“Absolutely impossible descent into politics. And Mediaset is not contestable»- Corriere.it

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK – Mediaset not contestable. I believe that Piersilvio and Marina Berlusconi, even if I haven’t talked to them about it, have every intention of keeping the company and don’t want to sell it in the slightest – Urbano Cairo said at a meeting in New York organized yesterday by the Italian Exponents Group (GEI) answering a question about his possible interest in acquiring one of the networks —. a non-issue, as is Mondadori. Mediaset owned by the Berlusconi family at 50% and a greater share in terms of voting rights. The company is doing well, it’s making money, there’s no reason to sell one asset or the other. I believe nothing will happen.

The president of RCS Mediagroup, La7 and Cairo Communication held a series of meetings in the United States with major publishing groups, including The New York TimesThe Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and with innovative and somewhat privateer companies, with interesting and different ideas such asAxios.

In the conversation with Mario Platero, president of the Gei, then open to questions from the public, Cairo described his passion for New York, born during one semester at NYU as a studentand for American politics, starting with the series of books The Making of the President written by journalist Theodore H. White, and he said that it was thanks to some ideas on the media taken from reading the book The powers that be by David Halberstam that he got hired as an assistant by Berlusconi in the eighties. In the evening, Cairo received the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation Transatlantic Leadership Award as part of an initiative that introduces American high school students to the study of the Renaissance.

I found a world in great turmoil. There are anticipatory realities of what Italy and Europe are, he explained about his meetings, denying journalists’ hypotheses that he is looking for partners or investors. To a question about the German publishing group Axel Springer which announced a series of layoffs at Bild related to the introduction of artificial intelligence, Cairo replied that maybe for the Bild it was also a newspaper with some difficulties. Certainly a topic on which to think well, the weight of some very considerable structures, we will have to try to jump through hoops to reconcile everything and not easy.

To those who asked him if he has interest in entering politics, he replied: I already said it before climbing Rcs and even more so after. When you have a group with a turnover of more or less one billion three hundred million, with 4,500 employees, 4,500 collaborators, therefore roughly ten thousand families who are somehow connected to this group, in my opinion, before thinking about different things such as politics you have to think about this group, to make it go well, to have responsibilities. That’s why I think it’s completely impossible. I’m not saying I don’t like politics, though one thing I can’t do.

On the future of Forza Italia after the disappearance of Silvio Berlusconi, Cairo said the foreign minister Antonio Tajani has taken matters into his own hands in concert with Marina Berlusconi, it seems to me there is a desire to move forward. And the request for a judgment on the Meloni government: a complicated moment, from many points of view: economic, geopolitical, the war in Ukraine. However, thanks also to the Draghi government which ruled until October, Italy grew well last year. Employment is going well this year, the premises are good. We have to let the government work.

To an observation by his interlocutor on how La 7 is sometimes considered hostile towards the government, Cairo explained that there is always a lot of dialectic in the broadcaster. Sometimes there are programs that appear to have a hostile attitude but host centre-right officials and we would host even more government officials if they were willing to come. And maybe they will in a while.

As president of the Turin football club, Cairo then answered a question about the negotiations for the purchase of Serie A TV rights. Today I think we needn’t worry, he explained. We didn’t expect to find who knows what values ​​in the envelopes. It was known that there could be a negotiating component, we must be careful but not worry. The Italian championship is alive and vital – she added – we have lost ground but we can recover. Cairo then stressed the importance of obtain a five-year contract, instead of a three-year one. an important element – he concluded – because it allows for an extra horizon.