| The new law will see prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's
firm Mediaset taking over 90 percent of Italy's television broadcasts,
and gives him freedom to acquire more newspapers and radio stations.
The long-in-the-works rules raise the cap on broadcast advertising
and ease limits on how many stations each TV player can own. Besides
putting a 20% cap on the total share of the media market revenue
that a single company can hold -- instead of a 30% cap placed solely
on TV revenue -- the new law will allow cross-ownership of webs
and newspapers in 2010 and optimistically sees Italy shifting to
terrestrial digital TV by 2006, say media reports.
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