Italian pubcaster Rai TV has revamped its operations over the past year, providing new international opportunities for its commercial arm. Richard Middleton reports.

It has been a transformative 12 months for Italian public broadcaster Rai TV as it focuses on modernising both its programming output and its distribution methods. 

Of all changes implemented domestically by Rai’s director general Antonio Campo dall’Orto, it is perhaps the focus on digital that has garnered most headlines. 

The pubcaster’s digital division was relaunched with a new app for its on-demand service, Rai Play, while its main channels were spruced up and programming efforts – across both drama and unscripted – have been refocused.

The changes are paying dividends domestically with rising ratings, but they are also now opening up new avenues for commercial division Rai Com. 

Gian Paolo Tagliavia, chief digital officer at Rai and president of Rai Com, says the focus for the company is to use some of its domestic muscle to make inroads into the global market. And ramping up drama output across Rai’s four main channels is already having an effect.

“We are not concentrating [our drama] only on Rai Uno any longer; now we are looking at four channels, and that means more product, more angles and different ways to tell stories.”

It means more opportunities for Rai Com duo Mattia Oddone, head of international sales, and David Bogi, head of international development, and the potential of its scripted muscle is clear.

Rai accounted for more than three-quarters of all domestic fiction production in 2015/16 and its broader drama focus is already delivering global sales. Rai Uno cop drama Il Commissario Montalbano (Inspector Montalbano) has been selling internationally for years, but shows from Rai’s other channels, including Rai Tre’s crime drama Non Uccidere (Close Murders), are also now landing globally, with numerous territories including Franco-German network Arte picking up the FremantleMedia Italia and Rai Fiction show.

Rai’s Renaissance drama Medici: Masters of Florence has also reached international shores after a deal with Netflix, which will see it become available on the SVoD service in the US, UK and India among other countries.

Tagliavia, who agreed a coproduction and digital content partnership deal with Arte last summer, adds the company will also build on programming block arrangements with the likes of Scripps, which makes some of Rai’s lifestyle content available on its international networks.

Distribution of Rai’s channels globally will also be ramped up, with the company now overseeing this part of the business itself. “Instead of giving everything to third parties and then almost forgetting about it, we decided to terminate a 25-year deal and do it ourselves. And we’ve had a really interesting six months,” he says, adding that the US, German and Dutch markets are particularly important.

Tagliavia has also revamped the digital arm’s management structure to make the most of opportunities both domestically and globally, with new ventures in the pipeline.

“Being digital, we don’t see the growth in the coming years – it’s already here,” he says. “So it made a lot of sense to have the same management, and to leverage opportunities internationally, commercially and locally.”

An international OTT play is “on the radar,” Tagliavia adds, not to replace existing cable or satellite distribution methods but to complement them.

“You have to start building that OTT expertise in your own country and we have that now, and it will help us,” he says, referencing Rai Play’s domestic launch last September. Tapping into “strong Italian communities around the world” should provide a ready audience Tagliavia adds, although he is clear that a balance must be struck between “a product that is made for Italians abroad and for people who love Italy.” 

Such an offering could, of course, cannibalise Rai Com’s international sales, but Oddone says the sales team is working to support the firm’s digital ambitions. The trick will be delivering these new services, and finding homes for Rai’s expanded output quickly enough to audiences in a world already swamped with content.