Italy

[IT] The Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) adopts guidelines on the prominence of audiovisual and radio media services of general interest

IRIS 2024-10:1/15

Ernesto Apa & Eugenio Foco

Portolano Cavallo

In its board meeting of 9 October 2024, the Italian Communications Authority (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni – AGCOM) approved the Guidelines on the prominence of audiovisual and radio media services of general interest (the Guidelines).

The Guidelines are aimed at ensuring a prominent position for services of general interest on television screens, without prejudice to the possibility for users to customize how services are displayed, as required under the European Media Freedom Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1083).

To do so, the Guidelines lay down the criteria to qualify a service as being of “general interest” thereby ensuring that adequate prominence is afforded to it on any receiving device and through any platform. The services of general interest identified by the Guidelines include:

(i) free-to-air audiovisual and radio media services broadcast by the Italian public service broadcaster (RAI) on digital terrestrial television (DTT), satellite and online;

(ii) nationwide free-to-air audiovisual and radio media services broadcast on DTT, satellite and online (e.g. linear television and radio channels, catch-up tv and catch-up radio, etc.) with a generalist, semi-generalist and information thematic genre and whose programming schedule includes news programmes, as well as those with a programming genre for “children and youth” and “culture” as defined by an underlying AGCOM resolution.

(iii) local free-to-air audiovisual and radio media services broadcast on DTT, whose programming schedule includes news programmes.

The Guidelines require that the abovementioned services of general interest are afforded prominence on all devices and user interfaces which enable access to such services, including smart TVs, decoders, devices such as dongle and console, smartphones, tablets and PCs. To achieve this, the Guidelines provide specific icons to be displayed in a navigation rail on the home page of the devices.