Italian pay DTT drops from 32 to 21 channels
August 20, 2019
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
A total of 413 TV channels were available throughout Italy in June 2019 on the main distribution platforms, of which 350 were owned by producers based in Italy.
The majority of channels (293) were available on satellite/DTH, while 126 were distributed via DTT (69 on both DTH and DTT).
The pay-TV offer amounted to 203 TV channels, while there are 147 free-to-air channels. There were also 113 HD channels, of which 111 on DTH and 15 on DTT (some channels are distributed on both platforms).
The study from Confindustria Radio TV highlights the significant reduction of the pay-TV offer on DTT, from 32 to 21 TV channels, as a result of the closure of the Mediaset Premium platform in June 2019.
This follows an agreement between Mediaset and rival Sky Italia in March 2018, which means that the latter is now the only pay-TV operator on DTT/DTH in Italy.
The new Sky Italia offer on DTT has also reduced the number of channels in HD and eliminated time-shifted channels. In practice, this is a light version of the satellite offer, focusing primarily on the sports/football and cinema/TV series genres.
The Sky Italia-Mediaset agreement has also enabled Fox Italia Group to get on DTT for the first time with its two flagship channels: Fox and National Geographic Channel.
During the first half of 2019, Sky Italia revised the movie channel offer on satellite both in terms of naming and number (22). The new line-up includes two premiere channels (Sky Cinema Uno and Sky Cinema Due), Sky Cinema Collection (dedicated to exhibitions and thematic collections) and 6 genre channels (Family, Action, Suspense, Cinema Romance, Cinema Drama and Cinema Comedy). The offer is completed by two channels in time-shifted version and Mediaset’s five Premium Cinema channels.
The 4K offer is still marginal and only available on TivùSat’s FTA satellite platform. In January, NASA 4K UHD joined Rai 4K, Fashion TV 4K and the Eutelsat 4K service channel. For its part, Sky offers a selection of sports programmes and 4K/4K HDR movies on its latest generation decoders (Sky Q).