Aldo Grasso Storia Della Televisione Italiana Pdf Free
Abstract: Prior to the mid-nineties, Italian television did not produce any soap operas. Daytime serials were imported mainly from the USA.Unexpectedly, the most commercial television genre was produced for the first time by the public service broadcaster: Un posto al sole was aired by RAI in 1996. The commercial competitor Mediaset immediately responded with Vivere in 1998 and CentoVetrine in 2001. Un posto al sole still airs today, while both Mediaset’s soaps were cancelled.The paper focuses on the rise and fall of domestic long-running daytime serials, on the different choices taken by the two competitors and on the perspectives opened up by the genre on Italian TV schedules.Keywords: soap opera, Italian television, daytime drama, television production, commercial television.
1 IntroductionUnlike the majority of continental Europe, until the mid-Nineties, there was no local production of soap operas in Italian television. Instead, daytime serials were imported and dubbed, mainly from the USA. The public broadcasting company, RAI, considered the genre as being of poor cultural level, unsuitable for the mission of public service television. But the production of the genre was not a goal for the newly born commercial television, Mediaset, either: it was more profitable to import soap operas from the United States than to produce them in Italy.Unexpectedly, in 1996, RAI itself produced and aired the first Italian soap opera, Un posto al sole. Its huge success quickly convinced Mediaset to enter a profitable market.
In less than three years, from 1998 to 2001, two new soaps were produced: Vivere and CentoVetrine.The story of the domestic soap opera genre is a great example when analyzing the heated debate in the industrial, political and cultural aspects of Italian television, where the commercial broadcaster played (and still plays) a decisive role.The article will focus on the reasons of the late rise and of the present crisis of the domestic soap opera in Italian television. The socio-cultural frame where the Italian soapscape was born and the political features which gave birth to commercial broadcasting in the eighties will be taken into account. The cultural and industrial reasons behind the production of the first domestic soap opera, Un posto al sole, will be briefly described, followed by the reaction of the commercial broadcaster. The strategy of commercial television will be analysed by taking into consideration the narrative features and the scheduling techniques that distinguish the two competitors. In conclusion, the crisis of the domestic commercial production will be considered, together with a quick glance at the new perspectives in the field. 2 The Beginning of Italian Commercial Television (1980–1995)In the early eighties, the newly born Italian holding company, Fininvest (owned by Silvio Berlusconi), brought the monopoly of the public service television network, RAI, to an end.
Having started his activities in the real estate market in the sixties, by the mid-seventies, Berlusconi’s interests turned to the media market and television became a pivotal asset in the Italian-tycoon’s group. From 1980 to 1984, Fininvest succeeded in buying out three television channels: Canale 5, Italia Uno, and Retequattro. Up until then, the monopoly of RAI was founded on its three channels (Raiuno, founded in 1954; Raidue, 1961; and Raitre, 1979) and on the pedagogic mission upon which John Reith’s BBC was built in the fifties: to educate, to inform, and to entertain.Fininvest brought an aggressive marketing and advertising strategy to Italian television, whose content and audience habits were deeply transformed over the next decade. The particular Italian political climate of the eighties contributed to the birth of what was called a television “duopoly”.
This peculiar definition means that not only did RAI and Fininvest have the same economic, political, and social relevance (both of them owned three channels, both had political protection, and both were financed through advertising, even if RAI was, and still is, also financed through taxes), but also that through the eighties and nineties they harshly fought each other as competitors focused on providing the same types of content and genres, instead of developing their uniqueness.This attitude is particularly clear in the development of domestically produced long-running daytime serials. Prior to the mid-nineties, original soap operas were totally absent from Italian television schedules. In the United States and in other European countries, such as the UK and Germany, the industrial production of this genre had been routine for decades, while in Italy, the reputation of the genre suffered from a deep-rooted cultural prejudice, based on its poor aesthetic values and trivial content.
But the harshness and rapidity of the competition between private and public television models caused a radical and quick turn in the attitudes of Italian television experts. In the new competitive scenario, both RAI and Mediaset realized how profitable that genre could be, and consequently they understood the need to overcome any cultural bias: the idea that soap operas are cheaper to produce than other genres (such as drama or prime time entertainment) and they can build a large and faithful audience. For this reason, they are a core business of commercial television broadcasting. So, in less than five years, from 1996 to 2001, three new original soaps were created: Un posto al sole (RAI, 1996), Vivere (Mediaset, 1998), and CentoVetrine (Mediaset, 2001). An Italian approach to the soap opera was born, whose characteristics show the differences in the two competitors’ strategies and the uniqueness of the Italian television system at large.Surprisingly, in spite of its deep-rooted cultural bias, it was the public service network, RAI, that started the production of the most commercial TV genre in 1996.
Mediaset immediately responded by producing two soaps in less than three years and by building a new production centre near the city of Turin that was totally devoted to the production of long-running daytime serials.After two decades, the Italian “soapscape” has completely changed. Only RAI’s show, Un posto al sole, is still on the air, while both Mediaset soaps were cancelled ( Vivere in 2008, CentoVetrine in 2015).
But the relevance of the genre for the commercial network is attested by the recent, unpredictable success of imported daytime serials, such as the Spanish serial, El Secreto de Puente Viejo (Canale 5, 2013-present) or the German serial, Sturm der Liebe (Canale 5-Retequattro 2006-present), as we will see in the next section. 3 The Competition on Daytime Serial DramasFrom its birth in the early fifties until the seventies, RAI’s serial drama production was mainly focused on the “sceneggiato” genre, that is, the television adaptation of classic literary masterpieces (e.g.
Dickens’ David Copperfield, Manzoni’s I Promessi sposi and Tolstoy’s War and Peace). In the difficult environment of post-war Italy, RAI undertook a pedagogic mission to popularize domestic and international classic novels to a vast and poorly educated audience.In parallel with the production of this expensive genre, a cheaper domestic format was developed, the so-called miniseries (from 2 to 6 or 8 episodes), whose narratives mainly dealt with national themes (family and love stories, crime stories, biographies of famous historic Italian characters, and so on). Before the end of the seventies, very few imported serials were put on RAI’s schedules. The advent of the commercial television broadcaster in 1980 radically changed this situation. Mediaset’s strategy was mainly focused on the purchase of American serials, which were cheaper and more profitable to buy than they cost to produce. The scheduling of American serials was planned using careful marketing strategies, which until then were totally unknown by RAI. TV programs became “events”, which were advertised and sold to the audience long before their actual scheduling.The clash of two different cultures in the field of seriality became clear in the case of Dallas, the famous US prime time soap opera produced by the American network, CBS.
RAI bought Dallas from CBS in 1978 – when RAI still had a monopoly on Italian television. In spite of its huge popularity all over the world, RAI was still unaware of the relevance of the serial form in the contemporary international television market, and considered Dallas to be nothing more than an exotic outsider. Up until 1981, the show remained unaired. In 1981, forced by the competition with the newly-born commercial network which was introducing in the Italian television context the genre of the imported serial, RAI decided to schedule Dallas, but it totally ignored its correct serial flow: the episodes of the first and of the second season were randomly aired, and the audience was obviously confused by the show. At the end of the same year, Mediaset bought the unsuccessful show from RAI. Canale 5, one of the three channels owned by Berlusconi, scheduled the first and second season in the correct chronological order. Its airing was preceded by a careful advertising campaign based on teasers, which were a totally unknown advertising technique on Italian television.
For the first time, hype was created for a television show, and the success was huge.From then on, Hollywood movies and imported serials became a conspicuous part of Mediaset’s daily schedules, together with the first daytime soaps like General Hospital (Canale 5 1982–1989, then Retequattro 1989–1993), or Guiding Light (Canale 5, 1982–1988, then Retequattro, 1988–2012), and Latin-American telenovelas. Telenovelas were totally unknown by the Italian audience, but the genre was very cheap in international markets and it soon became a cornerstone in Mediaset’s new daytime schedule: the huge success of Escrava Isaura (Retequattro, 1982) and Dancin’ Days (Retequattro, 1982) started a flood of Brazilian and Mexican productions in the commercial daily schedules.Ten years after the shock of Dallas, another imported daytime serial was at the centre of a harsh fight between the two competing broadcasters. In 1990, RAI decided to enter the market of imported daytime serials through the acquisition of an American soap opera produced by CBS, The Bold and the Beautiful, which during the same year debuted on RAI’s second channel, Raidue, where it scored unexpectedly high ratings and where its huge success would continue for four years.However, in 1994, the television rights for the show expired.
RAI did not renew its options and Berlusconi fought to buy the show: in front of his higher economic offer to the American network, CBS, RAI was forced to back down.On April 4th, 1990, The Bold and the Beautiful was aired by Canale 5, which made it the cornerstone of its daytime slot, and still boasts an average daily audience of 6 million people. From then on, the soap opera genre in Italy has been defined by its slow narrative rhythm, its complicated and unrealistic love relationships, and its handsome “tabloid-style” characters. Similar to what happened with Dallas, once again Mediaset “stole” a successful TV show from RAI’s schedules and turned it into gold. After that “lesson” in the television market arena, it was evident that seriality was a crucial asset, which could not be underestimated any longer.
4 The First Italian Soap Opera: Un posto al sole (RAI, 1996-Present)In the mid-nineties, Mediaset and RAI did not have either the necessary technical skills or the industrial infrastructure to produce an original soap opera. Unlike any other television serial drama, soaps must simultaneously be written, filmed and post-produced, essentially as an industrial assembly line model; just like its narrative structure, its in-progress production routines are potentially never-ending too. Storyliners must take into account the need for inserting commercial breaks, which are an essential part of the profitability of the show. The shows can be re-scheduled and rerun and they can be sold on international markets. These are reasons why soaps are an asset for a television network, despite their bad reputation in the “high-brow” television scholarship.Italian television had no tradition in the industrial production of this genre: RAI preferred the mini-series format and Mediaset was more focused on buying serial dramas than on producing them. But the need for an original serial drama could not be ignored any longer, and not only for economic reasons.
In the nineties, the global-local theme was the main theoretical and cultural issue in international media and television studies: the need for “national drama”, that is, a domestic daily serial narrative which could give voice to local cultural and social needs and identities, could no longer be underestimated. In this context, the two Italian broadcasters had to face the difficult choice of whether to adopt a more profitable production model upon which the much needed “soap opera factory” could be based. Two alternatives were at stake: the first one was the American model, epitomized by The Bold and the Beautiful, based on a slow narrative rhythm and focused on love stories, which take place in luxury interiors and stereotyped locations and which involve many handsome and good-looking characters who live – and occasionally work – in an aspirational luxurious world. The second alternative model, the British serial drama represented by Coronation Street (ITV, 1960-present) and EastEnders (BBC One, 1985-present), was completely unknown by the Italian audience: characters and locations are represented in a realistic way; communities are more important than couples, and storylines based on friendship or working relationships are often more relevant than love stories. In addition, individual and social problems such as drugs, unemployment, and illness play a major role in the narratives.
Unexpectedly, it was the public service broadcaster who started the game of producing the most commercial of television genres. Moreover, instead of choosing the successful US soap opera model of The Bold and the Beautiful, RAI followed the British serial drama production model. In 1996, RAI signed a joint venture with an Australian-based television company, Grundy Production, which owned the rights to a successful Australian soap opera, Neighbours, a format which at that time had already been purchased by 25 countries. This choice was risky.
Neighbours was based upon realism and community relationships rather than upon sentimental issues, so its narrative structure was very far from the habits of the Italian audience. Another risky issue was that Neighbours was a format. In the nineties, imported and adapted formats were not so common in Italian schedules. It would still take some years for Big Brother and the reality show genre to conquer Italian television. In particular, serial drama was traditionally considered as the most difficult genre to be formatted. But RAI needed to learn how to create such a complex show from scratch; therefore, the Italian broadcaster bought its technical skills in producing a long-running serial drama from Grundy.
Italian storyliners were not used to coping with many characters and storylines at the same time and so they had to learn from Australian headwriters how to manage long-running stories involving more than twenty main characters on a daily basis. Italian actors, who mostly had experience from theatre or movies, were trained by Australian teachers on how to play multiple scenes per day, as required by the soap opera genre. Italian directors were trained in how to film so many actors at a time given a very short amount of time. Every single production step had to be understood, studied, learned and adapted to local needs, in a constant, delicate and often controversial mediation process.The debut of the show, on October 21, 1996 on Raitre, was predictably difficult. The Italian audience’s reaction was lukewarm.
In the first season, inexperienced actors and authors made many mistakes. Moreover, the show was scheduled in a late afternoon slot (6.30 pm) – which was unsuitable for a traditionally daytime genre – and afterwards, it was shifted to the even more difficult access prime time slot (8.30 pm).Happily, RAI seemed to have learned how to deal with seriality: in spite of its laboured first season, the show was allowed the time to build its audience. In the following months it was carefully re-written; the day-by-day training improved actors’ and authors’ performances, and, little by little, the first Italian soap opera became popular and loved by a faithful audience.In contrast with the glossy style of The Bold and the Beautiful, which is based on never-ending love conversations between two handsome and forever young-looking characters in their luxury villas in a glossy and unreal Los Angeles, the realistic stories of Un posto al sole take place not only in living rooms and kitchens, but also in pubs, shops, and workplaces. Characters are real-looking people of all ages. The fast-paced narrative is focused not only on love affairs, marriages and friendship storylines, but also on social and cultural themes such as alcoholism, abortion, divorce, crime, and drugs. The streets and squares of Naples, the sunny Mediterranean city where the action takes place, are present in each episode.
Aldo Grasso Storia Della Televisione Italiana Pdf Free Download
The main location is a beautiful three-storey “villa” in the Posillipo gulf, where most of the characters live; the atmosphere is sunny and warm, and a bit of humour is present in each episode.
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