Il progetto pedagogico della Rai: la televisione di Stato nei primi vent’anni. Il caso de ‹‹L’Approdo››

From 1954 to the present day, RAI has undoubtedly made a considerable contribution to Italy’s collective consciousness and cultural identity. Sixty years later this is still highly topical, and not just for the television industry. In the past television appeared more concerned with people’s real interests, however today it seems to respond more to the market dynamics, changing its ethical and social identity. Although the level of education and wealth in Italy has improved, increasingly low quality programs contrast this with suggestive imagery to captivate the viewer. Contemporary historians have started to be aware that audiovisual productions are essential to research. Italy’s economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s was accompanied by messages from television and other media that recounted and accelerated the economic and social progress of that period. Starting from the assumption that television has always had a decisive power over society, the focus of this study is on a less examined period in its history, the beginning of television. “better” because there was no competitor, “real” because it was indisputable and above all “didactic” because Italy, just after the war, needed education. The history of Italian television began on 3rd January 1954, with the birth of public service broadcasting. In a very short time it had completely revolutionized Italian society, transforming it into being large-scale and modern. Distances between territories and cultures shortened and society began to standardize tastes, then consumption and, eventually, thought. The end of this period was in the 1970s with the end of RAI’s monopoly, and its seeming guarantee of cultural pluralism. Control of RAI passed from government to parliament. Private television stations were booming and state television kept up with the competition, changing its productions. Television changed, with its purpose and the mindset of those in control. This is a cross study of several subjects relating to television that asks the hard questions needed to understand the truth about the architects and aims of RAI at the beginning. What values were given? On what conditions? Who wrote the programme schedules? Who chose the topics and format? Why? Who ultimately decided the form of national cultural identity transmitted through this new device? Research was in three stages. Firstly, to identify and collect the bibliography, the sitography and the national and international bibliographic equipment covering the history and scheduling of Italian television in the first two decades. In particolar reviewing educational programmes (Telescuola, Non è mai troppo tardi, La Tv dei ragazzi) and cultural programmes. Study of these programmes was based on the RAI multimedia Catalogue. The second part of the research reviewed “L’Approdo” television programme, the history, peculiarities and purposes of this cultural enterprise in all its forms, including radio and printed periodicals. The third stage was research of the archives and interviews within the RAI buildings verified the educational aims underlying television at the beginning. The conclusions are that in the beginning, television with all its limits was a didactic and socially cohesive instrument. This may seem largely verifiable and obvious, but it is less obvious to prove by examining educational television of those years such as “L’Approdo”, a cultural and educational programme which can be seen as part of lifelong learning. Validating the didactic purpose of the longest running Italian cultural television broadcast by reviewing its beginnings was interesting. Although unquestionably controversial, the aim of the programme was to spread “high” culture to millions of viewers that were unfamiliar with the topic. This aim was achieved thanks to the quality of the broadcast and to its influential and prestigious groupe d’intellectuels. The audience ratings recorded by “Opinion Service” verified the didactic and incisive potential of television to broadcast any topic, even artistic and literary ones. If Italian television in its first two decades was educational, “L’Approdo” was a well-chosen term. The name, even now, has unquestionable charm, at least for the tenacity of scholars advocating classical culture against the slow and inexorable triumph of the media society. In addition, the attempt to bring together culture and the new media, something never risked before, seems admirable and forward-looking. “L’Approdo” seems to represent an unimaginably modern television programme of the past. At the same time, more than thirty years of memory projects historical research into the future, with a remarkable collection of images and facts about art, literature, culture, publishing and society that reveals Italy and its cultural identity. The very cultural identity that television has portrayed and determined. This research began with a study of the sources, focusing firstly on the “Rai Yearbooks” (with reports of the Board of Directors and the Board of Auditors, annual financial statements and the extracts of Shareholders Meeting). Other sources were “Opinion Service” pamphlets, studies and research about television and education and RAI Eri publications: “Radiocorriere tv”, “L’Approdo Letterario”, “Notizie Rai”, “La nostra RAI”, “Video”. In the last few years RAI made publicly available a substantial variety of videos from the beginning to the present day (www.techeaperte.it). These cover the RAI Multimedia Catalogue, which was essential to this research. Also essential were the two RAI libraries in Rome.