In Italy, Newspaper Readership Remains Low Compared to Most of EU Countries

ITALIAN MEDIA

In Italy, newspaper readership remains low compared to most of EU countries.

Publishing trusts own the most important newspapers.

The Italian print newspaper market can be divided into four main segments: paid-for national dailies, paid-for local and regional dailies, free dailies distributed in some cities, magazines.

Among the most important national paid-for newspapers: L’Avvenire, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Giornale, Libero, Il Messaggero, La Repubblica, Il Sole 24 ore, La Stampa and L’Unità.

Freesheets are a rather recent development within the Italian press market in Milan, Rome and some other cities. Readers can find Metro, for example, launched in 2000 in Italy.

Nevertheless, the free press is undergoing a difficult stage in Italy due to a crowded market and the overall scarcity of advertising revenues.

The periodical publications market includes 199 papers, of which 136 are monthly magazines and 63 are weekly magazines.

Italy does not have tabloid daily newspapers. The most popular dailies are the sport papers like La Gazzetta dello Sport, sold on Mondays.

Radio has shown no signs of stagnation.

Two public stations lead Italian radio: the division of RAI, Radio Uno (news, public affairs, culture) and Radio Due (news, culture, music, entertainment).

RAI also owns Radio Tre , a talk radio station with a good selection of classical music and information about theatre, movies, books, etc.

The larger share of the audience belongs to private networks, as RTL and Radio Deejay.

Italians can choose from eight free national TV channels: Rai Uno, Rai Due, Rai Tre (owned by the public broadcasting company RAI), Rete 4, Canale 5, Italia 1 (which belong to the private network Mediaset), La 7 and MTV Italia.

Additionally, there are about 800 local TV channels and both RAI and Mediaset offer paid-for as well as free channels on Digital Terrestrial Television.

RAI started broadcasting in 1954 and quickly became popular. Commercial television, on the other hand, appeared in 1976, and the TV system became a ”duopoly” with RAI and Mediaset.

Mediaset channels own their popularity to TV series and films imported from the US to Japanese cartoons and to telenovelas imported from South America, while RAI had to construct a national brand image. However, today RAI offerings are similar to Mediaset programming with a large number of reality shows, quiz shows both foreign and Italian, TV series and TV movies, talk shows.

In 2003 Sky Italia appeared, supported by a strong position in the rich market of football matches.