Commercial television between social change and lack of legislation (1976-1984)

Abstract

The essay analyzes the nascent phase of private television in Italy and the autonomous evolution of the television system until the consolidation of the three national networks Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4. The protagonists of this phase are small private televisions, the big publishers and the parties. Often, first televisions are short-life, but they represent an interesting cultural phenomenon that opens the way for large investors. At the beginning of the Seventies the main publishing groups as Rizzoli, Rusconi, Mondadori, and Silvio Berlusconi, invest with the aim of creating national broadcasting companies, a path that is accomplished through close relations with political parties, especially with Democrazia cristiana and Partito socialista. In a phase of full transformation, the absence of a regulatory discipline — linked to a political calculation of the parties — is an advantage for the strongest investors. Such transformation of the ether is accompanied by a process of anthropological change of the public to which the influence of advertising contributes. Then, changing tastes of the public will be an obstacle to the systematic organization of the television broadcasting sector.