Parece ser que Rupert Murdoch se anota un tanto, en la batalla que está librando con Silvio Berlusconi. Los dos, grandes magnates de los medios de comunicación, de tintes bastante conservadores, son muy conocidos por controlar grandes cadenas de medios de comunicación y además ser personajes muy conocidos a nivel mundial.
Os dejo aquí la noticia para que la leais a ver que os parece. Está en inglés, y como nadie me va a pagar por traducirla, pues si tenéis algún problema para leerla, ya sabéis, a estudiar más inglés.
Un saludo,
Carlos Oleaga.
ROME, Nov. 26 — For those keeping score in the duel between the one-time friends and now competing media barons Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi: Mr. Murdoch is slightly ahead on points, but Mr. Berlusconi might still pack a punch.
For years, the two have been locked in a turf battle over the Italian media market. Mr. Berlusconi, through his company Fininvest, remains Italy’s unrivalled media boss with holdings that include the three largest private television stations, newspapers, a publishing house and a film production company.
But a proposed new media law here could weaken his long-held lock on Italian television, and in the process help Mr. Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of the News Corporation, which owns Sky Italia, Italy’s sole satellite provider.
[Mr. Berlusconi, 70, was being tested for a heart problem in a hospital intensive-care unit on Sunday after collapsing while delivering a speech in Montecatini in Tuscany. “There is no emergency, no alarm,” a spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, told Reuters, adding that Mr. Berlusconi was in intensive care at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital because his cardiologist heads the unit.]
Mr. Berlusconi has long held the upper hand due in large part to the fact that he served as Italy’s prime minister. But six months ago, he was defeated by Romano Prodi who has vowed to end Mr. Berlusconi’s hegemony over the media. Mr. Murdoch has been publicly courting Mr. Prodi ever since.
Last month, the government floated a new conflict of interest law (explicitly targeting Mr. Berlusconi) and the new media law, which would put a 45 percent ceiling on advertising for any one broadcaster. The media law would also force the state-run broadcaster, RAI, and Mediaset, the media division of Fininvest, to transfer one of their analog channels to digital within fifteen months, freeing up two channels for new investors.
A recent analysis by IT Media predicted that Sky Italia was positioned to benefit most by the new law. The report said Sky could earn an additional 28 million euros ($37 million) a year from its implementation. Mediaset, meanwhile, could lose up to 103 million euros ($135 million) a year in earnings, the report said.
“More than it being an intervention in favor of Murdoch and News Corp., what is happening is a freeing up of the Berlusconi monopoly,” said Francesco Siliato, a media analyst who is a member of a commission consulting with Italy’s minister of communications, Paolo Gentiloni. “It is an attempt by this government, with what little they can do with the margins they have in Parliament, to seriously open up the television marketplace.”
In the past, Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Murdoch dined together and would collaborate on blockbuster deals. Now they take jabs at each other through the press.
“So what comes next — a new alliance between Murdoch and Prodi?” Mr. Berlusconi was quoted as saying in the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “And to think that Murdoch was once a conservative.”
In last spring’s elections, Sky Italia played a subtle yet effective role by offering itself as a third-party news alternative to Italy’s traditional stations, which are notoriously beholden to Italy’s various political forces. And Mr. Prodi recently gave Sky an exclusive half-hour interview, later explaining that Sky was the only outlet that would give him the time and balance he needed.
Sky Italia declined to comment, but in a statement said it supported the new media law and any initiative that opened up the television marketplace. And in recent earning reports, Mr. Murdoch has singled out Sky Italia for special praise, noting that it has emerged as one of the News Corporation’s most profitable divisions.
In its most recent quarterly earnings report, the company said that its global satellite TV revenues rose to $622 million from $498 million. In Italy, it had added 434,000 net subscribers to end the quarter with 3.83 million. With Sky Italia closing in on 4 million subscribers, there is speculation among analysts that a public offering is in the works, perhaps as early as next year.
Under the Berlusconi administration, Italy posed a unique challenge to Mr. Murdoch. It took over a year of protests by Sky Italia before the Italian government headed by Mr. Berlusconi finally ended its subsidies of the decoders needed to access the digital terrestrial channels, an emerging competitive platform to satellite (Mediaset has by far the most digital offerings and thus benefits most from decoder sales).
Mediaset was also able to end Sky Italia’s exclusive broadcast rights to Italian series-A soccer matches. Mediaset acquired the digital terrestrial rights for a number of top teams (including Mr. Berlusconi’s team, AC Milan) at what seemed like a suspiciously discounted rate.
But with Mr. Prodi in office, the situation has changed. In July, the government announced a new plan for the selling of soccer television rights which is less favorable to Mediaset. In addition to dealing with the new laws, Mr. Berlusconi himself is entering the second week of a trial in which he and David Mills, an English lawyer and the estranged husband of Britain’s culture minister, are facing charges of false accounting, embezzlement and tax fraud in the purchase of television rights for American movies by Mediaset. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.
Maurizio Gasparri, minister of communications under the Berlusconi administration, was the architect of previous legislation that was criticized as overly friendly to Mr. Berlusconi and Mediaset. In an interview, Mr. Gasparri called the recent moves by Mr. Prodi’s government “excessive” and “vindictive.”
“We need to open the markets, but we shouldn’t have to expropriate those who are already there,” Mr. Gasparri said.
There are concerns that Mr. Prodi may lack the mandate and will to impose any reforms because he holds such a slim majority in Parliament and faces conflicting interests within his coalition. So far, attempts by Mr. Prodi’s administration to liberalize other markets like taxis, pharmacies and banking have met stiff resistance and a series of crippling strikes.
Mr. Murdoch’s lot may have improved under the new government, but the untangling of Italy’s media marketplace is anything but settled.
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