1993 in Italian television

List of years in Italian television

This is a list of Italian television related events form 1993.

Events

In 1993, all three the principal Italian television companies (RAI, Finivest and Telemontecarlo) have to face hard financial troubles and the consequences of the Mani Pulite typhoon that upset the political system. Both the talk shows of Michele Santoro and Gad Lerner on RAI 3 and the Fininvest news programs (TG5 and TG4) play an important role in gaining the support of the public opinion on the enquiries. However, Fininvest gives a wide space also to Vittorio Sgarbi, who, in his daily column, defends the politicians investigated and attacks the magistrates with unaudited verbal violence.

RAI

  • 3 February: The TG1 director Bruno Vespa, controversial because notoriously bound to the DC, that himself called “my reference editor”, resigns after that the journalists have announced a strike against him. On September 8, also the TG3 director Sandro Curzi resigns, to protest against the spending cuts decided by the new RAI board of directors.
  • 19 February. The program Un giorno in pretura (A day at the court) gets 7,760 million viewers showing the first Tangentopoli trial, to the Milan council clerk Walter Armanini. Since 28 October, the same program gets an again broader audience airing the process to the Montedison manager Sergio Cusani, where the Procurator Antonio Di Pietro harasses important politicians as Arnaldo Forlani and Bettino Craxi. Umberto Eco is among the few to criticize the use of the television as a pillory.
  • 25 June Reform of RAI. By now, the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate (Giorgio Napolitano and Giovanni Spadolini) nominate the Administrative Council of the estate, that elects at its turn the General Director. 
  • 13 July. Installation of the new Board of Directors, the so-called “Professors” (also if really the professors are only two on five); Claudio Demattè is elected President, Gianni Locatelli General Director. One of the first choices of the new Board is to delete the very popular show Saluti e baci, considered vulgar and too expensive. The “professors” have the commission to the settle the RAI budget and to free the estate from the political conditionings, but in both cases, they get limited results.
  • 27 September Birth of Rai Parlamento, the headline caring the institutional communication, directed by Nuccio Fava.
  • 3 November. In a dramatic TV message to the nation the president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro rejects with indignation the charge to have received illicit funds by the secret services when he was Interior Minister.
  • 17 November: the match Italy-Portugal for the qualification to the 1994 FIFA World Cup gets the record audience of the year, with 20, 300 million viewers.
  • 25 November-2 December For the last time, Beppe Grillo appears in RAI with a two-part show that gets 14,600 million viewers. The performer attacks harshly the TV publicity and moreover the telephonic society STET, accused to host nasty services and erotic hotlines. (The STET president, Biagio Agnes, former RAI general director, had banished Grillo from the little screen for his attacks to the PSI). Later, Grillo will exhibit only in pay-tv.
  • 17 December: the RAI correspondent from New York Maria Giovanna Maglie is forced to resigns for irregularities in the expenses list.
  • 24 December: for the first time, Rai airs the Christmas Concert from the Paul VI audience Hall in Vatican, with the presence, among others, of Lucio Dalla and Angelo Branduardi; Elisabetta Gardini presents the show. The event will become a tradition of the Christmas time, aired sometimes by RAI, sometimes by Canale 5.   
  • ·28 December: after forty years of presence in video, Nicoletta Orsomando retires and is knighted.
  • ·30 December : the Ciampi cabinet emanates the so-called “save RAI decree” establishing a capital increase of 500 billion liras and a growth of the canon to avoid the failure of the estate. Silvio Berlusconi accuses Ciampi to waste the taxpayers’ money for a RAI controlled by PDS.

Fininvest

For Fininvest, 1993 is a difficult year, with the closure of La Cinq, a growing indebtment with the banks, the arrest for corruption of the manager Aldo Brancher and the perspective of a hostile government if the left wins the next elections. The idea of a direct intervention of Silvio Berlusconi in politics, to save the company interests, begins to circulate. However, Canale 5 confirm its public success, and Enrico Mentana’s TG5 is the most viewed news program, overcoming TG1.

  • ·7 April : at the Maurizio Costanzo Show, the principal TV stars, both RAI and Fininvest, with the slogan “Forbidding is forbidden”, take the field and mobilize the public against the projected regulation that forbids the infomercials inside the TV shows. The initiative is successful and the project is retired. The episode inaugurates the unprejudiced use by Silvio Berlusconi of the television for political purposes.
  • 26 November: in a press conference, broadcast on all the news programs, with a 5 million viewers’ audience, Silvio Berlusconi declares himself available to enter politics.
  • Maria De Filippi, the future “queen of trash”, debuts on Canale 5, substituting Lella Costa as presenter of the show Amici.

Other channels

  • Spring: Montedison completes the acquisition of Telemontecarlo by Rede Globo.
  • Summer: the pay-tv Tele+2 gets the rights of the Italian football league system, till then always granted to RAI, and hires the most famous TV sport journalist, Aldo Biscardi; on 29 August, the first encrypted match (Lazio-Foggia) is aired. The passage to the pay-tv revolutionizes the Italian football, with the multiplication of early and late kickoffs.
  • September: Cinquestelle, Odeon and Tivuitalia unificates in a single circuit, RTA (Reti Televisive Associate).

Awards

10. Telegatto award, for the season 1992-1993.

Debuts

RAI

Serial

Variety

  • Il grande gioco dell’oca (The great game of the goose) – presented by Gigi Sabani, directed by Jocelyn; the show is suspended at the second season for production troubles and for the charges of cruelty to animals. The format is successfully exported in the Spanish countries with the title El gran juego de la hoca.
  • Mezzogiorno in famiglia (Family noon) – variety and game show, ideated by Michele Guardì, aired by RAI 2 in the weekend around noon; lasted till 2019

Sport

News and educational

  • Ultimo minuto (Last minute) – presented by Simonetta Martone; 5 season. The show tells the dramatic experiences of people who risked their lives and includes docu-fiction realized by the future film director Gabriele Muccino; it is famous also for the parody done by Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo in Mai dire gol.
  • Il rosso e il nero (Red and black), political talk show with Michele Santoro; 2 seasons.

Fininvest

Serial

Variety

  • Canzoni spericolate (Reckless songs)- music contest among sport and entertainment personalities, the professional singers excluded; presented by Enrica Bonaccorti and Marco Columbro; 2 seasons.

News and educational

  • Target – magazine by Gregorio Paolini about television, presented in turn by Gaia De Laurentis, Natasha Stefanenko and Tamara Donà; 7 seasons. It is characterized by a sloping rhythm and by stylistic experiments (as the use of a horse as “host”) unusual in the Fininvest shows.

Other channels

  • Tappeto volante – (Telemontecarlo) talk show, hosted by Luciano Rispoli and characterized, unlike the Costanzo’s programs, by a friendly and relaxed atmosphere; it lasts until 2009, transmigrating to various channel.
  • Il processo di Biscardi – (Tele+2) sport show, created by Aldo Biscardi as an answer to Rai’s Il processo del lunedì; after having transmigrated, in the years, to Telemontecarlo and various minor channels, it’s actually aired by Italia 7.
  • Vizi privati, pubbliche visioni (Private vices, public visions) – (Lombardia 7); erotic show where the transsexual Maurizia Paradiso presents amateurish porn videos; 2 seasons.

Shows of the year

Rai

TV-movies

Period drama

Miniseries

Serials

Variety

News and educational

  • Tocca a noi (It is our turn) - magazine by Enzo Biagi.
  • Il pianeta dei dinosauri (The dinosaurs’ planet) – program of popular science, by Piero Angela.
  • Totò, un altro pianeta (Totò, another planet) – documentary in 15 episodes by Giancarlo Governi, analyzing the life and the career of the Neapolitan comic actor in every respect.
  • La donna che lavora (The working woman) – by Raffaella Spaccarelli; updating of the historical 1959 reportage.

Fininvest

TV-movies

Miniseries

Serial

Variety

Other channels

Variety

  • Corpo a corpo (Clinch) - (Telemontecarlo) talk show about the personal fears, with Alba Parietti.

News and educational

  • Rock notes, La storia del rock (History of rock) – (Telemontecarlo) documentary in 12 episodes by Dario Salvatori.

Sit-com

Ending this year

  • A pranzo con Wilma
  • Avanzi
  • Bellezze al bagno
  • Big!
  • Buon pomeriggio
  • Extralarge
  • Il mercato del sabato
  • Mezzanotte e dintorni
  • Porca miseria
  • Il pranzo è servito (a young Matteo Salvini takes part, as contender, to one of the last episodes, defining himself “a professional do-nothing”).

Deaths

  • 15 September: Edmondo Bernacca, 69, colonel of the Italian Air Force, for decades official weatherman of RAI.
  • 4 November: Nerina Montagnani, 96, actress, famous to have played Natalina, the chambermaid of Nino Manfredi in a long series of Lavazza's commercials.
  • 20 November: Massimo Inardi, 66, doctor and parapsychologist, very popular champion of TV quiz in the Seventies.

This page was last updated at 2022-09-09 11:59 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari