Italian TV – SHOWTIME!
Television is an integral part of everyday life in Italy. On average there are three TV sets per family and the one in the kitchen is always on during meals. Bars, restaurants and public places often have a TV blaring in the corner. According to the research institute TNS Abacus, we watch TV for more than 4 hours a day.
Italian TV is big business with huge revenues generated through advertising and it’s a culture unto itself. It is all about spectacle and plugging lifestyles of the rich and famous that are beyond the reach of most Italians except via our TV sets.
There are around 40 free-to-air TV channels but quantity does not mean quality. Advertising is all pervasive and even the publicly funded RAI generates 50% of their revenue through advertising. With three terrestrial channels, the RAI enjoys the highest audience share of any public broadcaster in Western Europe, which at 43% would make any broadcaster weep for joy, except ex-PM and media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, whose Mediaset dominates 44% of the market share.
The difference between public and private channels is null. The RAI’s slogan: “Di tutto, di più” literally means “More of everything” – a smorgasbord of daytime chat shows, soaps, reality shows, sport, variety shows, and telefiction ( hospital, police and historical dramas and the occasional dramatisation of a saint’s life). Perfect for channel surfing which we call zapping. My mother is a master. For his sanity my dad has bought another identical 28 inch TV set and put it in another room.
In addition to the ad breaks, promotional messages are woven seamlessly into programmes. Maurizio Nichetti’s film The Icicle Thief (1989) is a beautiful send up of this blurring between promotion and programming.
The Veline can’t go without a mention. They are the young nearly-naked women who lip-sync and high kick their way through light entertainment, satire and comedy shows, a kind of adjunct to the main action.
Airtime given to news and current affairs is scant. There is a real lack of hard news gathering which in the mornings is subsituted by the reading of news and comment from the daily papers. Midday and evening bulletins are identical on each channel and political chat shows are chaotic shouting matches dominated by disorderly behaviour rather than information – it gets audience.
One of the weaknesses of Italian TV is that information is served up by the political parties instead of being provided to balance propaganda. In fact the RAI’s channels are divided systematically between the major parties and this influences top level appointments and programming. Meanwhile Mediaset is owned by the leader of the opposition.
Italian TV may shock, bore or amuse but it’s not all bad. Gems include the weekly Linea Verde and Linea Blu, gastro-voyages to tiny country and seaside towns up and down Italy and Il Commissario Montalbano is an unmissable detective show, 100% made-in-Sicily quality TV