Mediaset

Mediaset S.p.A. is an Italian mass media and television production and distribution company that is the largest commercial broadcaster in the country. The company is controlled by the holding company MFE – MediaForEurope (the original iteration of Mediaset S.p.A., a.k.a. the Mediaset Group), which is majority-owned by the Berlusconi family's Fininvest Group. Stemming from a business founded in 1987 by entrepreneur and later Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Mediaset competes primarily against the public broadcaster RAI, the privately owned La7 and (through Sky Group Limited) Comcast's Sky Italia. Mediaset's headquarters are in Milan, Lombardy. Many of its studios were located in the Milano 2 area of Segrate, a municipality bordering Milan, where broadcasts of local station TeleMilano (now airing nationally as Mediaset's Canale 5) began in 1978. After merging with various local broadcasters to form the Canale 5 syndication, production was moved to Cologno Monzese, where the infrastructure of the former Telealtomilanese was present. The company currently has two main television production centres, in Cologno Monzese and Rome. In 2019, Mediaset transferred its corporate functions to the Netherlands and as a result, the Italian operations were taken over by a wholly owned subsidiary of Mediaset which began operations that year.