Above
photos show, the timeline of Silvio
Berlusconi since 1989. Bottom left shows
Silvio with, Pres. Geo. W. Bush, Silvio
shaking hands with TVI publisher, Josie
Cory, after 1989 MIPCOM press Q&A
conference, Josie Cory with John
Billingham of BBC and Joe Bamberger of
UFA, Germany, in
Cannes.
Television
With No Borders / We Preserve The Moment
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Feature
Story -
Mr.
Berlusconi from TVI's Person of the Week in 1989,
to Italy's Prime Minister of Italy and friend of
America -
-----
in 1989, during the
MIPCOM television conference in Cannes, France,
Silvio Berlusconi was and still is one of is
Italy's richest men, whose reach is hard to escape,
especially now that he's Italy's Prime Minister.
During
TVI's feature interview by Frank IIezzi,
Berlusconi, RAI-TV, he described himself, a future
political leader to watch out for. "He was right
on", says TVI publisher Josie Cory. "During the '89
MIPCOM Cannes meeting, you could see his future in
the way he spoke to the press. He was getting ready
for his 2000 A.D. international world events
fame."
-----
As an example:
President George W. Bush participates in a
plenary meeting with leaders during the G8 Summit
on Sea Island, Ga., Wednesday, June 9, 2004.
Clockwise, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi, European Council
President Bertie Ahern, European Commission
President Romano Prodi, Canadian Prime Minister
Paul Maritn, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
French President Jacques Chirac.
-----
Not Bad Company is it? An
Italian can spend a Saturday shopping at his local
supermarket, relaxing in his home, reading a paper,
before flicking through a few TV channels to watch
AC Milan play football, and all these services may
have been provided by his prime minister.
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STORY PEOPLE SECTION
///
Center
Page / Biography
TIMELINE:
Silvio
Berlusconi was born in 1936, apparently
in comfortable circumstances. Friends and foes
have been quick to mythologise his career - he
supposedly charged entrance fees for puppet
shows at primary school, was a ghostwriter for
high school essays and of course sold vacuum
cleaners to pay for his law degree at the
University of Milan. His thesis was on The
Newspaper Advertising Contract. 1960 Corte
Costituzionale ruled that state broadcaster RAI
monopoly is
unconstitutional.
----Highlights
in his early years:
Silvio started honing
his business skills at a young age.
He used his charm to sell
everything from vacuum cleaners to university
essays during his youth, activities complemented
by stints as a nightclub singer, but this was
just the warm-up.
----His
business mind came into play at a young age - as
a student he supplemented his income by charging
fellow students for writing their exam papers.
Later he worked as a singer with his own band on
summer cruise
ships. 1960's
-1970's
-1980's
-1990's
-2000's -
----Highlights
in the 2004s: Prior
to 2004, which saw publication of Paul
Ginsborg's perceptive Silvio Berlusconi:
Television, Power & Patrimony (London:
Verso 2004) and David Lane's Berlusconi's
Shadow: Crime, Justice and the Pursuit of
Power (London: Allen Lane 2004), there was
no major English-language study of Berlusconi or
Fininvest.
----Marco
Travaglio's L'odore dei soldi (Rome:
Editori Riuniti 2001), reviewed
here,
endorses the Economist's claim that the
empire's smell is not very sweet. Other Italian
treatments include Paolo Labini's Berlusconi
e gli anticorpi: Diario di un cittadino
indignato (Bari: Laterza 2003), Giorio
Bocca's Piccolo Cesare (Milan:
Feltrinelli 2002), Giuseppe Fiori's Il
venditore: Storia di Silvio Berlusconi e della
fininvest (Milan: Garzanti 1996), Franco
Cordero's Le strane regole del Signor B
(Milan: Garzanti 2003) and Giovani Sartori's
Mala tempora (Bari: Laterza
2004).
----Giovanni
Bechelloni's 'The Journalist as Political
Client in Italy' in Newspapers &
Democracy (Cambridge: MIT Press 1980) edited
by Anthony Smith and Political Clientalism
& the Media: Southern Europe & Latin
America in Comparative Perspective
(PDF)
by Daniel Hallin & Stylianos
Papathanassopoulos offer a perspective. That is
consistent with Gianpietro's 'Media Moguls in
Italy' in Media Moguls (London: Routledge
1991) edited by Jeremy Tunstall and Ginsborg's
Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil
Society, State 1980-2000 (London: Allen Lane
2001).
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Companies
controlled by the family of
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
dominate
----Italian
commercial television (with a 45% audience share
and over 60% of total advertising sales), have a
major presence in advertising and publishing,
and have been moving into telecommunications,
despite recurrent allegations of of impropriety.
Ownership of Italy's mass media is even more
concentrated than that of Canada and
Australia.
----The
family has beneficial ownership of around 96% of
the Fininvest holding company. Fininvest has a
48.6% controlling stake (worth around US$6.0
billion) in Mediaset,
the terrestrial television group that competes
with state-owned RAI and operates three
networks: Canale 5, Italia 1 and
Retequattro.
Dominance of the airwaves is of particular
interest given low newspaper readership figures:
Pippa Norris' insightful A Virtuous Circle:
Political Communications in Post-Industrial
Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
2000) for example notes suggestions that 82% of
Italians depend only on television for news, the
highest percentage in the
EU.
----Fininvest
also has a controlling stake in Mondadori,
Italy's largest book and magazine publishing
group (with 30% and 38% of the domestic market
respectively). Mondadori's magazine arm
encompasses over 50
titles.
----Fininvest
controls Il Giornale, a leading national
newspaper that competes with L'Espresso's
La Republica and with La Stampa
and Corriere della Sera of the RCS group.
It has a 36% stake in financial-services group
Mediolanum. Other holdings include property,
multimedia, printing and telephone directories.
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ByLines:
Editors Note Italians,
like most Americans, are attracted to personal
success stories. It
was in 1971, when TVI first wrote about Silvio.
He had just launched a local cable-television -
Telemilano. "We saw the project grow and grow",
wrote TVI's co-founder, Al Preiss, 'until the
Berlusconi family firm controlled three
commercial TV channels". /
He
fooled them all by teaming with President Bush,
after 911.Related
Stories
/
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