates that of its predecessor Salini. A few weeks go by and Fuortes returns to Supervision on 12 October for a very important hearing where the CEO very clearly explained the state of serious suffering in which the accounts are pouring of Rai, above all if referring to the commitments it is called upon to honour.
Also in this case, these are the same painful remarks already expressed by Salini a few months earlier and well known to all the parliamentarians when he declared that "It is for this reason that it is now undeferrable that the conditions are defined to establish whether the perimeter of the Public Service can remain unchanged, with maintenance of the commitments deriving from the Service Contract as defined in an economic and financial context that is no longer current, or if instead deliver Rai to a re-perimeteration overall (also in employment terms, with the inevitable social repercussions), with a probable decline in the central role played by the public radio and television service concessionaire in supporting the reference sector as well as the inevitable impacts on the entire Italian cultural and audiovisual industry ”.
Salini stated clearly in a letter to the Chairman of the Supervisory Authority, Alberto Barachini, dated 20 October 2020: "In the context briefly outlined above, the inertial evolution of the results for the four-year period 2020-2023 highlights an economic-financial situation tend to be unsustainable".
Therefore, the fundamental premise, i.e. the main emergency that Rai is facing is of an economic/financial nature: what is it capable of producing in relation to the resources at its disposal and how/where can the investments necessary for its development and face increasingly intense competition. But the resource theme is only complementary and contextual to two more "emergencies" affecting the Public Service: the first is of a regulatory nature and the second of a technological nature.
On the regulatory level, the approval of the well-known is in the pipeline government act 288 (Community provisions relating to the adaptation and coordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions concerning the supply of audiovisual media services). In recent days, both the Public Works commission of the Senate and the Culture commission of the Chamber approved the mandatory but non-binding opinions destined for the Government for the approval of the provision. It is a subject that, in fact, redefines the lines of the previous TUSMAR (Consolidated Text on Radio and Television) resulting from the Gasparri Law of 2004 which indicated the perimeter of the internal resources of the SIC (Integrated Communications System) and therefore involves the entire supply chain of the national audiovisual market (see the recent declarations of Giancarlo Leone, president of the APA on the funds destined for national productions and the position expressed by Netflix Italia with the declarations of Eleonora Andreatta). In this new passage, at least one point is of great importance on Rai's future accounts, wherever they would like to be review advertising crowding quotas which, in fact, would penalize the Company compared to the competition. We will now see if and how much the Government will be able or willing to implement the recommendations expressed by the parliamentarians.
Furthermore, still with regard to the regulatory "turbulence", it is necessary to remember that various proposals have been presented for governance reform Rai from almost all the parties and who are now trying, with difficulty, to bring back to a single track. A very difficult undertaking with the real risk of getting bogged down in times perhaps longer than those of the current legislature. The goal is to review Law 220 of 2015 with which the center of gravity of control over the Company has shifted from Parliament to the Government.
The legislative issues are inevitably connected and intertwined with the economic ones where the same question always arises: how resources are used that Rai has, whether they derive from the license fee or from advertising? This is exactly the question that the supervisory commissioners asked Fuortes: "What kind of public service do you intend to propose?". This is the heart of the problem: the current Rai is not and cannot be what it was in another geological era, when there was no internet and nobody imagined the spreading OTTs with the various Netflix & Co. As we have mentioned, first Salini and then Fuortes said clearly that with current resources and the uncertain prospects that can be glimpsed, it will be very difficult to sustain the perimeter of commitments that the company is asked to do.
What to do then? In recent days, the Ad Rai has clearly specified the nature of these resources: “In reduction. Unstable and uncertain. Unpredictable and impacted by exogenous variables” and presented four “modest proposals”:
- “Full recognition of fee resources, eliminating the current withholding of 110 million euros
- Remodulation of the limit for each bracket to 8% in 2022 and when fully operational
- Cancellation of the concession fee on the ordinary rent
- Expansion of the scope of application of the fee to multimedia devices (with appropriate measures)”.
As can be seen, these are by no means harmless and painless proposals when referring to the impacts that areentire audiovisual market (see the license fee that should be paid on devices capable of receiving Rai programmes, as well as the perceived threat of subtracting funds intended for publishing which has raised so much controversy). Furthermore, always with regard to the license fee, we must remember the never-ending intimidation on its reduction, abolition or return to general taxation, as has often been heard from various political parties (from the PD to the League).
Finally, still speaking of the fee, it weighs a warning from Brussels, which for now seems dormant but not completely defused: the return to its payment with the old method of postal payment slips, a time in which payment evasion was of significant dimensions. This theme emerged in May of last year when, by carefully reading the indications on the Community regulations on competition, it came out that the electricity supply companies should no longer collect charges not deriving directly from their business (and the Rai license fee would fall within these).
Finally, Rai is in the midst of an epochal transformation that concerns the technological front. As known, the phase of discontinuing MPEG-20 coding began on 2 October in view of the transition to DVB-T2 scheduled for next year. It is a question of entering the new world of the diffusion of audiovisual signals under the sign of the frontal opposition between broadcast and broadband, between linear and non-linear vision. Not a few are those who see itor the end of digital terrestrial by the end of the decade in favor of a production, editorial and technological model, mainly based on diffusion through the network. With what resources is Rai able to support this effort, both from an economic and cultural point of view? Fuortes himself recalled that the "digital natives in Rai" are few and the average age of the employees is very high.
Therefore there remains a strong perplexity on the fact that this "organizational model", in these specific market contingencies, can constitute and allow that step forward capable of putting Rai on the track of its development. Salini was right and the current CEO has reiterated it well: in this context the company has few prospects and, as it goes, it will be able to achieve some savings and perhaps plug some budget holes but it is much more than imagining how to compete with its formidable competitors.
Finally, the "reform by genres" lifts the veil on a very delicate raw nerve that does not only concern the Rai company: the information. As we mentioned earlier, both the Business Plan still in force, as well as the Service Contract, explicitly provide for having to face the "remodeling of newspapers" and the adoption of an editorial project on this subject which envisages the creation of a NewsRoom which has been talked about for some time without ever coming to terms with it.
Therefore, the one that has just begun appears as a truncated reform of an editorial component of phenomenal importance. We are on the eve of important institutional deadlines which foresee the election of the new President of the Republic and the prospect of a parliamentary vote which may not even be very far away and it seems difficult to imagine that "politics" lets an instrument of influence slip under its nose of such importance. The document approved in recent days limited itself to launching an "in-depth" direction without further specifying its editorial tasks and objectives. They are expected for next week the related names, with the inevitable controversies, which have already begun, which will arise as soon as the names are announced.
It is often said that Rai is the mirror of the country and/or vice versa. Who knows, maybe it's true.
