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Overview of the events of 1954 in Italian television
3 January. After five years of experimentation, the speaker Fulvia Colombo [it] announces from the Milan studios, the official beginning of the TV broadcasting on Italy. This is the schedule of the day:
11 AM
Inaugural ceremony, from the studios of Milan, Turin and Rome, with the three cities’ mayors, the Rome vicar cardinal Clemente Micara, the Minister of Communications Modesto Panetti and the RAI president Cristiano Ridomi.
2.30 PM
Arrivi e partenze – officially, the first show of Italian television
The TV signal covers Northern Italy, Rome and the Tyrrhenian side of Central Italy. The transmissions last four hours and a quarter by day (from 5:30 to 11:30 PM, with a pause from 7 to 8:45; from 11 AM to 4 PM and from 5 PM to 11:30 PM during the holidays). The TV programming relies on music, plays and films; the news are strictly institutional and focused on the official ceremonies. The subscribers to the new media are initially just 90, but a month later they number already 24,000 people.
January–March: The RAI publishes its “TV self-discipline code”, inspired by the moral criteria of the Centro cattolico Cinematografico (Catholic Cinematografic Center).
10 April. RAI changes its business name from Radio Audizioni Italiane (Italian Radio Auditions) to Radio Televisione Italiana (Italian Radio Television).
3 June. The Catholic Filiberto Guala is appointed RAI's Delegate Manager. His most important choice is the assumption, after a formative course, of three hundred young intellectuals (the so-called “white corsairs”) to balance the influence of the ancient managers (generally liberals or former fascists). Among the “white corsairs”, there are people with a brilliant future, like Umberto Eco, Gianni Vattimo, Furio Colombo, Piero Angela and Andrea Camilleri.
6 June. RAI takes part to the Eurovision’s birth. Immediately after the opening show (the Narcissuses Feast, from Montreux), the Italian TV broadcasts for the whole Europe a speech by Pope Pius XII.
16 November. The first Italian miniseries, Il dottor Antonio (see below) is aired.
10 December. The fee for televisions is instituted. At the end of the year, the subscribers include 88,000 locations. Most of these TV tubes are located in public places, because of the high price of both the fee and the TV sets.
Debuts
Un, due, tre (One, two, three) – variety, directed by Mario Landi, lasted for six seasons. It is conceived as a parade of international stars, but soon the comic duo Ugo Tognazzi and Raimondo Vianello wins the audience's attention and becomes the focus of the show. Some of their sketches caricaturing other TV shows; as Mario Soldati's Travel in the Po valley, looking for genuine foods (with Vianello as the writer-gastronome) or the enquiry The working woman (with Tognazzi in woman dress) are very popular today again. After five years of huge critic and public success, the show is roughly suppressed, because of a sketch where the duo, using the freedom of the live broadcast, politely mocked the president Giovanni Gronchi.
Una risposta per voi (An answer for you) – educational program, lasted 13 seasons. The university professor Alessandro Cutolo answers to the letters of the viewers on every subject.
Passaporto (Passport) - course of English language for the young ones, care of Jole Giannini; 800 episodes.
Come le foglie (Like the leaves) – by Giuseppe Giacosa, by Mario Ferrero, with Anna Miserocchi and Ivo Garrani; the moral collapse of a high-class family after the bankruptcy of his father.
