MILAN -- Italy's lower house of Parliament approved a controversial media bill on Wednesday that critics claim concentrates even more of the media in the hands of media tycoon-turned-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Legislation is a revised version of a bill that President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi refused to sign into law in December in a major blow to Berlusconi.
The media reform bill lifts the ban on a private company owning more than two national television stations, allowing Berlusconi's Mediaset group to retain its three commercial stations: Italia 1, Canale 5 and Rete 4.
This means Berlusconi can bypass a constitutional court ruling last November to remove Rete 4 from terrestrial to satellite broadcasting.
New law, expected to be rubber-stamped by the Senate next month, also sets a time frame for the launch of digital TV by 2006 and allows the cross-ownership of TV stations and newspaper assets beginning in 2011.
Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, directly or indirectly controls 90% of Italian television either through Mediaset or his supporters on the board of state broadcaster RAI.
"This ugly bill aggravates the main cancer of Italy's broadcasting system: the hyper-concentration of power in the hands of one single person," Piero Fassino, head of the main opposition party Democrats of the Left, said after the vote.
Berlusconi's $7.8 billion personal holding company Fininvest, which controls Mediaset; Medusa Film; and the Mondadori publishing group, with some 50 magazines, among other companies, accounts for more than half of Italy's advertising market.
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