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REVENUES
In line with longstanding trends
throughout Europe, in recent years the
Italian television market has drawn in
increasing revenues from fee-based
services alongside public funding and
advertising revenues.
In this development, the licence fee,
which is higher than the previous year
(+1.4%), ends to gradually reduce its
weight on the system’s total resources.
Already, the inflows generated by the
various forms of pay TV have exceeded
funding from the licence fee.
Historically, the parameter used to adapt
public funding has been the
programmed inflation rate, and not the
actual rate of inflation, meaning that not
only does it not allow the company to
recover the entire effect of inflation
within the Italian economy, it also fails
to consider the significant pressure on
production created by the level of
competition of communication within
the marketplace that has been growing
for several years now. In a context of
such competitiveness, the Italian licence
fee remains the lowest in Western
Europe.
It should also be noted that in Italy,
reliable estimates point to a significantly
high rate of evasion with reference to
both the special licence fee and the
ordinary fee, the latter estimated at
between 25 and 30% and far and away
the highest in Europe, where the
average rate of evasion is 10%.
The Italian television system will,
however, continue to be funded
primarily through advertising revenues,
although we are seeing progressive
growth in revenues from pay TV on one
hand and a shift towards investments in
other emerging media on the other.
The gradual decline or suffering of
revenues from television advertising in
recent years is common to the main
public service broadcasters throughout
Europe, although audience figures
continue to remain quite stable.