Abstract

This article presents some of the most relevant aspects of Arca, the ambitious digitization project recently undertaken by Mediaset, the biggest Italian private broadcaster, covering all the 40 years of its history. The initiative required the synergic effort of many different areas of the company, in order to map all of the archived content, identify criteria for their selection and prioritize their migration into digital format, enrich them with metadata, and make use of the digitized materials in both linear and non-linear contexts. The main phases of this process are discussed on the basis of several interviews and many internal documents that the author was able to study. Moreover, the article also reflects on the complex reasons and logics behind such a challenging project, and on where Mediaset should have identified its greatest value.