Viewing by remote control
Guy Dinmore | Monday, 16 June 2008
Fed an expanding diet of reality and game shows displaying saucy soubrettes, Italians at the weekend are tuning into a new prime-time series, Tell Me The Truth, where VIPs and their real-life partners strut their stuff and vie to be judged the most beautiful and sincere couple. Rai Uno, the most popular of the state broadcaster's three terrestrial channels, launched the Saturday evening series two days after Silvio Berlusconi was sworn in for his third time as prime minister.
The timing was coincidental and would go unnoticed elsewhere. But Italy is different. It happens that Endemol, the international production company that made the series, has for the past year been part-owned and one-third controlled by Mediaset, the private Italian broadcaster, also with three terrestrial channels, which in turn is owned and controlled by the billionaire Berlusconi family.
Endemol, creator of Big Brother and Deal or No Deal, is a big supplier to both Mediaset and Rai. Last year Rai says it bought 735 hours of programming from Endemol under an annual contract worth euro40m-euro45m.
As prime minister, elected in April with a comfortable majority in parliament, Berlusconi also controls appointments to the Rai board. That Italy's third richest man in effect dominates the Rai-Mediaset duopoly of terrestrial free-to-air viewing would raise howls of protest over conflict of interest elsewhere. In Italy it is barely discussed any more -- at least not on television.
Sandro Curzi, a 78-year-old veteran of the left who wonders if he will lose his job as one of Rai's nine board members, says the "sex lives of VIPs" is another step in the dumbing down of Italian television. "I am worried about the culture of this country. Even at the big newspapers, the idea of the great scoop, in-depth investigation and news have gone," he says. "Only in the cinema are we still innovating," he adds, praising Gomorra, the award-winning film on the Naples Mafia.
"Berlusconi won the elections because he succeeded in modifying the culture of the country," he says. "It is the opium of the masses. This is how television functions." Mediaset, asked to comment, said the company had increased its information programmes during the past three years.
For Daniele Luttazzi, Rai and Mediaset have a more determining role. He was one of three journalists fired from Rai in 2002 after Berlusconi, in his second term as prime minister, said some correspondents were unfit to work there. Luttazzi, in his satirical programme, had crossed the line when he interviewed Marco Travaglio on his book The Scent of Money: The Origin and Mystery of Silvio Berlusconi's Fortune. (Travaglio is in trouble himself. While speaking on a news-chat show, also produced by Endemol, he accused a prominent centre-right senator of having Mafia friends.)
"In the past 20 years, Italian TV -- both Rai and Mediaset -- has shaped a propagandistic framing of rightwing values: God, Family, Fatherland," Luttazzi says. "We are in a permanent electoral campaign grounded in fear and xenophobia. TV is constantly promoting rightwing values and trying to shape the country's mentality, both through news and entertainment. The Italian left ignores the virtues of counter-framing and that's why it has lost the elections."
Giuseppe Giulietti, an opposition MP who worked for Rai, agrees that media control translates into votes, but for different reasons. "Berlusconi wins by creating information based on fear. He runs a fear agency," he says, arguing that the centre-right exploits issues such as crime, immigration and Italy's gypsy communities.
Giulietti has been fighting government-proposed legislation that would allow Mediaset's Rete4 channel to keep its analogue broadcasting frequency until 2012, in the face of European Union (EU) efforts to open the market to more competition. Yet he makes the point of blaming leftwing politicians for the "Italian anomaly of the TV cartel", by colluding with the right to preserve the decades-old status quo that gives the left control over Rai's third channel, Rai Tre.
The channel's respected star of investigative journalism is Milena Gabanelli, whose Report documentaries regularly expose misdeeds of government and big business. For more than a decade, she says, she worked without political pressure. Then with a theatrical pause, she adds: "Until three weeks ago."
Yet the pressure has not come from the Berlusconi government but from the party that is the political custodian of Rai Tre, the left-of-centre democrats. A former adviser to Walter Veltroni, the ex-mayor of Rome and Democratic party leader who was defeated in the April elections, protested against an investigation into building permits in the capital during the Veltroni era.
For one of Rome's most prominent sociologists, however, journalists and politicians exaggerate the importance of television. Massimo Baldini, media guru at Rome's Luiss University, says Italians may watch a lot, but they do not really listen. "Berlusconi won three elections and he lost twice," Baldini states simply. "TV has an influence but not a decisive one." The Eurobarometer 2007 survey showed that 47 per cent of Italians "tend to trust" what they see on television, well below the European average of 58 per cent.
Baldini says that although television cannot create trends, it can ride them, like a fashion - and Berlusconi understands this best. "He makes his body a window display - the hair implants, the facelifts," Baldini says. "He understood that the clothes make the king. Words are fallen mistresses. They no longer have power. In public discourse there are only two words that count -- free and new." (Additional reporting by Silvia Marchetti. FT Syndication Service)
The timing was coincidental and would go unnoticed elsewhere. But Italy is different. It happens that Endemol, the international production company that made the series, has for the past year been part-owned and one-third controlled by Mediaset, the private Italian broadcaster, also with three terrestrial channels, which in turn is owned and controlled by the billionaire Berlusconi family.
Endemol, creator of Big Brother and Deal or No Deal, is a big supplier to both Mediaset and Rai. Last year Rai says it bought 735 hours of programming from Endemol under an annual contract worth euro40m-euro45m.
As prime minister, elected in April with a comfortable majority in parliament, Berlusconi also controls appointments to the Rai board. That Italy's third richest man in effect dominates the Rai-Mediaset duopoly of terrestrial free-to-air viewing would raise howls of protest over conflict of interest elsewhere. In Italy it is barely discussed any more -- at least not on television.
Sandro Curzi, a 78-year-old veteran of the left who wonders if he will lose his job as one of Rai's nine board members, says the "sex lives of VIPs" is another step in the dumbing down of Italian television. "I am worried about the culture of this country. Even at the big newspapers, the idea of the great scoop, in-depth investigation and news have gone," he says. "Only in the cinema are we still innovating," he adds, praising Gomorra, the award-winning film on the Naples Mafia.
"Berlusconi won the elections because he succeeded in modifying the culture of the country," he says. "It is the opium of the masses. This is how television functions." Mediaset, asked to comment, said the company had increased its information programmes during the past three years.
For Daniele Luttazzi, Rai and Mediaset have a more determining role. He was one of three journalists fired from Rai in 2002 after Berlusconi, in his second term as prime minister, said some correspondents were unfit to work there. Luttazzi, in his satirical programme, had crossed the line when he interviewed Marco Travaglio on his book The Scent of Money: The Origin and Mystery of Silvio Berlusconi's Fortune. (Travaglio is in trouble himself. While speaking on a news-chat show, also produced by Endemol, he accused a prominent centre-right senator of having Mafia friends.)
"In the past 20 years, Italian TV -- both Rai and Mediaset -- has shaped a propagandistic framing of rightwing values: God, Family, Fatherland," Luttazzi says. "We are in a permanent electoral campaign grounded in fear and xenophobia. TV is constantly promoting rightwing values and trying to shape the country's mentality, both through news and entertainment. The Italian left ignores the virtues of counter-framing and that's why it has lost the elections."
Giuseppe Giulietti, an opposition MP who worked for Rai, agrees that media control translates into votes, but for different reasons. "Berlusconi wins by creating information based on fear. He runs a fear agency," he says, arguing that the centre-right exploits issues such as crime, immigration and Italy's gypsy communities.
Giulietti has been fighting government-proposed legislation that would allow Mediaset's Rete4 channel to keep its analogue broadcasting frequency until 2012, in the face of European Union (EU) efforts to open the market to more competition. Yet he makes the point of blaming leftwing politicians for the "Italian anomaly of the TV cartel", by colluding with the right to preserve the decades-old status quo that gives the left control over Rai's third channel, Rai Tre.
The channel's respected star of investigative journalism is Milena Gabanelli, whose Report documentaries regularly expose misdeeds of government and big business. For more than a decade, she says, she worked without political pressure. Then with a theatrical pause, she adds: "Until three weeks ago."
Yet the pressure has not come from the Berlusconi government but from the party that is the political custodian of Rai Tre, the left-of-centre democrats. A former adviser to Walter Veltroni, the ex-mayor of Rome and Democratic party leader who was defeated in the April elections, protested against an investigation into building permits in the capital during the Veltroni era.
For one of Rome's most prominent sociologists, however, journalists and politicians exaggerate the importance of television. Massimo Baldini, media guru at Rome's Luiss University, says Italians may watch a lot, but they do not really listen. "Berlusconi won three elections and he lost twice," Baldini states simply. "TV has an influence but not a decisive one." The Eurobarometer 2007 survey showed that 47 per cent of Italians "tend to trust" what they see on television, well below the European average of 58 per cent.
Baldini says that although television cannot create trends, it can ride them, like a fashion - and Berlusconi understands this best. "He makes his body a window display - the hair implants, the facelifts," Baldini says. "He understood that the clothes make the king. Words are fallen mistresses. They no longer have power. In public discourse there are only two words that count -- free and new." (Additional reporting by Silvia Marchetti. FT Syndication Service)