Abstract

The survey of the Italian public debate about the public service broadcasting between 1990 and 2005 starts from the law n. 223/1990 which ratify the existing private-public system and obliges to better define the reasons and goals of the state intervention. In 1995 a referendum stated that privates could buy shares in the RAI, the Italian public service broadcaster. Attempts to reform the rules of state presence in Italian broadcasting failed between 1995 and 2001, as well as the Constitutional Court rulings about the anti-trust limits were ignored. The fact remains that the two issues - motives of public initiative and purchase of Rai shares from privates - were mingled in political and cultural debate, down to the rules stated by the so-called Gasparri law in 2004.