The accounts of Viacom Italia increased in 2017, with a total turnover of 67.9 million euros, + 20.6% compared to the previous year. A success mainly due to the excellent results of free TV.
The television group led by Andrea Castellari sees a moment of strong growth for the year 2017 particularly thanks to the free TV, which receives its financing only from publicity. In the year 2017 Viacom Italia obtained 67.9 million euros in total profits, of which 37.8 million from pay TV – with a decrease of 3.8% compared to 2016 – and a good 21.1 million from the traditional television network + 151%. Overall, a positive result was accompanied by a negative note: -31.1%, equal to 369 thousand euros in the digital sector.
How can we explain the success of free TV? The increase would be due among others to the success of Paramount Channel which was launched at the beginning of 2016. The Viacom group is also trying to reach the youngest audience, from 4 to 14 years old, by acquiring 50% of the Super! channel by De Agostini, which reached + 8% in 2017. As for pay TV, Viacom is involved in a five-year deal with Sky, which has the exclusive distribution of the following channels: Nickelodeon, Nick jr, Teen Nick, Comedy Central, MTV Music and MTV.
Precisely because of the greater development of the TV channels on the free-to-air TV, the pay-TV sector seems to have suffered the worst consequences with an audience decrease of 25%. But among the Viacom-branded kids channels, there is one exception: Nickelodeon, which instead of decreasing has seen a rise in its audience of 1%. Despite this success, Viacom fears a possible negative impact in 2018 due to the Franceschini law that will impose a minimum amount of content produced in Europe to be part of their programming.
