You are in:
- Archives » 2006 » August 2006
TV Nation
More proof that Italy is firmly in the post-Berlusconi period: Backed by left-leaning pressure groups and media academics, Prime minister Romano Prodi has pledged to reform the country's television industry.
According to the BBC Prodi wants to "promote competition" in the television sector, where state-owned RAI and Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset account for 85 percent of terrestrial programming. The EU Commission, which counts among its former presidents a certain Mr Prodi, has also complained that Italy's TV structure is unacceptable. Tana De Zulueta, a Green MP and spokesperson for the campaigning group A Different TV says that the big two "have sewn up the market, so if you want to sell a programme in Italy you have got to agree on the price with (them),
"And that means quality has slipped, because there is no longer real competition," she continued.
In a country as TV-obsessed as Italy, she claims, this kind of concentration can have dire consequences.
Professor Paul Ginsborg of Florence University points to some of the effects: "TV in Italy is awful," he says. Broadcast news is in real difficulty. Mediaset's news is not taken seriously on the left as it is owned by the former PM, while other critics counter that RAI is subject to the demands of the government of the day: When Berlusconi was in power, left-wingers argued that he effectively controlled 85 percent of TV news.
And yet... much of the criticism levelled at the boob tube seems more of a critique of Italian culture, and Berlusconi's influence in particular. "The TV is on in every home at meals. TV is on in many restaurants when people go and eat out," complains Ms De Zulueta,
"So you never get away from it and most people's perception of what is going on, they get it from TV. TV is really decisive in defining reality in this country."
Prof Ginsborg is even more strident: "Italian society is fragmented. It's also a society that is time-poor. Nobody has enough time for anything," he told the BBC. Drawing attention to the TV careers that have come to an abrupt end following criticism of Mr Berlusconi, he claimed parallels between the centre-right leader's practices and those of former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini:
"He's not got blackshirt men with clubs ready to knock you over the head if you don't agree," he said. "His regime is based on something in many ways more subtle and more insidious - that is, passivity...
"More or less chloroforming the people by means of endless appeals to consume, work and spend as the prime activity and motivation of life and to allow the politician to get on with the job.
"All that is dangerous for democracy."
This, unfortunately, is typical Marxist opium of the people stuff: Voters don't behave in the way you want, so blame it on the doping effect of television. It's been used by charlatans everywhere, from fundamentalist Christians to hard left cultural commentators. Italian TV might be dire, but it isn't unique in Europe: Indeed, few European countries would not benefit from subjecting their broadcasting giants to more competition.
It seems, instead, to be a Berlusconi problem. Though Berlusconi was identified with economic expansion, he did precious little to encourage it while PM. Much of what the gogglebox shoulders the blame for - consumerism, fracturing of communities and families, erosion of leisure time, a tenuous grasp of "reality" - have also been identified as characteristics of liberal economies, at least by left-leaning observers. Is this television's fault, or are broadcasters simply giving viewers what they want?
The critics' language hints at something deeper, as if the entire population is emerging from some kind of national psychosis. The citizens of post-Communist eastern Europe faced a struggle to overcome the traumas of their recent history. In Britain, the Thatcher era is commonly depicted as a collective retreat from reality, as it is too difficult to otherwise explain the fact that people voted for her.
Italy needs broadcast reform to help it "mature as a democracy", says Prof Ginsborg. Translated from the Italian, that means "to vote against Berlsconi more convincingly."
