While still a student, Silvio Berlusconi, the son of a Milan bank official, displayed two of the main qualities that marked his later career as a media tycoon: business acumen and a penchant for performing. While preparing a dissertation on “The Newspaper Advertising Contract” for his honors degree in law from Milan University, he helped finance his studies by working as a singer on cruise ships.

Upon graduating, he was quick to recognize the entrepreneurial opportunities opened up by the wave of postwar affluence that rolled across Italy in the 1960s. He moved into the booming construction sector, and in 1969 borrowed 3 billion lire to build a prestigious dormitory suburb, Milano 2, on the edge of the city. His decision to install a cable network in the complex in 1974 was his first entry into a television marketplace that was about to undergo a massive expansion.

The historic monopoly over national broadcasting enjoyed by the public sector organization, RAI (Radio Televisione Italiana) had been confirmed by Law 103, passed in 1975. But the following year, the Constitutional Court ruled that it did not extend to the local level. This decision legitimated the mushrooming “pi- rate” television operators and attracted new investors with around 700 commercial stations springing up around the country. Berlusconi was quick to see the enormous potential in this explosion of activity, and in 1975 he set up a holding company, Fininvest, to manage his expanding interests. In 1979 he established a major film library, renting titles to stations on the condition that they carried advertising purchased through his Publitalia subsidiary. He rapidly became the dominant force in a market that saw television increase its share of national advertising from 15 percent in 1976 to nearly 50 percent, ten years later. By 1983, Publitalia’s advertising revenues had overtaken those of RAI, and by the end of the decade they accounted for around 70 percent of all television advertising expenditure.

His power within the new commercial television marketplace was further cemented by his own moves into station ownership. Between 1977 and 1980, he created a nationwide network, Canale 5, creating the illusion of a single channel by dispatching video tapes by courier for simultaneous transmission. Programming was unashamedly populist, relying heavily on imported films and soap operas and home produced game shows. In 1981 the Constitutional Court revised its earlier decision and ruled in favor of national private networks providing there were strong antitrust provisions. Berlusconi took full advantage of this opening, buying out one of his main competitors, Italia 1, in 1982, and acquiring his only other serious challenger, Rete 4, in 1984. These moves confirmed his domination of commercial television, earning him the nickname Su’ Emittenza (“His Transmitter-ship,” a pun on the traditional title for a cardinal).

His power did not go unopposed, however. In October 1984, magistrates ruled that his channels breached RAI’s monopoly right to broadcast a simultaneous national service and shut them down. But he had powerful political friends, including the prime minister, Bettino Craxi, who returned from overseas early to sign a decree reopening them. Even in a climate of growing enthusiasm for deregulation, no other European government had allowed a single individual to accumulate such concentrated control over terrestrial television. This political support established an effective duopoly in national television for the rest of the decade, giving Fininvest’s three commercial networks and RAI’s three public channels an overall share of between 40 to 45 percent each.

Reviewing this situation in 1988, the Constitutional Court sent a warning to parliament urging them to introduce strong antitrust provisions at the earliest opportunity. Parliament’s response, the Broadcasting Act of 1990 (known as the “Mammi Act” after the Post and Telecommunications Minister who presented it) fell way short of this. The parliamentary debate was bitter, with the former chair of the Constitutional Court arguing that the Act disregarded the Court’s antitrust instructions and was far too sympathetic to private television power. The new law legitimated the status quo. Berlusconi was allowed to keep his three broad- casting networks, and Publitalia’s domination of the television advertising market remained untouched. However, new cross-ownership rules did require him to sell 90 percent of his shares in the country’s first pay-TV venture, Telepiu, and to divest his majority stake in the Milan daily newspaper, Il Giornale Nuovo, which passed to his brother Paolo. Critics of his communicative power were unimpressed, and in 1992 media workers mounted a strike to protest against Finivest’s domination of the advertising market.

Renewed pressure for tougher antitrust legislation coincided with a worsening financial situation within Finivest, as the group absorbed the costs of recent acquisitions. In 1986 Berlusconi bought the soccer (football) club AC Milan and spent substantial sums on making it into the most successful Italian club of all time. In 1988 he acquired the La Standa department store chain, one of the largest in Italy. And, after an ex- pensive and bitterly fought contest with Carlo de Benedetti of the computer company Olivetti, in 1990, he had made a major move into newspaper, magazine, and book publishing, with the purchase of the Mondadori group, giving him control of 20 percent of the domestic publishing market. These outlays led to a 12-fold increase in the group’s debt, which stood at $2 billion by 1994.

Faced with continuing demands for the break-up of his television empire, he seized the political initiative and, at the beginning of 1994, announced that he would contest the forthcoming general election. Luciano Benetton, head of the clothing group, spoke for many when he wryly observed that, “Silvio Berlusconi’s love of politics is motivated by fear of losing his television interests.” His vehicle was an entirely new party, Forza Italia (named after the football chant “Go Italy”) in coalition with the federalist Northern League and the remnants of the neo-fascist MSI movement, renamed the National Alliance. During the campaign he relied heavily on orchestrated support from his press and television interests, leading the distinguished journalist, Indro Montanelli, to resign the editorship of Il Giornale in protest. He projected an image of a man untouched by the old corruption, in touch with the aspirations of young Italy, and in favor of low taxation, free markets, and personal choice.

His coalition of the right won 43 percent of the popular vote in the March 1994 election and formed a government with Berlusconi as prime minister. There were immediate allegations of conflicts of interest. He had tried to forestall these at the start of his election campaign by resigning from all managerial positions and handing chairmanship of his major company to his old piano accompanist, Fidele Confalonieri. But since he and his family still held 51 percent of the group’s shares, critics were unconvinced. These suspicions, coupled with the defection of the Northern League, led to the fall of his administration after nine months.

His exit from office coincided with other shifts in his personal circumstances. In July 1995, he announced that he had sold a 20 percent stake in his new subsidiary, Mediaset (covering his television, advertising, film, and record interests) to three outside investors (including the German media magnate, Leo Kirch) for $1.1 billion. More shares were sold later to banks and other institutions, reducing his holding to 72 percent. Then, two days before the April 1996 election, he announced a public flotation that would eliminate his majority control.

His political standing was also under threat. His carefully cultivated image of a man outside the corrupt old guard had been dented by revelations that in 1978 he had joined the secretive Masonic lodge, P2 (Propoganda 2) that had formed a powerful state within a state with connections to the armed forces, secret services, banks, and government. Then, in January 1996, he was called before magistrates in Milan to answer charges that he had bribed financial police to present a favorable tax audit of his corporate accounts.

This helped to sour his return to politics in the general election in April 1996. Although he was elected as a member of parliament, his right-wing bloc was forced to concede control of government to the Olive Tree Alliance, Italy’s first successful center-left coalition since World War II.

Having spent the late 1990s reorganizing his party, he was once again elected prime minister on May 13, 2001. Berlusconi is the prime minister of Italy, leader of the Forza Italia party, head of the center-right coalition known as the House of Liberties, and the wealthiest man in Italy, with an estimated net worth of $10.3 billion.

Whether he remains a central figure in Italian politics and business in the future, Berlusconi will be remembered as the man who in the space of just 25 years built a conglomerate that rose to dominate Italian commercial television and become Europe’s second largest media empire (after Bertelsmann of Germany) and Italy’s third biggest private company, and the man who used his communicative power and his flair for showmanship to launch a new political party that gathered enough votes to secure his election as prime minister in just four months. Overall, his career over the last 30 years stands as an impressive illustration and warning of the power of concentrated media ownership in a lightly regulated marketplace.