1983 in Italian television


This is a list of Italian television related events from 1983.

Events

1983 is a turning point in the story of Italian television. After thirty years of undisputed RAI preponderance, Berlusconi's Canale 5 fights as equal the public television and crushes the competition by the other two private networks: Rusconi's Italia 1 is absorbed by Fininvest, Mondadori's Rete 4, despite a programming of good standard, must face growing debts, moreover for a bad management of the advertising.

Rai

6 January: the final evening of Fantastico 3, hosted by Corrado Mantoni and Raffaella Carrà, gets the highest ratings of the year.5 February: Tiziana Rivale wins the 1983 Sanremo festival with Sarà quell che sarà, while Toto Cotugno gains the “people's prize”, assigned by the audience through TOTIP coupons, with "L'Italiano". Vasco Rossi polemically reveals the use of playback, leaving the stage before the end of his song "Vita spericolata". March 6: the third RAI channel, till then publicity free, begins to broadcast advertisements.April 13-14: the second RAI channel broadcasts, for the first time on the Italian television, Gone with the wind, in two episodes.June 13: the popular presenter Enzo Tortora is jailed, with the charge of Camorra association and drug trafficking; the public opinion divides into supporters of his innocence or guilt.October 3: RAI anticipates the opening of TV broadcasting from half past twelve to noon. In the lunch time slot, so far neglected, the first RAI channel airs a new phone quiz show, Pronto Raffaella? with Raffaella Carrà.October 9: the First, Second and Third RAI Channels change name in RAI 1, RAI 2 and RAI 3 and get new logos.

Private channels

January 2: birth of Rete A, owned by the editor Alberto Peruzzo. It begins as a generalist channel, but soon it specializes in home shopping and Latin-American telenovelas.January 5: Edilio Rusconi sells Italia 1 to Fininvest, for 35 billion liras. The channel becomes a television aimed to the young people. April 26–27: Rete 4 gets a scoop. While in Turin the trial to the Red Brigades is in progress, the channel broadcasts, in two evenings, an Enzo Biagi's interview to Patrizio Peci, former terrorist, and then collaborator of justice.May:Canale 5, with a share of 13%, overwhelms RAI 2 and becomes the second Italian channel; Publitalia, the Fininvest advertising agency, with a 504 million liras turnover, overcomes Sipra, the RAI agency. November 21: Canale 5 airs the first episode of the miniseries The thorn birds; it gets very high ratings, with a peak of 14 million viewers, also thanks its scandalous matter. In competition, Rete 4 airs The winds of war but with very disappointing audience results, despite a massive advertising campaign. The defeat in the “war of the fictions” deepens the Rete 4's crisis.

Debuts

RAI

Variety

Pronto Raffaella? – Noon show on RAI 1, directed by Gianni Boncompagni and hosted by Raffaella Carrà; 2 seasons. The program alternates musical numbers, talk show moments and phone games. It gets an extraordinary and unexpected public success, moreover thanks to the phone games; they are very simple and naïve but allow the public at home to interact with the TV star. RAI is forced to strictly rule the calls, to avoid the clogging of the phone lines.Serata d’onore, spring show in favor of UNICEF, hosted by Pippo Baudo and others; 8 seasons.

News and educational

Italia sera – in-depth magazine broadcast in access prime-time, hosted by Erica Bonaccorti and Mino Damato ; 4 seasons.Colosseum – semiserious magazine about the game and the show, by Brando Giordani and Emilio Ravel; 5 seasons.La straordinaria storia dell’Italia – with various hosts and Rossana Podestà as constant guest; 4 seasons.Trent’anni della nostra storia – a mixture of variety and historical reportage about Italy from 1954 to 1986, hosted by Paolo Frajese; 4 seasons.

For children

La banda dello zecchino, weekly show bound to the Zecchino d’oro, with various hosts; 19 seasons.Cartoni magici – 2 seasons.

Fininvest

Variety

Drive-in – cabaret show, set in an imaginary drive-in restaurant, written by Antonio Ricci, with Gianfranco D’Angelo, Ezio Greggio and Enrico Beruschi; 5 seasons. The show is based to two elements, by then revolutionary: the unceasing flux, without musical moments or dead times, of sketches, comic monologues and film parodies; and the constant presence of nice girls scantily dressed. It is the most successful Fininvest variety of the Eighties and launches many comic actors and female sex-symbols.

News and educational

Record – sporting magazine, hosted by Cesare Cadeo and Giacomo Crosa; 4 seasons.

Other private channels

Accendi un’amica : home shopping program. Some hosts, as Guido Angeli, testimonial of the Aiazzone furniture, and Wanna Marchi, producer and seller of improbable slimming products, become popular despite the bad taste of their performances.M’ama non m’ama, with Sabina Ciuffini and Marco Predolin; 3 seasons. First Italian dating showUn milione al secondo – quiz hosted by Pippo Baudo ; 2 seasons.Gli affari sono affari – game show hosted by Jocelyn Hattab, set in a supermarket, with clients casually chosen as contenders; 2 edizioni.

International

Fame Capitol

Shows of the year

RAI

Drama

Flipper – by Andrea Barzini, with Andrea Mingardi, Chrisitan De Sica and Margherita Buy, in two episodes; the misadventures of a wannabe rock star against the backdrop of an Emilian small-town.Il passo falso by Paolo Poeti, with Michele Placido and Valeria Ciangottini; the revenge of a man convicted of murder against his accomplices who went unpunished.10 registi italiani, 10 racconti italiani ; cycle of TV movies. The most significant is Avventura di un fotografo by Francesco Maselli, from an Italo Calvino's tale.Don Chisciotte by Maurizio Scaparro, from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, with Pino Micol and Peppe Barra.Per un viaggio in Italia, trilogy of TV-movie about a travel in Italy, directed by three non-Italian female writer.Un marziano a Roma – directed and interpreted by  Antonio Salines, from an Ennio Flaiano's play. An alien landed in Rome passes quickly from fame to oblivion.The scarlet and the black, by Jerry London, with Gregory Peck, Christopher Plummer and John Gielgud; 2 episodes.La freccia nel fianco – by Giovanni Fago, with Anne Canovas, from the Luciano Zuccoli novel, about the tragic love between a mature woman and a younger boy.

Miniseries

Delitto e castigo by Mario Missiroli, script by Tullio Kezich, with Mattia Sbragia; 5 episodes. The serial is wholly shot in studio, to get the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Dostoevskij's novel.Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana – by Piero Schivazappa, from the Carlo Emilio Gadda's novel, with Flavio Bucci; 4 episodes.

Serial

Le storie di Mozziconi – by Nanni Fabbri, with Leo Gullotta as a Roman tramp, from Luigi Malerba's tales.

Variety

Morto Troisi, viva Troisi! – by Massimo Troisi, with Roberto Benigni and Lello Arena; mockumentary where the Neapolitan actor stages his death, his burials and the hypocritical comments of his colleagues.Pranzo in TV – talk show, hosted by Luciano Rispoli; VIP and ordinary people are reunited around a dinner table to comment the daily events.Chewing gum show – comic variety, with Cochi Ponzoni and Maurizio Micheli.Folkitalia – variety with Toni Cosenza.Galassia 2 – by Gianni Boncompagni; the show, very expensive for its sci-fi scenography, is for RAI the greatest flop of the year.Gransimpatico – with Enzo Jannacci. as protagonist and Sylvie Vartan and Giorgio Gaber as constant guests.La porta magica – with Renato Rascel.

News and educational

Effetti personali – documentary by Giuseppe Bertolucci and Loris Mazzetti about the classic movies shot in Emilia Romagna.Questo secolo: 1943 e dintorni – enquiry by Enzo Biagi about the Second World War.Capitali culturali dell’Europa – European coproduction in 12 episodes. For RAI, Calo Lizzani and Ermanno Olimi made documentaries, respectively, on Venice and Milan.

Finivest

Miniseries

Variety

Beauty center show – variety set in a beauty resort, vith Barbara Bouchet and Franco and Ciccio.Ciao gente – game show hosted by Corrado Mantoni.Ric e Gian folies – with Ric e Gian and Edwige Fenech.

News and educational

Falpalà – fashion magazine, hosted by Eleonora Brigliadori.

[Rete 4]

- ''The winds of war''

Variety

Fascination – variety about love matters, hosted by Maurizio Costanzo and Simona Izzo.Gran varietà – with Luciano Salce, Loretta Goggi and Paolo Panelli, inspired to a classic RAI radio variety.

Ending this year

Attenti a noi dueDirettissima con la tua antennaFresco frescoIl telegrammaTG3 set
  • ''Zim zum zam''