1978 In Italian Television

This is a list of Italian television related events from 1978.

Events

Rai

* 16 March: at 9.58, an extraordinary edition of the TG1, led by Bruno Vespa, heralds Aldo Moro's abduction and the slaughter of his bodyguards. In connection from via Fani, the journalist Paolo Frajese, gasping with emotion, describes the bloody scene of the crime. On 9 May, always Vespa and Frajese, in another dramatic extraordinary edition, lasting almost four hours, report to Italy the discovery of the politician's corpse.
* 18 May: on the eve of the 1978 Italian referendum, four radical exponents appear on ''Political tribune'' gagged and with signals on the neck. Following ten minutes of silence, Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino explain that they intended to protest against the space given them by RAI, judged too exiguous.
* 30 May: for the second time in a row, a RAI production (''The Tree of Wooden Clogs'') wins the Cannes Film Festival.
* 15 June: the President Giovanni Leone, long accused by the press of corruption and nepotism, announces in television his resignation. Clearly tired and embittered, the president ends his speech by saying: “It's my duty to say, it's your right to be reassured, that for six years and a half your president was an honest man.”
* 21 June: the semifinal match Italy-Netherlands of the 1978 FIFA World Cup gets the record audience rating of the year with 27.400.000 viewers.
* 13 July Corrado Mantoni and Dora Moroni, his partner at the show ''Domenica in'', are gravely injured in a car crash. For Moroni, the accident and the following invalidity mean the end of a promising career as singer.
* 30 August: suicide of the actor Luigi Vannucchi. He was suffering from depression, despite his wide popularity gotten on stage and on television. The following week, RAI airs his last role, ''The absurd vice'', where he plays Cesare Pavese (a writer who committed suicide).
* 16 October: RAI broadcasts live the election of Pope John Paul II and his first words to the crowd.
* For RAI, the year 1978 is marked, as well as by the particularly dramatic chronicle events, by a sudden wave of liberalism about sex and nudity, in variety shows (''Stryx'', ''Ma che sera'', ''Settimo anno''), fiction (''Madame Bovary'') and information (''Aquario'', ''L’amore in Italia''), The year also marks the arrival of two anime television series (''Heidi, Girl of the Alps'' and ''Grendizer'') that are popular among the youngest public. The shows inspire fierce criticism by parents and pedagogues.

Private channels

In 1978 the Italian private televisions, overcome the number of 400 and begin to be a serious threat to the RAI monopoly, also if they are again limited to the local scope and their programming remains, with some exception, low quality (sexy shows, old movies in bad copies, infomercials).

* April: RCS Mediagroup enters in the TV business, buying Telealtomilanese, the most popular Lombard private channel.
* 2 May: in Milan, birth of Antenna Nord, owned by the editor Edilio Rusconi.
* 9 May: Franco Alfano, reporter of the Roman television GBR, gets to shot first the opening of the trunk hiding the Aldo Moro’s body, beating on time the RAI correspondent Paolo Frajese. Not wanting to speculate on a tragedy, GBR gives in for free the historical images to RAI.
* 26 May: in Rome, birth of RTI (Radio Televisione Italiana), owned by Carlo Perrone.
* 7 September: the cable TV Telemilanocavo begins to broadcast on air, renamed Tele Milano. In July, its editor Silvio Berlusconi had declared that his television would have been at disposal of the “right wing and anticommunist DC politicians”.
* Birth of Elefante TV, the first Italian network of local televisions, managed by the brothers Leo and Guelfo Marcucci; born as a generalist television, whose star is Beppe Grillo, in the Eighties becomes a channel airing exclusively infomercials.

Debuts

Rai

* ''Che combinazione'' (What a coincidence!) – show, hosted by Delia Scala and later by Rita Pavone, aimed to encourage the payment of the licence fee.
* ''La sberla'' (The smack) – cabaret, directed by Giancarlo Nicotra, with Gianfranco D’Angelo and Enrico Beruschi, resuming the formula of ''Non stop''; two seasons.
* ''Il trenino'' (The little train) – show for children; two seasons.
* ''Di tasca nostra'' (Of our own pocket) – magazine in defense of the consumer.

Private channels

* ''Il '' (Antenna 3 Lombardia) – game show with musical interludes, hosted by Renzo Villa.
* ''La bustarella'' (The sachet) (Antenna 3 Lombardia) – game show hosted by Ettore Andenna and directed by Beppe Recchia and Cino Tortorella, with sexy elements (in some trials, the female contenders end up naked). It sees the debut of many future Mediaset stars, as Carmen Russo.
* ''Caccia al tredici'' (Hunt for the thirteen) (various channels) – football magazine, hosted by Gianni Rivera and successively by other champions.
* ''Grand prix'' ( Quinta Rete) – magazine about motors, hosted by Andrea de Adamich.
* ''Polvere di stelle'' (Stardust) ( Telealtomilanese) – movie magazine.

Television shows

Drama

* '' Il gabbiano'' (The seagull) – by Marco Bellocchio, from the Anton Chekhov’s play, with Laura Betti, Pamela Villoresi and Remo Girone.
* ''Yerma'' – by Marco Ferreri, from the Federico Garcia Lorca’s play, with Michele Placido, Edmonda Aldini and Franco Citti.
* ''La governante'' (The governess) – by Giorgio Albertazzi, from the Vitaliano Brancati’s play, with Anna Proclemer and Gianrico Tedeschi; a Sicilian family must face the scandal of the lesbianism.
*''Closed circuit'' – by Giuliano Montaldo, with Flavio Bucci and Aurore Clement, inspired by Ray Bradbury’s '' The veldt''. The fantastic plot (the bullets of a spaghetti-western gunfighter kill really the spectators in the theatre) is an allegory about the violence in the mass media.

Miniseries

* ''Il balordo'' (The fool) – by Pino Passalacqua, from the Piero Chiara’s novel, with Tino Buazzelli in his last role; in 3 episodes. A quiet musician, victim of the circumstances, is first prosecuted by the fascism, then hailed as a hero and elected major of his village.
*''Jazz band'' – by Pupi Avati, with Lino Capolicchio, Gianni Cavina and Carlo Delle Piane; music by Amedeo Tommasi; in 3 episodes.  Pupi Avati gets his first public success, fictionalizing his youth experiences as jazz clarinetist in the Bologna of the Fifties.
*''Le mani sporche'' (Dirty hands) – by Elio Petri, from the Jean Paul Sartre’s play, with Marcello Mastroianni and Giuliana De Sio; in 3 episodes.
*''Madame Bovary'' – by Daniele D’Anza, from the Gustave Flaubert’s novel, with Carla Gravina and Paolo Bonacelli; in 6 episodes.
*''Nella città vampira. Drammi gotici'' (In the vampire city, gothic dramas) – by Giorgio Bandini, with Flavio Bucci, in 4 episodes; medley of fantastic tales by various authors ( Capuana, Lovecraft, Gogol).
*''Il processo'' (The trial) – by Luigi Di Gianni, from the Franz Kafka’s novel, with Franco Graziosi, in 2 episodes.

Among the foreign miniseries, the hits of the year are Ingmar Bergman’s ''Scenes from a marriage'' (for the critics) and ''Roots'' (for the public).

Historical dramas

* ''Alto tradimento'' (High treason) – by Walter Licastro, with Franco Branciaroli; biopic about Cesare Battisti, in 3 episodes.
* ''Il furto della Gioconda'' (The Mona Lisa’s stealing) – by Renato Castellani, with Enzo Cerusico as Vincenzo Peruggia, Bruno Cirino as Pablo Picasso and Philippe Leroy as Leonardo da Vinci; in 3 episodes.
*''Disonora il padre'' (Dishonor thy father) – by Sandro Bolchi, with Stefano Patrizi and Martine Brochard, from the autobiographical novel of Enzo Biagi; 3 episodes. The father of the title is the fascism, to which the young protagonist rebels, adhering to the Resistance.
* ''La gatta'' (The female cat) – by Leandro Castellani, with Catherine Spaak as Mathilde Carré; in 3 episodes.
* ''Nero su nero'' (Black on black) – by Dante Guardamagna, with Paolo Stoppa, in 3 episodes; inspired by the true story of Amalia and Rosa Panvini, who forged the Mussolini diaries.
* ''Storie della camorra'' (Histories of camorra) – by Paolo Gazzara, with Mariano Rigillo, Luigi Vannucchi and Massimo Ranieri, in 6 episodes; the history of the Neapolitan criminal society from the Nineteenth century to the Second world war.

News and educational

* ''Acquario'' (Aquarius) – talk show hosted by Maurizo Costanzo. Sensational the episode where the magistrate Vincenzo Salmeri, infamous puritan, has to face the porno-star Ilona Staller.
* ''L’amore in Italia'' (Love in Italy) – reportage by Luigi Comencini

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