In August 1996, the board of administrations of RAI, the public radio and television company, made decisions concerning the directors and vice directors of all the news and programs departments in RAI-the third such change of executives in four years. For three days, all Italian newspapers dedicated their leading articles to the subject, and continued with two or three inside pages filled with comments, backgrounds, and feature stories. As on previous occasions, the nominations of RAI department directors were an important conversation topic. This level of attention in the press, and the concern for public opinion by RAI, would be seen as quite unusual in most countries; even in Italy, there is no similar interest with regard to other kinds of companies. Television is not only a conversation topic in terms of the content and programs it presents to audiences, but for itself.

Beginnings and Developments

     The official history of Italian television began on January 3, 1954, at which time Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) was the only television network, transmitting news and prime-time programs. RAI had begun as a state-owned radio broadcasting entity in 1924, when it was called Unione Radiofonica Italiana (URI), and was heavily controlled by the national government, at that point a fascist regime. For years, and despite trans­ formations in government, the same company remained a monopoly, simply changing its name-in 1924 URI, in 1927 Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR), and in 1944 RAI (which originally stood for Radio Audizioni Italia; when TV broadcasts began ten years later its named changed, but retained the same acronym). From 1954 to I976, the history of Italian television is the history of RAI, for the monopoly was extended to television, with the same concentration established during the radio era.

     In 1954, the postwar reconstruction period ended and a new phase of industrialization began, with a huge transformation of the country. Until the end of the 1960s millions of Italians relocated inside the country, from south to north, from small villages to large cities, from agriculture to industry. This was a period of great transformation. Television, contrary to the expectations of intellectuals and politicians, was an immediate success. At first, for most people, television viewing was public viewing: in the bars, the cinemas, the houses of the richest families. When a second channel began broadcasting on November 4, 1961, television reached a nationwide audience and family viewing at home began to be more common. In a country still characterized by a high level of illiteracy, television became the most widespread media, in contrast to the traditional low circulation of the daily press (among the lowest in the world) and the irregularity of school attendance (especially in the south).

     The unexpected success of television, coincident with the unexpected great transformation of the country and the rapid growth of national income, explains why the medium became an important political issue. While private entrepreneurial groups tried to create alternatives to the state monopoly of radio and television, the Corte Costituzionale (the high court that oversees the Constitution), ruled on July 13, 1960, that the television monopoly was legal. Just a few years after the beginning of regular programming, then, "tele­ vision" and RAI (as the only broadcaster and producer), became the makers of two different kinds of histories. One was the history of a new medium, which concerned technological evolution, the quantity and quality of programs produced and broadcast, and the audience reactions. The other was the history of the power struggles among political parties and businesses for the control both of legislation and the resources related to RAI-from the control of news and electoral campaigns, to the control of advertising, to the production of fiction, variety shows, and other forms of popular culture.

The Struggles for Television Power

     Italian television has not only been a public-service institution, in the European tradition. It has also historically been a central means of power controlled by the Christian Democratic Party (until its dissolution in 1994) and the Catholic Church. It does not work as a self-supporting industry. Rather, it receives financial resources from both advertising and from fees paid by subscribers. Advertising is sold to firms at low prices and in a very discriminating way, depending on the political power of the organizations and institutions involved. Automobile advertising, for example, was forbidden because FIAT, the Italian automobile company, did not want other cars to be seen on the screen. During the 1970s this situation began to change. On April 14, 1975, governmental reforms gave RAI a new regulatory structure. The main powers (nomination of the board of administration, and control over policies) were transferred from the government to parliament. Even more significantly, on July 28, 1976, the Corte Costituzionale issued a new ruling that allowed the transmission of radio and television programs at local level. With that decision the era of competition had begun and the media system entered a period of change that continued through the 1990s.

     RAI no longer holds monopolies for radio or television: half of its radio audience has gone. Even within RAI itself, the organization is no longer monolithic. Radio and television channels have their own news departments, budgets, and political and cultural outlook. They compete among themselves and with private broadcasters for audiences. Influence, power, resources, and audiences are broadly divided across three segments: the major portion goes to the Catholic sector, the second to the Socialists, the third part to the Communists. Meanwhile, in the private sector the greatest competition has come from the media empire created by Silvio Berlusconi.

     Under the new legal structure permitting local broadcasting, Berlusconi was able to build a network of three channels: Canale 5, Italia 1, and Rete 4. These local and regional broadcasting systems were unified by a common management and strategy within Medi­aset, which in turn was controlled by Fininvest, the holding company created to oversee Berlusconi's media operations. They were financially supported by Pu­bitalia, a firm specializing in the collection of advertising revenues. The extraordinary and very rapid success of private television in Italy was due mainly to one factor: a large number of new companies which had flourished in the roaring 1960s and 1970s had no way to reach Italian markets with their advertising, because of the restrictions described above. Yet after years of hard work, and of social and political unrest, consumers were ready to accept new styles of living and to enter the era of mass consumption. Berlusconi and his management understood this need and provided an answer-a private television system which for the first time in the European scene offered a scheduling and programming policy shaped by marketing philosophy.

     The three channels were intended to be strong com­petitors with the public channels. Canale 5 was created as a general channel for mass audiences, while Italia 1 was aimed at a younger audience, and Rete 4 at women. Successful programs included American films and American series and serials (such as Dallas and Dynasty), game shows, Latin American telenovelas, new formats of Italian variety shows, and Japanese cartoons for children. By the end of the 1980s, the competition between the private and public networks was at its height and the audience more or less divided in two equal parts. The financial resources coming from advertising grew seven-fold in about 12 years, and, although the greatest part went to the private network, the overall media system-RA! and daily press included-increased their revenues as well. While at the end of the 1970s advertising expenditure as a percentage of gross national product was the lowest among industrial countries, at the end of 1980s it reached 6 percent.

     On August 6, 1990, after years of discussion and struggle among the main political parties, a new law was passed by parliament recognizing that a new television system had emerged from the rough competition between RAI and Fininvest. With the new law, private television systems, at both national and local levels, are obliged to transmit a news program in order to maintain their license. In the 1990s, then, competition began in the news arena. Twelve national channels were recognized by the 1990 law. But the six channels owned by the two main networks, RAI and Fininvest, shared 90 percent of the audience.

Television as a New Enemy

     In the 1990s television became, even more than before, the centre of the Italian political scene. Silvio Berlus coni, the owner of Fininvest, made the decision to enter into the political arena, creating a new political movement called Forza Italia (Forward Italy). The coalition of leftist parties that had replaced the old Socialist and Communist parties, led by the Partita Democratica della Sinistra (PDS, Democratic Party of the Left), was furious. The two television networks were heavily engaged in the 1994 election campaign: RAI effectively on the side of the left coalition and Fininvest on the side of the right coalition. To the surprise of most observers, the right coalition of Silvio Berlus­ coni won the elections of March 27, 1994 and Berlus­ coni became the head of the national government.

     From the day of the Berlusconi victory, a war began. It was not only a war against Berlusconi but against television itself-the new enemy. Politicians, intellectuals, teachers, newspapers, began to organize public meetings and conventions against television. Some called for a national referendum against private television. Berlusconi became, for half of the country, the incarnation of evil, and was unable to resist the attacks-he resigned after only seven months. A temporary, technocratic government passed a law, which was not approved by parliament, dictating severe restrictions on the use of television in electoral campaigns (practically forbidding the use of television as a propaganda device). In the meantime, advertising revenues decreased rapidly and the entire media system entered a period of recession. Both RAI and Fininvest faced large debts and drastically reduced their investments in drama production, the most expensive segment of the television industry.

     In spite of these views, a June 1995 national referen­dum on a number of questions to do with television­ such as the quantity and placement of advertising, and whether one person should be allowed to own more than one private TV channel-ended in a low-turnout victory for Berlusconi, who had used his three channels to campaign vigorously for a "no-change" vote (such as by implying that favorite soap operas and telenovelas would no longer be available if the vote went against him), while the three RAI channels, by then headed by Berlus­ coni's own appointees from his 1994 stint as prime minister, remained neutral. The campaign against Berlusconi's domination of private television continued (and he was obliged to reduce his holding in Mediaset to below 50 percent), but began to resemble campaigns of the same kind occurring in other countries, focusing on the amount of violence and sex in programming, or on ways to protect children from television.

Scheduling: Programs and Audiences

     Italian television is created from an original and changing mixture of five different kinds of content: American drama, Italian drama, Italian soccer and other sports, Italian songs and shows, Italian news and politics. Each one is bound to strong patterns of Italian culture.

     The style of presentation has two main approaches. One is melodramatic, in the 19th-century tradition of melodrama and opera. The other is light and ironic, in the tradition of the commedia dell'arte and of the avanspettacolo, a form of popular theater variety show featuring comedians and girls.

     The relationship of Italian television to American drama has specific characteristics. Even prior to television, American mass culture has been the model for Italian entertainment, mainly through films. Throughout the 1950s most American movies were imported into Italy, dubbed in Italian, and shown throughout the country in more than 11,000 cinemas. The first audiences for television, then, looked at television as a different form of movie, and indeed, American films have, for years, been the prime-time family viewing on Mondays. American films, and subsequently, American series and serials have provided a considerable part of the offering of Italian television channels. Among European channels, Italian television has dedicated more air time to American drama programs and to foreign films dubbed in Italian than any other.

     Another important element of Italian television has been the production of a form of original drama series that has no real counterpart abroad. This is the tele­ romanzo (television romance) or sceneggiato (adaptation of novels). The stories are presented in six or eight episodes of two hours each, taken from the masterpieces of international literature. They are shot and played in a realistic setting in a mixed style between theater and film. One of their models is to be found in an Italian postwar invention, the fotoromanzo or novel with photographs-long-running series that sold weekly as magazines (and are still produced). Action is slow and all the stories are located in the past, mainly in the 19th century. Prime-time Sunday was for years dedicated to the family viewing of teleromanzi. Since the 1980s, however, this kind of drama production has no longer been produced in the same way. Since then, Italian drama has tried to adopt more standard formats, with stories now located in contemporary Italy. The most successful of these stories was La Piovra (The Octopus), a story about the Mafia. Begun in 1984 and still continuing, it is a kind of Italian-style serial comprising seven miniseries to date.

New Developments

     The trend that began in the 1990s has been toward tighter television regulation. Antitrust rules, limits on advertising, establishment of national authorities and regional control bodies, regulation of access to media during election campaigns (introduced immediately following the fall of the first Berlusconi government), and programming and production quotas within the framework of the European directive "Television Without Frontiers": all these and other steps have been approved by Italian legislators after the establishment of the RAJ-Mediaset duopoly. Law 122, passed in the spring of 1998 by the PDS-led government that succeeded Berlusconi's first period in office, established for the first time a quota of net revenues to be re-invested in national and European TV drama and movie production. Some 20 percent of the license fee from state television, and 10 percent of television advertising revenue from private television, went to this purpose. The intention was to help bring about a renaissance in the television industry, setting aside a figure estimated at around 400 million per annum.

     This policy of production fund quotas, related to the much-debated issue of the "defense of national identity" against the risks of Americanization, has had an immediately visible impact: the crisis that followed the massive import of foreign productions has been succeeded by a remarkable recovery, and the schedules of both private and public television have since been filled with domestic drama, much appreciated by the viewer for its cultural proximity.

     However, American series maintain a cadre of faithful fans. Normally shown outside prime time, they are generally able to guarantee audiences in accordance with the average share of the channels on which they appear. Only a tiny slice of American imports now have access to prime time on the Italian channels, which are dominated by domestic drama, and these imported offerings are mostly TV movies or a small number of series suitable for a family audience or young adults. The remaining American programming is spread over the daytime schedule, or, in the case of harder or more edgy products, late at night.

     Satellite television arrived in Italy-where the cable infrastructure has never been highly developed-in the second half of the 1990s. It heralded the advent of a multi-channel environment that is still expanding thanks to digital technology and, even more significantly, to international operators who were allowed to enter the national market. Telepiu and Stream, the two satellite platforms operating in Italy, have been largely controlled by foreign capital from the beginning. Some 90 percent ofTelepiu was owned by Vivendi Universal (Canal Plus), and Stream was owned jointly by Mur­doch's News Corporation and the former Italian monopolist Telecom. In 2002 the two platforms merged into Sky, under Murdoch's total control. This development resulted from two factors. One was a consequence of the global alliance between Vivendi and News Corporation. The other was related to the fact that the Italian market proved too limited for two different satellite-based entities, both of which went through a critical period, as did other European pay­ television systems.

     In spite of the "pull" of soccer, the penetration of satellite pay-TV is quite slow. Interestingly enough, the "television of the future" seems to have prompted Italians to rediscover the social and collective mode of television viewing, which in the past accompanied the beginnings of terrestrial TV when only a minority of households had a television set. Bars, sports clubs, and groups of friends and neighbors now take out a single subscription, from which tens of them can benefit at a much lower individual cost.

     If the arrival of the multi-channel environment has not (or not yet) affected television audiences' habits and preferences, it has had an immediate impact on the programming structure of terrestrial television, draining off quite large portions of premium content, particularly sport and cinema, which have consequently resulted in a downswing in the supply afforded to traditional television. On the RAI channels, for example, sports programs fell from 2,280 hours in 1998 to 1,426 in 200 I, while in the same period showings of movies fell from 3,074 to 2,344 hours.

     In recent years, RAI and Mediaset managed to obtain and maintain more or less equal positions in the Italian market, and their six channels (three each) hold a steady 90 percent. This balance is the result of two opposite trajectories: descending in the case of public and ascending in the case of private television, which year after year gains a small fraction of the market. From 1998 to 2003 the commercial networks share increased from 41 to 44 percent while that of the public networks decreased from 48 to 45 percent.

     After 2000, these opposing trajectories accelerated. Mediaset got the advantage by exploiting the reality and game-show format (such as Big Brother and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) and its gain was further galvanized by the victory of the political coalition led by Berlusconi in 2001. RAI went through one of its periodic phases of instability, due to changes in top management and the redistribution of posts according to the spoils system of the new center-right majority. In spite of this, public television has maintained a slight superiority, even though this was more difficult to achieve than in the past.

     This was not the case as far as advertising is concerned. In Italy, as everywhere else, advertising revenue from television began to fall after 2001 because of the downswing in the telecommunications sector. Actually, the public and private television channels felt this to quite a different degree. RAI's revenue decreased dramatically, whereas Mediaset actually obtained a slight increase: an opposing trend which, it has been surmised, is not unrelated to the political landscape.

     Speculation mushroomed in other circumstances as well. The wait for a third pole able to rupture the crystallized balance of the RAI-Mediaset duopoly has accompanied Italian national broadcasting history for more than ten years, since the duopolistic system was established and received legal recognition. During 2000 it seemed that the conditions for achieving this had finally come about, thanks to the purchase by Seatffelecom of the two Telemontecarlo networks owned by the Cecchi Gori Group. Telemontecarlo had never managed to obtain more than a skimpy 2 percent of the market, but the new owners announced plans for expansion of the main network, renamed La7, and had successfully started an acquisition campaign of stars, managers and journalists taken from RAI and Mediaset as well as a fairly substantial advertising round­ up. This decision could also be viewed as a progressive development, the creation of a new network, no matter how small, in the wake of the multimedia convergence between telecommunications, television and Internet.

     On this premise, it is not surprising that what hap­pened afterwards was traced back, in some circles, to a craftily orchestrated plot to neutralize the challenge of La7 to the supremacy of the duopoly. The hard facts are that in July 2001 the Pirelli and Benetton companies took over the controlling share of Olivetti from the Luxembourg financial enterprise Bell, in turn the major shareholder of Telecom. The new owners announced that they did not intend to risk a large investment in a television project that could not ensure results. The prospects of a third Italian television pole melted away into thin air. The cozy duopoly of the Italian television system is still alive and in good shape