Here in Portugal magic is growing also because at least 2 friends of me have gone to televion recently.
The most part of people (apart of magicians) do not see magic as an art.
But as we can see exist a lot of people starting to do magic, which means that our art is not death.
Do not you agree?

Here in italy it not very popular.
They see in it more tricks than good performing,pheraps because they make up their mind that if soembody try to do a trick ->it is a sort of game-> game is something for kids.
Bad habit...

Oh, yes, and besides we have to add that it is very hard to manage an Italian audience, because the average Italian spectator usually feels challenged and considers easily his not-understanding of a trick as a diminution of his intellectual dignity. This can explain the strange success of a magician, whose artname is Casanova, that is maybe now the most popular artist in Italy, whose characteristic is to fail regularly and be catched in each trick he does.

In Spain, We´ve only seen Magic on TV three times. Once was 15 years ago when Juan Tamariz had a program called "Magia Potagia".
Next, 5 years ago, a few months before DC came to Spain we had about 10 of his TV specials.
After that, the only thing we´ve seen is the "Masked Magician". Makes me cry...

Maybe the question should be different:
why is magic so poorly represented in most countries? I guess there are several sad answers to this:
1. Too many poor magicians out there, who drag the whole art down. I recently saw a couple of magicians in denmark, performing street magic on a sort of festival. almost all of them had the term "loser" clearly printed on their forehead. stupid shirts and ties, the usual tux, you get the picture. the low down was a ventriloquist who did not even try to cover his constantly moving mouth. he could not even fool my three year old daughter. since they got some newspaper coverage, my guess is, that they were even paid for the job. unbelievable. it would take the whole team of "Industrial Light + Magic" to make them presentable on TV. and they are not the exeception.
2. When I ask people here, what they think of magic, the usual reply is: "it is boring, it is always the same". when I dig deeper I find out that refer to those "hair in the wind" illusionists a la Copperfield, Klocke or Siegfried and Roy.
3. The hard reality is most of the time more disturbing/unbelievable than any of us can imagine. after seeing the World Trade Center tragedy, and feeling the emotional impact even here, any stupid vanishing trick a la Copperfield leaves some shallow taste in my mouth.
so, if we want the situation to be changed, we have to make sure that our art improves considerably. I remember quite well, that when Boris Becker and Steffi Graf were still playing very successful tennis, the sport got big media coverage. after they ended their career, it went out of publics notice almost instantly. If you are really brilliant and outstanding, and you also have a knack for marketing yourself, believe me you will get even more attention then you would really like to have.

For this Reason the italian specs will try anything to put theirs hands into the trick.The challenging come first,the entertainment second.
For "Casanova" it's a strange story.
He was unknown,he failed miserably a trick the last night of the year in front of million of TV specs and he became famous.
Comics send his performance in TV and he understand that the more he fail the more his fame increases.....
I don't know if here in italy a Blaine type media construction will work....