UPDATE: Telecom Italia Still Reviewing Options For TV Asset

Telecom Italia SpA (TIT.MI) is still reviewing its options for its television channel La7, the chief executive of the Italian telecommunications operator said Thursday.

"The review is still going on just as it is for all the other assets," Franco Bernabe said, on the margins of a news conference about a deal with a second Italian publisher--RCS Mediagroup SpA (RCS.MI)--to sell content on the operator's online store.

"We are satisfied with La7 which is going well," he said, according to MF-Dow Jones. "Its (market) share has risen so we are happy to have this stake."

Shares in Telecom Italia Media SpA (TME.MI), the operator's partially owned subsidiary to which La7 belongs, were off 0.78% at EUR0.24 in Milan.

On Tuesday, Telecom Italia denied a local news report that it had hired a bank to help it sell Telecom Italia Media or at least 20% of it.

Telecom Italia owns nearly 70% of Telecom Italia Media, which also runs the MTV television channel in Italy, among other activities.

"Reviewing options can mean either the sale or the development (of the business) so Bernabe's words don't clear up the situation very much," a Milan trader said. "I don't expect a spin-off in the short term."

At the news conference, Bernabe announced a deal with RCS to sell virtual versions of the media group's books and newspapers at Biblet, an online store run by Telecom Italia.

The store will offer more than 650 e-books as well as digital editions of Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport, two of Italy's biggest newspapers.

Consumers will be able to download them onto devices such as tablets, including the Olipad, a device to be brought to market in the coming months by Olivetti, a unit of Telecom Italia.

Telecom Italia entered into a similar deal with Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA (MN.MI), another Italian publisher.

-Alberto Chimenti, MF-Dow Jones; Gilles Castonguay, Dow Jones Newswires, [phone]; [e-mail]

  (Paola Longo of MF-Dow Jones contributed to this article.)