Pier Silvio Berlusconi - Variety500 - Top 500 Entertainment Business Leaders

Posted by Aldo Pusey on Thursday, April 18, 2024

Berlusconi, who once worked in marketing at Mediaset’s Publitalia advertising unit, moved to broadcasting to program its youth-oriented Italia 1 channel and steer programming for all three of its national channels starting in 1996. The result: Mediaset is now a multi-channel, multi-platform broadcaster with free-to-air, pay-TV operations and both linear and non-linear content, thanks largely to Berlusconi’s 2005 launch of pay-as-you-go Mediaset Premium. In 2019, Premium was fully integrated into rival Sky Italia’s offering through a content-sharing deal when the company set up the pan-European Media­ForEurope to operate in Italy, Spain and Germany. Mediaset has been embroiled in a multibillion-euro dispute with Vivendi ever since a 2016 collapsed pay-TV deal, but with Berlusconi and Vivendi CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine in active talks, a compromise could come soon.

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