Word: berlusconi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...arousing quite the same fury, are common sights across Europe these days. Established government-owned -- and frequently dull -- networks are facing a feisty new array of commercial competitors. In Italy the state-owned RAI-TV has been joined by three popular networks run by TV Magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who is also part owner of La Cinq. In West Germany, the government is spending an estimated $10 billion to wire the nation for cable (which is already widespread in countries like Belgium and Holland). German cable viewers can choose from such new channels as the Luxembourg-based RTL-Plus...
Last November the government awarded the franchise for a fifth channel to a group headed by Berlusconi and two French businessmen with ties to President Mitterrand. Opposition leaders charged that the new channel would have a pro- Socialist bias and that it was being rushed on the air to beat the March 16 legislative elections, which the Socialists are in danger of losing. Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, a leading Mitterrand foe, even tried to thwart the channel's start-up by closing access to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where technicians were about to install an antenna. Government officials...
...object of much of this wrath is Berlusconi, 49, who is making his first venture into French television. A self-made millionaire in real estate before he was 40, Berlusconi started buying Italian TV stations in 1978 and soon linked them into nationwide networks, with schedules heavily laced with game shows and U.S. movies and series. Though private TV networks are officially banned in Italy, a government edict allowed Berlusconi's popular channels to continue...
...Cinq's programming is following Berlusconi's successful formula, with several Italian-produced game shows, movies like Saturday Night Fever and such U.S. series as Flamingo Road and Murder, She Wrote. Berlusconi insists that La Cinq "will bring in new blood and raise the level of professionalism on all the other networks." Though opening night drew mixed reviews ("Clumsy," declared Liberation, an independent Paris daily), ratings were good: an estimated 62% of the Paris audience watched at least one minute of the programming...