Online Newspapers, Live TV Channels, Radios

Media in Italy is basically “television centered” which means television is the most popular media in Italy. Due to the dominating role of television, the rate of press circulation remains low. The total circulation is 6,024,000 and there are 121 circulations per 1000. According to a survey from 2015, the percentage of newspaper readers in Italy reduced by 22% between 2010 and 2015. Still, there are newspaper markets which are divided among 84 publishing companies and most of them publish only one newspaper. Some of the national daily newspapers are “Corriere della Sera”, “Avvenire”, “La Nazione”, “Il Giorno” etc. Others are local daily newspapers like “Il Gazzettino”, “L’Eco di Bergamo”, “Il Piccolo” etc. The press in Italy isn’t subjected to any censorship but has a basic press law which is provided by the constitutional principle of freedom of individual expression. Article 21 of the Italian constitution states that all persons have the right to express their thoughts freely, verbally or in any other form of communication. There are also some other press laws like the Italian legal code, notably the Albertine Edict of 1848, the Penal Code, Public Security laws etc.

Since Television is the most popular media for the Italian people, there are 358 television stations and 30,300,000 television sets. The number of the television audience in Italy is relatively much higher compared to other countries. In a survey, it was found out that 96% of the Italian people have the access to television. The people can choose which channel they want to watch from among 230 national free and subscription channels, and an average of 100 local channels in each district. “RAI” and “Mediaset” are the two major broadcasting network in Italy which runs both the television and the radio. Their main source of revenue comes from advertising and the rest from public funding. Some of the channels of “RAI” broadcaster are “Rai 1”, “Rai 2”, “Rai Movie”, “Rai News 24” etc. There are also other national television channels like “La Sposa HD”, “Italia 1”, “Fox Life” etc.

Radio in Italy is the most trusted and second most frequently used media after television. There are about 4709 radio stations. About 68% of the Italian people listen to radio every day with a consumption rate of 149 minutes. There are both public and private radio broadcasters. The public broadcaster “RAI” runs some of the channels like “Rai Isoradio”, “Rai Radio 1”, “Rai Radio 2” etc and leads the market with 21.9% of total sector revenues. There are also some other channels like “Radio DeeJay”, “Radio Maria”, “Radio Capital” etc. Each radio channel also has websites so that the people can also have access to them online.

The number of individuals with Internet access is 13,200,000. The Italian people choose to be connected to the rest of the world via the Internet even though Internet penetration currently sits at 62%, compared to 73.9% for the rest of Europe. Their priority list holds search engines and websites in the first two and social networking sites in the third. The most used social networking site is Facebook which accounts for 22.8 million Italian social media users. Instagram accounts for 8.3 million users, followed by Google+’s 7.5 million users, Twitter’s 6.6 million users, Linkedin’s 5.1 million users, and Pinterest’s 3 million users.