Mediaset overtakes Rai in Italian prime time viewing amid continued TV decline
May 15, 2026 11.34 Europe/London By Julian Clover


Italy’s traditional television market continued to shrink in 2025, with new figures from Italian regulator AGCOM showing declines in both all-day and prime time viewing, while Mediaset overtook Rai in prime time audiences.

According to AGCOM’s latest Communications Observatory report, average daily television audiences fell by 2.5% in prime time and 2.8% across the full day compared with 2024.

Looking over a longer period, the decline in traditional television viewing is even more pronounced. Compared with 2021, prime time audiences have dropped by 3.2 million viewers, or 14.5%, while all-day viewing is down 13.7%.

In prime time, Mediaset moved into first place with almost 7 million viewers and a 37.6% audience share in 2025. The commercial broadcaster increased its audience by 3% year-on-year, gaining 2 percentage points of share.

Rai fell into second position with 6.8 million viewers and a 36.4% share, representing a 7% decline year-on-year and a loss of 1.8 share points.

Warner Bros. Discovery remained in third place with 1.6 million viewers, down 7.9%, while Comcast-owned Sky recorded a 3.9% decline to 1.4 million viewers.

Cairo Communication-owned La7 was the only major broadcaster to grow slightly in prime time, edging up 0.2%.

Across the full day, Mediaset also led the market with a 37.5% share and 3 million average viewers, although this still represented a small year-on-year decline. Rai followed with a 35.8% share and 2.9 million viewers, down 5.1%.

Warner Bros. Discovery and Sky also recorded declines in all-day viewing, while La7 again bucked the wider market trend, growing 4.6% year-on-year.

The longer-term picture highlights the structural pressure facing Italy’s traditional broadcasters. Between 2021 and 2025, Rai lost 769,000 average daily viewers, equivalent to a 21.2% decline. Mediaset lost 208,000 viewers over the same period, while Warner Bros. Discovery and Sky also posted smaller declines. La7 remained broadly stable.

Despite the broader market contraction, the main terrestrial channels together recorded a marginal 0.2% increase in combined prime time viewing compared with 2024, reaching just over 13.2 million viewers.

Among the individual channels, Rai 1 remained Italy’s biggest single channel in prime time with 4.1 million viewers and a 22% share, while Canale 5 strengthened to a 17.6% share.

La7 also continued its gradual growth trajectory, achieving a 5.6% share, while Rai 2, Rai 3, Italia 1 and Nove all lost audience share year-on-year.