Massimo Scaglioni

TV Goes Social: Italian Broadcasting Strategies and the Challenges of Convergence

In recent years, the Italian television scenario has become fully convergent, and social TV is an activity – and a hip buzzword – indicating both a rich set of possibilities for the audience to engage with TV shows, and an important asset developed by television industry to provide such engagement, with promotional and economic goals. Mainly adopting the perspective of the production cultures of Italian broadcasters, the essay will explore the “Italian way to social television”, highlighting the strategies adopted by networks and production companies to encourage online television discourse and to exploit it as a content, a marketing device or a source of supplementary income.

Paratexts, Italian style: The promotional cultures of Italian commercial and pay television broadcasters

In recent years, the completed transition towards a fully developed multichannel environment and the growth of non-linear offers has brought to the Italian television (TV) landscape unprecedented attention on the ways in which programmes are communicated to the audience and their images and identities are carefully built. The preparation and circulation of promos have therefore grown in importance and relevance in the national TV industry, as new original practices emerged and a long-lasting tradition was challenged by new formats and goals. Building on a set of in-depth interviews with professionals involved in the writing, production and distribution of promos, and analysis of other production materials, the article reconstructs the ‘promotional cultures’ of Italian broadcasters, analysing the main production processes, the different kinds of promos and the various skills involved, and the logics and constraints involved in the making of these ephemeral paratexts that more and more are pervading both the structure of programming flow and the experience of national TV viewers. Thus, the article investigates the professional practices and logics of contemporary commercial and pay TV programme promotion in Italy, defining the role played by national private broadcasters and transnational groups in shaping an Italian promotional space on TV. The ‘Italian style’ of TV show promotion emerges as a constant negotiation between local historical traditions and clichés, on the one hand, and international trends in promo production and aesthetics, on the other, with a solid path shared with other countries and broadcasters, and some peculiar specificities.

Cinema multiforme. Pratiche di consumo e strategie di offerta del film in televisione e nello scenario convergente

Sulla base dei risultati di una ricerca qualitativa, il lavoro indaga da una parte il mutato ruolo dello spettatore del cinema sulle piattaforme televisive e digitali in uno scenario pienamente convergente, proponendo in particolare tre profili di consumo (onnivoro, leggero e tradizionale) che illustrano le combinazioni tra le diverse offerte e le complesse valorizzazioni del contenuto-film e un modello a piramide rovesciata che inserisce le tecnologie di fruizione in rapporto alle pratiche spettatoriali convergenti, e dall’altra le reazioni, le logiche e le strategie dell’offerta televisiva e mediale che tengono necessariamente conto di questo scenario multiforme e in evoluzione. Building on the results of a qualitative research, the authors investigate, on the one hand, the varied role of cinema viewers on television and digital platforms, inside a fully convergent media scenario. In particular, the essay defines three different consumption profiles (omnivore, light and traditional), to illustrate the combination between an abundant offer and the different appreciation of films, and shows an inverted-pyramid model combining consumption technologies and convergent viewing practices. On the other hand, it studies the reactions, logics and strategies of TV and media offer, necessarily taking into account an evolving, multiple scenario.

Blurred Lines, Distinct Forces: The Evolving Practices of Italian TV Audiences in a Convergent Scenario

This chapter builds on the final results of a several-years-long qualitative research on Italian convergent television, mainly focusing on the different professional and cultural approaches to television and media convergence and on the changes in television viewers’ consumption habits and practices, following or reacting to broadcasters’ production strategies. An original “pyramid” model of “weak” and “strong” audience engagement is presented, to represent effectively the relationships between television shows and their audiences and the different possible practices. The model is also particularly effective in explaining the more recent trends inside the Italian scenario. These changes in viewing practices and in the interplay between broadcasters and audiences have been divided into four categories to offer a fluid and unstable yet accurate portrait of television convergent consumption.

From Referee to Scapegoat, but Still Referee: Auditel in Italy

On 14 December 2011, the Italian antitrust authority, Garante della concorrenza e del mercato (AGCM),1 issued a ruling that was, in many ways, historic. It concerned Auditel, the company that produces the television viewing figures in Italy. It was fined €1,806,604 on three counts of abusing its dominant position2 in the specific market of measuring the consumption of free-to-air and pay TV. Rather than focusing on the specific legal reasons that led to this verdict, we need to look carefully at the underlying rationale that stems from the judgement and its ramifications.

Writing Games: Continuity and Change in the Design and Development of Quiz Shows in Italy

As in the United States and in many countries across Europe, the quiz show was a founding genre for Italian television as far back as the 1950s: because of their broad appeal, such game shows as Lascia o raddoppia and Il musichiere contributed strongly to television’s burgeoning popularity during the subsequent decades. Since then, the quiz show has traversed different eras of television history, with partial and gradual changes to its textual features, aesthetics and narratives, as well as its production routines. Since the 1980s, with deregulation and the advent of commercial television, the Italian game-show market has become more international and more reliant on formats. In the genre’s long history, the “hidden profession” of writing TV games exhibits elements of both continuity and change. The needs of format-adaptation have highlighted two main areas of “localization”: question-writing and casting. This essay explores the profession of game-show writer in Italy and how the role has evolved. It adopts a historical framework to illuminate the continuity and change in the profession, in relation to a broader history of both the genre and the television medium, while also seeking to outline both the specificity of the Italian TV context and its connections with an international environment.