Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Media Magnate and Former Prime Minister, Dies at 86

variety.com:

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSilvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media-mogul-turned politician who defined a three-decade-long era in postwar Italy during which TV spin, tainting allegations of corruption and sex scandals were pervasive — but who also achieved unprecedented political stability in the country — has died.

He was 86. Berlusconi died at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, according to Italian media reports. He had been suffering from leukaemia and had recently developed a lung infection.After building a fortune by launching Italian private TV with his Mediaset empire, Berlusconi entered politics in 1993, was elected prime minister in 1994, and went on to serve as the country’s premier three times, not consecutively, becoming the longest serving democratically elected Italian leader.

He was ousted from parliament in 2013 following a tax fraud conviction. Berlusconi’s construction company Edilnord built a modernistic complex on Milan’s outskirts, named Milano 2, which he outfitted with an internal cable TV station, called Telemilano.

Launched in 1978, Telemilano became the seed of Berlusconi’s creation of Italy’s first national private TV network, a feat he accomplished by buying up local stations on which he simultaneously broadcast the same programming.