The European Commission has given Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Italia the go-ahead to compete for a digital terrestrial television frequency in Italy, a move opposed by rival Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset. Mediaset along with state-owned RAI and small broadcasters have been opposed to Sky Italia taking part in Italy’s last sale of digital terrestrial television assets, saying the market is still not big enough to support further competition.
Sky Italia welcomed the ruling which Chief Executive Tom Mockridge said in a statement “confirmed the Italian TV market has undergone significant changes in the last few years.” The decision was quickly slammed by Berlusconi’s government as “severe and unjustified” while the media mogul’s Mediaset said it would appeal in court against the move.
The Commission said Sky Italia, News Corp’s satellite unit, could bid on condition that it uses the frequency for free-to-air television only and not for pay TV until 2015 - four years later than under a current deal. News Corp, owner of the Fox broadcast and cable networks, the Twentieth Century Fox movie studios and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and The Sun, agreed in 2003 not to move into the pay-TV market until the end of 2011.
Mediaset said it was “totally disconcerted” by the Commission’s decision. It said the conditions which had led to the restrictions being imposed remained valid. “This decision authorises a monopolist in satellite and pay television…to operate in the free-to-air market and gives the company free rein to acquire frequency assets that are already insufficient for existing operators,” it said.
Berlusconi’s government attacked the decision. “This change is severe and unjustified, taken abstractly and without minimum consideration of its explosive impact on the Italian market,” Paolo Romani, a deputy minister who holds the communications portfolio, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the Commission dismissed media reports suggesting the Italian prime minister had written a letter at the last minute to lobby against Sky Italia’s participation. “I absolutely find no evidence of this,” she said.
(Source: Reuters)
