Italian public broadcaster RAI is turning to a pay model to restore some of the content it has lost to the commercial sector.
New director-general Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, a former Viacom executive, wants to create an online subscription offer. Dubbed RAI-Pay, it would combine film and drama from the RAI archive with top sporting events – a kind of BBC Store meets Netflix.
According to La Republicca, Dall’Orto sees the Mediaset commercial group as his main competitor, running successful free-to-air commercial channels on which it has built a premium operation – ostensibly on the rights to the Champions League – to which it has now added an online catalogue.
It’s not just in terms of content where RAI wants to compete, as it sees the look and feel off its online offer slip behind Mediaset, Sky and La7, which is perceived as being the best in Italy.
Dall’Orto has a three-year term, plus a potential two more years, in which yo carry out his plan. His immediate plan is a consolidation of currently separate newsrooms – and with it a string of redundancies.
