1m Italians cancel pay-TV in 2012
March 12, 2013
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Italy’s pay-TV channels lost the largest number of subscribers in Europe in 2012, with one million Italians giving up on their subscriptions.
An annual report of the European audiovisual sector of the Council of Europe for 39 countries shows that pay-TV subscriptions also dropped for the first time in Europe as a whole – by 13 per cent.
According to the data, however, Italy is the country with the greatest number of national TV channels, both pay-TV and free-to-air, provided on the various digital terrestrial platforms. Italian viewers have a total of 118 TV channels, 67 free and 51 paid; followed by Latvia which has 85 (80 pay-TV) and the UK with a total of 79, the majority (71) is free.
In total, in Europe there are 11,000 TV channels and 8,270 only in the countries of the European Union, where in 2012 369 new TV channels were launched (on DTT, satellite and cable TV), while 62 were closed (compared to the closure of 143 channels in 2011). Most of the channels are dedicated to sports, followed by those dedicated to general entertainment and movies.