Alberto Mingardi: When the Italians chose media freedom
'Liberty' hasn't been very popular in recent elections — economic freedom in particular.
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There are many reasons for that, but the main one seems to be that concepts such as freedom, the market, and competition are abstract to most people. 'Market' was a metaphor, connecting the act of trading with a village's fair. Now, the word evokes big financial entities, government bonds and a world of transactions impossibly detached from our daily lives.
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Still, there are heartening counter-examples on this account. Thirty years ago, a referendum in Italy — not a country particularly known for its economic libertarianism — showed that freedom of choice may have a go with voters, if they understand it as something concrete.
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In 1994, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi surprisingly won the national election and was appointed prime minister. He was then new to politics, though he would embark on a long and controversial career. Yet, only after a few months, his coalition collapsed, and his political enemies tried to cripple his media empire with three referenda that appeared a sure-fire way to win the vote.
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They failed. Berlusconi's television networks were not big on information or politics. They thrived on entertainment, free from any attempt to lecture the public. They were a little revolution, in a country that for years was used to government television only.
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Television in Italy was conceived as a monopoly and, as such, debuted in 1954.
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Only in the 1970s did a Constitutional Court's ruling open the way to some limited competition to Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI), the government-owned broadcasting company which featured news and entertainment. At that time, dozens of small cable networks running on shoestring budgets emerged, running quiz shows and local sports news programs, but then the government introduced such complex cable TV regulations that these networks that wanted to survive transitioned to radio.
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The 1970s were the heyday of the Italian interventionism. The entrepreneurial state ran at full speed, owning and purchasing businesses, trade unions were an informal part of the government, and regulations stifled private ventures. The arrival of independent media broadcasters was seen as nothing less than a barbarian invasion by many at the time.
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At 40 years old, real estate developer Silvio Berlusconi bought his first TV network in 1976, a small cable TV system that operated from a satellite city he built near Milan. He did not think that private competition should be happy with whatever space the government TV left it. Berlusconi wanted to compete with government TV. He aimed big. The government had three networks; he wanted as many. He bought movie rights and courted famous TV stars.
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