Berlusconi quoted on TV every 15 seconds for 72 hours. And Rai surpasses Mediaset

For 72 hours Italian television programming was monopolized by Silvio Berlusconi. Between the announcement of his death (which arrived on the morning of Monday 12 June), the funeral celebrated in the Milan Cathedral on Wednesday afternoon and the subsequent reactions, his name was repeated 1,108 times, once every 15 seconds. And the primacy goes to Rai, which has also surpassed Mediaset, the family business of the former prime minister.

Mediamonitor.it analyzed the data on the main national and international media, using Cedat85 detection technology. And he noted that, between 9:30 on June 12 and 2:30 on June 15, the four-time prime minister was named in the Italian media 58,058 times, with a peak of over 20,000 mentions on the day of his death. Of the 1,108 television quotations, 396 are on the 4 channels of the public broadcaster (Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai 3, Rai News24) while 386 are on the 4 monitored Mediaset channels (Canale 5, Rete 4, Italia 1, TgCom24).

Above all, the information-only channels are the driving force: at the top of the list is Rai News with 131 mentions for the founder of Fininvest, while Mediaset’s all-news channel Tgcom 24 follows closely with 130 mentions and immediately behind is Sky Tg24 with 129 quotes. Even in the general interest channels, however, Rai 1 (112) is slightly ahead of the flagship of the Mediaset networks, Canale 5, which is in fifth place overall with 109 quotations. Just behind is La 7 (sixth overall) with 108 mentions. This is followed in order by Rete 4 (95), Rai 3 (83), Rai 2 (70) and Italia 1 closes with 52 mentions.

On national radio, Silvio Berlusconi’s name was mentioned 937 times, i.e. approximately every 20 seconds. On the other hand, there are 1,539 citations on foreign websites and newspapers.