Sequenze, palinsesti e altri equilibri. Per una storia distributiva della televisione italiana

[Autom. eng. transl.] The history of television, and that of Italian TV is no exception, it is often reconstructed through the point of view of institutions, programs and spectators. In this way we end up leaving the interface that links all three of these dimensions in the shade, or to limit to a few hints: the schedule, intended both as a place of concrete power of leaders and political influences, and as a sequence that alone gives meaning to the programs it contains by placing them in precise spaces and times, and still as an inevitable material from which the public constructs its own experience of the flow. The essay intends to trace a brief "distribution history" of Italian television, focusing in particular on some crucial junctions and passages: the birth of the palinsestual device and the previous reference models; central control of the palimpsest in the Bernabeian age; the pre- and post-Rai "internal competition"; the development of commercial scheduling techniques and the collection of listening data; the last fire of generalism in the nineties; the persistent centrality of the schedule despite (and thanks to) the challenges of convergence. If the main outline of the argumentation will follow the (slow) renewal of the practices, strategies and processes for the programming of the schedules, a distribution history cannot fail to take into account the production choices, the supply of contents on the international markets, the forms of issue, outlining the operations and turning points of a "production and distribution system" of Italian television, inevitably connected to institutional decisions as to changes in public habits, but capable of imposing its own logic, routines and even ideologies. The history of Italian TV is thus re-read in the "professional" perspective of production studies, leading to reconsider the contribution of some choices that are apparently banal but actually full of meanings and, above all, of consequences also in public discourse and in shared perception of the medium.