6 TV Ratings In Italy Now Robust On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Auditel, the Italian TV audience measuring system, has evolved with the creation of a 30-member board of directors (from the original 22) representing every aspect of the Italian media landscape. The board is equally divided between broadcasters (with 15 seats)andmarketrepresentatives, with UPA, the Italian Advertising Association, having the largest number of members (six). Public broadcaster RAI has six directors, while private TV network Mediaset has four. Satellite TV operator Sky has two representatives on the Auditel board. Both broadcaster La7 and cable/satellite channel Discovery Italia have one director each. In case of a stalemate, the chairman now has two votes, instead of the usual one. Auditel ownership is divided among RAI (33 percent), Mediaset (26.7 percent), UPA (20 percent) and the rest split among five other media representatives and La7 (3.3 percent). Currently, Auditel monitors viewership among 196 national TV networks and 160 local TV stations. But of these, only 44 channels reach over an average audience of 20,000 viewers. However, TV viewership has increased from 233 minutes per day in 2004 to 258 minutes in 2014. By July of next year, Auditel will have increased its sampling from the current 5,600 TVHH to 15,600 inorder tobettermeasure both live transmission and timeshifted viewing up to seven days from the original transmission. The technical aspect of TV viewership monitoring has been outsourced to the American AGB Nielsen. Broadcasters are bracing for the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), to be held November 2-27, 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland. At stake is the future of FTA after the year 2030 — or even before. The issues to be addressed at WRC-15 pertain to UHF TV broadcast frequencies being entranced by mobile telecommunications systems (MTs). The WRC agenda calls for allocating additional frequencies to MTs with broadcasters opposed to MT allocation in the 470MHz-694MHz band, not wanting to disrupt TV broadcasting. Both FTA broadcasters and MTs want spectrum below the 1GHz band, but it is clear that only spectrum below the 1GHz is suitable for terrestrial TV. Another alarming development for FTA is the recent comment fromtheU.K. communications regulatory agency, which stated that FTA broadcast would continue to be viable only until 2030. Similarly, in Germany, FTA will not migrate to improved digital TV standard DVB-T2, since it is believed that the current digital terrestrial television standard will be FTA Evolving From “Must-Carry” to “Must-Have” Status sufficient until the FTA platform is replaced by broadband. Under these ominous omens, FTA stations fear the loss of their primary distribution platform and are afraid that they have to negotiate access to broadband networks. Fortunately, Telcos and other broadband providers are not too apt at producing quality content,whileFTAoperatorsexcel at it; therefore, the FTA plan is to grow from an immaterial “mustcarry” status to an advantageous “must-have” rank. June/July 2015 WORKS DESCRIPTIVE VIDEO WORKS www.descriptivevideoworks.com 1 866 818 3897 AN INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL MEDIA COMPANY We are proud to have described over 11,000 shows and 800 films Opening the entertainment experience to the blind and partially sighted through Audio Description (Continued from Page 4) World
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