Cover photo: Alberto Mingardi, Full Professor in History of Political Thought at IULM University, Milan.
The original version of this article was published in Italian by the same author on 18 August 2025.
Ageing, worn down by the passing years, yet still able to adapt to a world where it no longer holds the central role it once did. Television – especially in Italy – is like rock’n’roll: it is here to stay. Despite everything.
Or at least, that is how Alberto Mingardi, political scientist and Full Professor in History of Political Thought at IULM University in Milan, sees it.
“When a new medium of information emerges, it does not necessarily mean the previous one must disappear. Radio is a striking example,” Mingardi tells Mediatrends. He has devoted his latest book to a historic – and sometimes underestimated – turning point for Italian TV: the 1995 referendums to amend the Mammì law on frequency allocation and to abolish television advertising.
Mediaset production centre in Cologno Monzese, in the city of Milan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Beyond the political clash between the former prime minister and founder of the Mediaset media empire, Silvio Berlusconi, and the progressive front, embodied above all by the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), the professor analyses the social meaning of that referendum season.
He argues that Italians by and large rejected the proposals not for ideological reasons, but to preserve their right to choose what to watch on television.
This de-politicisation of the referendum questions, Mingardi recalls in his book, was the strategy adopted by Federico di Chio and Carlo Momigliano, then two young Fininvest executives tasked with steering the group’s communications on the vote.
They used it to shape the campaign in the run-up to polling day, persuading Berlusconi himself to stay silent on the issue and leaving Mediaset’s familiar faces to do the convincing of the audience.
The plan was clear: citizens had to feel the impact that a potential Yes victory would have on their daily viewing habits – above all, on the wider choice of films available in the evening.
Politics, they argued, for once had nothing to do with it.
Given the monopolistic past of RAI, Italy’s national public broadcaster, which after the arrival of a private competitor struggled to distance itself from the commercial-TV model and to redefine itself with a distinctive offer, the predominance of the No vote can be read as a repudiation of returning to a past even bleaker than an already unsatisfactory present.
When the outcome of a vote rewards those who think differently, the centrist and progressive world tends to blame the media: then Mediaset’s private channels, today social media and podcasts. Is it a way of avoiding responsibility for defeat?
That is one of the readings of the book. Each time a new medium of information appears, it is assumed to have an extraordinary power to manipulate individual choices. This idea first took hold in the United States in the 1920s and ’30s with the arrival of radio. The reasoning goes that only the newcomer can sway people: only radio and not the newspapers before, only television and not radio afterwards, only social media and not mainstream TV today. To me, it seems largely a shortcut — and in the case of the 1995 referendums, an even more curious one.
Why so?
Because the Yes campaigners had already adopted a self-absolving stance during the run-up to the vote: if we win, it will have been thanks to us. If we lose, it will be Berlusconi’s fault, since he can rely on the megaphone of his networks. And yet it was Berlusconi, back in the 1980s, who de-politicised television. He focused on entertainment because, as a commercial broadcaster, he needed as many people as possible to watch those programmes in order to sell the right advertising. That meant giving people what they wanted, rather than what it was deemed good for them to watch.
Alberto Mingardi is a co-founder of the Bruno Leoni Institute, established in 2003.
Could RAI have avoided playing on the same ground and instead built an independent public service, in the often cited BBC model?
RAI held a monopoly on news throughout the 1980s. It was the Mammì law that in some respects allowed Mediaset to launch its own newscasts. Although the very notion of quality programming is slippery, as shows that at first seem trashy later become cult favourites, the spread of commercial TV led RAI to differentiate itself only to a limited extent.
Why that choice?
By a dynamic similar to the 1995 referendum.
What do you mean?
RAI was created in the mid-1950s, and its monopoly went untouched for decades – indeed, it was reinforced until the late 1970s by several Constitutional Court rulings. The first taste of competition came with repeaters that initially, only in border areas and later across the country, began broadcasting foreign channels such as Telemontecarlo, TV Koper-Capodistria, and Radiotelevisione Svizzera Italiana. Yet even the arrival of new stations did not prompt RAI’s leadership to renew its offer.
You have spoken about the difference between politicians on TV and politicians dealing with TV.
For Italy’s political elite, RAI was – and still is – a powerful tool for consensus. It remains hugely important even today, although parties themselves are much weaker. Younger people sometimes think that the figure of the politician who manages television was born in the 1990s with Berlusconi’s success, but that is not the case. Since the 1960s, Italy has had politicians whose specialisation was precisely to dedicate themselves to TV. And that is how RAI became a kind of Disneyland for the parties.
The 1995 referendum is again a fitting case to illustrate the political strategies used to defend RAI’s status quo.
It was the application of the same logic: although the Yes supporters claimed they wanted to take two channels away from Mediaset to increase the presence of other private broadcasters in the frequency market, Italians understood that forcing the only real competitor to surrender such a significant share of its channels would only weaken competition. There was no intention of a mutual disarmament to encourage new entrants. Instead, it had been established that the number of frequencies was fixed and not expandable, and a twofold aim was pursued: to hit commercial TV, seen as culturally harmful, and to damage a political adversary.
Technological progress has overtaken the old assumption of frequency scarcity. Today, 30 years on, television in Italy is holding its ground better than in other countries against the endless supply of social media and new media. Is the end of TV only a matter of time?
I cannot predict the future, but I would be very cautious before declaring the death of television.
Photo: Unsplash.
What makes you say that?
There are three factors. The first is demographics. We are all creatures of habit and, once past a certain age threshold, we tend to maintain the same routines, including watching television for those accustomed to it. Linked to this is the so-called legacy effect, whereby certain habits are passed down, in this case helping to preserve the medium’s relevance: TG1 (Ed.: RAI’s flagship news programme) no longer holds the centrality it once had, but it is still perceived today as an authoritative source of news. The second factor lies in one of television’s most obvious weaknesses, which in fact has become a secret of its longevity.
What would that be?
TV is the least intrusive media. In many households and offices, people pay little attention to a television that nonetheless stays on in the background and occasionally catches their eye. Unlike a newspaper article or a podcast conversation, it demands far less concentration. It is another form of passive pull that is bound to last.
Photo: Unsplash.
The third point is still to come.
In the 1990s, many embraced the thesis that the dominance of the image, which had coincided with the rise of television, was destined to give way to the return of the written word, driven by what at the time was the Internet – a matter of words.
That is hard to argue today.
The situation has changed dramatically: formats are now mostly video. YouTube is not a broadcaster like Canale 5 (Ed.: Mediaset’s flagship TV channel), yet some social media platforms have borrowed certain traits from it. TikTok, for example, looks very much like a broadcaster and even thrives on content that has already been aired elsewhere by television networks.
YouTube is not a broadcaster, not a producer, yet it appears on TV.
With smart TVs, content consumption overlaps and blends. That is where we are today, and for this reason alone the news of television’s demise is premature. And, in any case, history always matters: when a new medium of information emerges, it does not necessarily mean the previous one must disappear.
The bronze horse sculpture at the entrance of RAI’s headquarters in Viale Mazzini, Rome, by sculptor Francesco Messina. Photo: WordPress.
Are you referring to radio?
Yes, radio is an evergreen and a clear, useful example. Despite the arrival of more modern competitors, it may even have become more important today from a political standpoint. Of course, in the case of mainstream television, its market share continues to shrink and the companies involved will have to work out how to respond to this trend.
In what way?
By adapting. Just as in the past it was assumed that advertising was the only source of revenue for private television, only to discover that subscription models can also provide reliable revenue.
If television is here to stay, what will its relationship be in the coming years with the new media and the platforms that host them?
Perhaps it is not so far-fetched to imagine these media coexisting after all.
