Yesterday, Mediaset shares lost another 4.31%. Since the beginning of the year they have dropped by a total of 32.53%. The company’s operating results are going downhill: 644.3 million Euro during the first half of 2008, down from 699.9 million in 2007. Mediaset makes its livelihood from advertising. Thanks to the Italian Government’s concession to broadcast on no less than three channels, Berlusconi is able to share the television advertising cake with RAI, through Publitalia, in what is essentially a monopoly. Everyone wishing to advertise on television must go via Publitalia. Craxi’s government concession, renewed by subsequent centre-left governments, has made Berlusconi a wealthy man. This is the great entrepreneur’s only secret to success. But is Mediaset’s advertising empire busy tottering? It has become necessary to divert the attention away from the account books and to find a suitable scapegoat, and who better than the Web? The 500 million Euro claim against Google for having permitted the viewing of clips drawn from Mediaset, on YouTube, is nothing more than a desperate measure adopted by someone who feels that he is about to be overwhelmed by change.
Within the next few years, perhaps the next three to five years, online advertising expenditure will overtake that spent on the print media and on television. In many countries, the time spent viewing the content of the Web now exceeds the amount of time that people spend in front of the television. The Internet is free and should remain so. I do not agree, neither with the intimidation tactics used by Mediaset, which, we mustn’t forget, is backed by Berlusconi and, therefore, by the Italian Government (which would be somewhat like CNN being able to count on Bush’s support in a court case because he owned the broadcaster), nor that there is any need, as claimed by Veltroni, to set some new rules (what rules?) or new laws for a new system of sharing (what kind?). All I want to say to anyone who surfs on the net: don’t post any clips drawn from Mediaset and, if you have done so already, then delete the postings. Mediaset should stay where it is; the Internet is no place for it.