It was reasonable to imagine that the television market in Italy was destined for profound changes as early as this year. But no one could predict how fast and radical they could be. The agreement reached last Friday between Mediaset and Sky for the exchange of valuable content, football and cinema, in fact marks a milestone on the national scene and redefines new balances where many toast and others worry.
At Rai, when the news of the big deal between the two main competitors of the public radio and television service arrived, thoughts were not the happiest. We asked some executives for their opinion: with the guarantee of anonymity, all the discontent that has been brewing for some time comes out. "We are out of the big games" or "we don't have a top management capable of thinking and acting in corporate terms", "we are prisoners of inert politics" and, finally, "it is the sign of an epochal clash between old and new television" .
These four statements encompass the entire perimeter of the crisis, of the difficulties, which Rai is going through on the eve of the expiry of its Board of Directors (we wrote about it in the previous article) according to the provisions of the 2015 Law. It is useful to recall this new arrangement when Roberto Fico, at that time President of the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission, declared "the worst law that could be devised for the public service" and by Maurizio Gasparri (his previous reorganization law of 2004) "A little law that will be torn up by the Court for its manifest illegality". The relationship with politics that has always marked the events of Viale Mazzini today promises to be even more complicated than usual in consideration of the well-known difficulties of the parties in the coming months.
Therefore, Rai out of the big games. We have written several times in this newspaper on the age-old question of the "pole of the towers" and underlined how this game means entering into the merits of the most significant technological transformations of the coming years. Despite vague and generic declarations, no step has been taken and the only operation that somehow, albeit timidly, approached this process, the Persidera deal with F2I and Rai Way, was miserably shipwrecked. Again, in the TV operators' big deals, the most valuable and attractive products for the young market, the public with greater spending power, i.e. sport (football), cinema and series, are always at the centre. Instead Rai is consolidated on the strongholds of fiction, information and entertainment. The board member Carlo Freccero, in an interview with La Repubblica shortly after the Mediaset Sky agreement, tried to find a lifesaver in the role, in the public service identity that belongs and is the responsibility of Rai. An important consideration which, however, refers to the heart of a still unresolved problem: what should be the project, the industrial policy, the vision of the public radio and television company for the next few years? Its core business, the hard core of its subscribers, viewers, are about to change at the speed of light. The concept of "service" is clear, that of "public" is less so, especially if we consider its profound mutation that has taken place - and is still ongoing - in its social and cultural composition as well as personal data.
As regards the summit, it is known that in the last two years there have been two general managers, Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, and now Mario Orfeo unable to operate in depth in the Company's industrial policy choices. The latter received the renewal of the service contract which could also provide ideas for innovation: the tables are at work for the proposition of a new industrial plan, for the news, for a language channel and for the institutional one.
On the other hand, the last statement we have reported, referring to the clash between old and new television models, deserves a more in-depth reflection. Briefly, it can be summarized in signal diffusion in a linear (frequencies, antennas, etc.) and non-linear (smart TV, network connection) way. In this field, the going is getting really tough, and when that happens, the tough get going.
Tim's CEO, Amos Genish, in the interview given to La Stampa on Wednesday, raised two major problems. The first refers to the possible excess of concentration between the various market players and then reiterated his interest in including a part of football in the Tim Vision package. As for concentration, it will be the Authority set up to verify the existence of the findings while on the football theme it is linked to a relative novelty on the front of the mediation rights owned by the Spanish company Mediapro. The latter was displaced by the joint Mediaset Sky move on the sale of football rights for the next three years as one of the potential buyers formally failed (although Mediaset yesterday reiterated that it could still be interested). Even for Rai, paradoxically, this new situation could open some interesting openings. For example, one of our interlocutor suggests, it would be useful to return to the field with an offer on RaiUno of a Serie A match on Sunday afternoon, at 18 pm, in a slot where the Public Service suffers from ruthless competition from Canale 5.
To remain in the sporting metaphor, the other competitors are in the field with great deployment of energy both in terms of technologies and contents. Returning to Sky, it is known that a deal is certainly of interest for the diffusion of its Q decoder on Open Fiber broadband which would make it possible to view the entire offer in ultra broadband. On the other hand Mediaset just yesterday launched its new channel 20 on digital terrestrial and promises to enrich it with products of sure interest. Finally, Netflix runs at full speed to conquer the national market (according to what is reported in a recent study by EY which drafted the report "Market Intelligence - OTT Video Services" there are over 800 subscribers) in good company with Amazon which has launch pad its Prime Video service.
For Rai, competition is increasingly fierce, while its resources are shrinking, in the face of progressively growing commitments (since 2010, revenue from advertising has decreased by around 500 million and in parallel the license fee has also decreased). What could be his future? The American PBS model? A residual television, for an adult audience over 50? The ball, for now, passes to politics.
