The final days of the RAI hegemony: On the sociocultural reasons behind the fall of the public monopoly

Abstract

Abstract This article examines contributory factors and main influences that made a pivotal contribution to the fall of the public radio and television monopoly in Italy in the second half of the 1970s. Four reasons are more relevant than others: changes in post-World War II Italian society; political issues such as the role of Constitutional Court and the establishment of the regions; economic factors such as the rise of industrial groups, pressure from advertisers and mass retail; and finally, technological elements such as new video-recording devices and the rise of cable television. Based mainly on secondary sources, this article pinpoints a series of reasons that go beyond – or are only partially linked to – the media world to explain a phenomenon that revolutionized Italian and European radio and television. Understanding them means understanding Italian culture at that time and, specifically, the significance of phenomena whose ramifications are still felt in the country’s contemporary media ecology.