The remarkable success of ‘juke-box’ television

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 42

The remarkable success of ‘juke-box’ television

NZPA-Reuter Milan Silvio Berlusconi, the Milanese business magnate who hopes to take France by storm when he helps launch its first commercial television channel next year, has revolutionised Italian leisure habits. Since his first national television network, Canale Cinque (Channel Five), went on the air in 1980, Italians have been fed a diet of films, sports programmes, soap operas and brash variety shows interspersed with high-pressure advertisements.

Such has been the success of Berlusconi’s formula, which he calls “juke-box”

television, that his empire, now expanded to three channels, regularly commands more than half of Italian television audiences. He has now set his sights yet higher with a French joint venture, saying he sees it as part of a strategy to overturn American dominance of European television. “It is only by forming an international group inEurope that we can make productions to compete with the Americans,” he said. Berlusconi’s success in Italy is all the more remarkable since the country’s private networks are at a big competitive disadvantage to the three state

channels. A 10-year-old broadcasting law allows private stations to function but bars them from making live nationwide broadcasts, effectively making news reporting impossible. Berlusconi has ingeniously got round this law by having all his programmes pre-recorded on cassettes before they are simultaneously transmitted from hundreds of relay stations throughout Italy. The result has been to trigger a bitter audience ratings war with RAI, the state broadcasting company. Sociologists believe the popularity of commercial

television has brought about lasting changes in Italian leisure.

Italians, who until the late 1970 s were among the most avid cinemagoers in Europe, now increasingly spend their evenings at home watching television. Last spring local magistrates ordered a shutdown of Berlusconi’s stations in three cities, Rome, Turin and Pescara, on the grounds that he was technically operating a nationwide broadcasting network. Millions of Italians suddenly discovered how much they had come to rely on Berlusconi for their regular evening fare of home-pro-

duced shows and — despite his European ambitions — U.S. soap operas such as Dynasty and Falcon Crest Amid public outcry the government was forced to rush through a temporary decree allowing the programmes to resume. Berlusconi, however, has many critics who argue that much of the output of his channels is flabby and frivolous.

Film directors such as Franco Zeffirelli and Federico Fellini have protested that their films have been defiled by countless breaks for advertisements, during showings on private television.