| MUMBAI:
As Italian Prime Minister's Mediaset and Rupert Murdoch's wholly-owned subsidiary
Sky Italia are at loggerheads. Sky Italia has filed a lawsuit against two units
of Silvio Berlusconi's terrestrial network for violating antitrust rules on advertising. Filed
in Milan, the action accuses RTI and Publitalia, the television and advertising
arms of Mediaset, of "refusing to allow Sky Italia to purchase advertising
on leading Italian commercial networks Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4". As
per a statement issued by News Corp in London, Murdoch's group would claim that
RTI and Publitalia were guilty of unfair competition under Italian law and had
violated the European Union's anti-trust rules. In
2006, Italian antitrust authorities considered Mediaset the dominant provider
of TV advertising and therefore induced it to sell advertising to other broadcasters.
Since then, Sky Italia bought advertising from Mediaset. In
2008, Sky Italia had broken the domestic duopoly of privately-owned Mediaset and
state-controlled RAI and exceeded Mediaset in its overall revenue. In
turn, to counterbalance, Mediaset boosted its digital terrestrial pay-TV offering
and targeted it at the lower end of the market with mix of series, movies and
soccer matches. Meanwhile,
challenging both the broadcasters Sky Italia hired celebrities from both state-owned
RAI and Mediaset, thereby posing a growing threat to Silvio Berlusconi's dominance
in the television market who owns three of the seven main terrestrial channels
in Italy. The rest three belong to RAI that is accountable to Berlusconi's rightwing
government. | 
