White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 8Local broadcasters, moreover, like localpublishers, with a few exceptions, seemto have been left only marginal markets.None of the larger groups in thesesectors, apart from Sky, which is theItalian subsidiary of the Murdoch group,operates as a cross-border businesscompeting on a larger – not to sayglobal or even European – market(except for one Spanish network in theMediaset group). This may look a wisedecision given the fate in the last 20years of the various European mediagroups who have attempted to competedirectly with the US giants (with thepartial exception of the BertelsmannGroup). As far as the major Italiantelevision and publishing group (againMediaset) is concerned, the decision waslinked to a choice dating around 15years ago and outside the scope of this<strong>paper</strong>: the owner’ decision to go intopolitics, which – according to his critics– may have favoured his fortunes in thecountry, but certainly made his groupdifferent from other companiesoperating on this very delicate marketand, as demonstrated by the events afterbankruptcy of the German Kirschgroup, may have made acceptance of hispotential investments problematic formany foreign governments.What applies to Mediaset in particularcan be extended to the sectors ofpublishing, television and radio ingeneral: operations are almost whollyfocused on the domestic market andthere is great difficulty in going beyondits horizon as regards strategicinitiatives. This is also due to an obviousbut often overlooked fact. Bookpublishing, television broadcasting andthat part of radio broadcasting whichdoes not only feature music (and whenit does, it is usually imported music) aredependent on the national language,Italian, which is, of course, differentfrom the languages in neighbouringcountries. This essential factor ofidentity for our citizens impliesdifferences and problems of mutualcomprehension with others. Theproblem does not affect only ourcountry. We can consider it one of themajor limits (both objective andotherwise) for any European culturalpolicy. In fact the diversity of languagesand the rejection of any attempts tostandardise – proudly andunderstandably protected – traditionsand identities is a major insuperabledifficulty with the USA, but also withthe emerging superpower, China(characterised by the clear-cutdominance of a relatively uniformmajority ethnic group over all theothers).The problem, however, is particularlyserious for Italy. Italian is spoken by lessthan 1% of the world population,entirely concentrated in Italy and oneSwiss canton. This is a much lowerfigure than for the languages of all theother European powers of similar sizein terms of population and economicimportance. This is the case with Franceor Spain or even Portugal, which hadlong-standing colonial empires and cancount on much larger linguisticallyuniform populations. This is the casewith Germany, since German is spoken,beside the great numers of Germancitizens, also by by most of thepopulation in Austria, nearly all theSwiss Cantons and an Italianautonomous province.WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 196