Once Upon a Time Italian TV was Good
Whilst chatting with one of my students, I discovered that he’d done his degree thesis on the subject of Italian TV . I had to know more about this aspect of Italy I love to hate.
My student told me that when TV was first launched in Italy, way back in 1954, Italian television had an objective. It was also good too. Oh how times have changed! Read more
Zero Tolerance
I watched an interesting fly on the wall type documentary the other day entitled ‘Tolleranza Zero’ - ‘Zero Tolerance’ (Yes, at times Italian and English are extremely similar).
This program was shown on La7, one of Italy’s public TV channels, and was about, as you might expect, how the Italian police are dealing with crime in and around Milan in Italy.
What came across to me was the high level of professionalism exhibited by the sometimes maligned Italian ‘polizia’. The ‘polizia’ is not the same as the para-military ‘carabinieri’, by the way, although the polizia does have a similar function. For more information on Italy’s many police type bodies, you might like my old post called ‘They Got Guns‘.
Certainly the Milanese polizia appear to be doing their job, and doing it rather well. Indeed, the recent proposals to put soldiers on the streets in Italy appear to be something of a slap in the face for this organisation, which is something of a shame.
Still, politicians who don’t interfere wouldn’t be good politicians, now would they?!
As an aside, the few documentaries which appear on Italian TV, usually far too late in the evening, are, for the most part, very well made.
At last, Top Gear in Italy
Some time ago, I wrote a little post with some suggestions for improving the TV here, one of those suggestions included adding a decent motoring programme, like Top Gear which I got back in the UK.
Well, for a couple of months now I’ve been buying the Italian version of the Top Gear magazine, and it is not at all bad. Then I noticed a few ads, including one whole bus which was covered in an ad for the Top Gear motoring programme.
Finally, car mad Italy gets a good programme about cars, motorbikes and all things motoring, I thought. About time too, even if the programme is part of the Top Gear franchise, and therefore, not Italian in origin.
However, there is a downside. Isn’t there always? The downside is that to see Top Gear you need to have a subscription to Sky, which, incidentally, we almost had, but for some mysterious reason (possibly because I was always a bit short with the Sky telesales people - I hate telesales), our Sky subscription was never activated, even if we now have Cartoon Network and CNN.
What the heck, I can at least read about exotic and un-environmentally friendly cars in the colourful Top Gear magazine. And Italians finally get a magazine that is a) not as dull as ditch-water and b) is not a thinly disguised car manufacturers brochure.
Italian TV, one more time…
Well, I’ve gone on about it before, Italian TV that is, and how low the overall quality of programming is. Another of my Italian TV related gripes concerned the inordinate amount of advertising viewers are blessed with.
Some time back, both of the biggies, RAI and Mediaset, were fined over the overuse of advertising. Not a great surprise to yours truly. Now, according to an article on page 20 of today’s Il Sole 24 Ore, the Euro parliament bods have accused RAI and Mediaset of showing too much advertising, and the EC has said that Italian sanctions against the perpetrators are rather too soft.
How strange, these ’soft’ sanctions. Now, I’m sure that this has nothing to do with a certain former Italian prime minister being effectively involved in the control of both of the TV big boys. No, no way.
Springing to their own defence, Mediaset has accused the EC of not understanding the situation in Italy, and of having miscalculated the number of ads. Well, they would have to say something, wouldn’t they?
One thing I would say about Italian TV advertising, much as I dislike it, is that Italy probably has one of the most sophisticated TV advertising systems in the world. Although they go over the top, in terms of quantity, the way in which all these ads are planned is very smart. And a lot of brain power obviously goes into the planning.
It’s a shame the same level of intellect does not go into the production of decent TV programs. With all the ad income there must be a fair amount of cash to invest in commissioning a little more ‘intellivision’. And, if the quality of content were higher, then possibly the viewers may overlook the vast quantity of ads they are bombarded with.
On the subject of non-advertising, the RAI and Mediaset big boys should spend a little (more) time watching Sky. This might give them a few ideas. Although one suspects that the attitude is most probably ‘it’s free so the viewers will just have to put up with the crap’. Indeed, both RAI and Mediast have pay-per-view systems, and by feeding the viewers rubbish on ordinary TV they can encourage them to pay for something better. Or am I just being paranoid?
You get what you pay for, I suppose.
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