Italian TV schedules have over the last four or five years fallen prey to the ‘reality’ format. The initial success of Grande Fratello [Big Brother] led executives in both the public (RAI) and private networks (most noticeably Berlusconi’s Mediaset) scrambling to import various other simple, and most-importantly, tele-votable formats. An industry has sprung up providing b,c & d-list celebrities willing to be shipwrecked, learn to dance, ice skate, or even join the circus – all in order to show the Italian public ‘the real me’.

In an interview with La Stampa, TV personality Gianni Boncompagni in a recent interview was asked about the ‘endemolisation’ of Italian TV scheduling.

Boncompagni: “It’s just trash made under the format of reality that has nothing original, they’re formats prepackaged abroad and reproduced everywhere. A blow for us authors.”

La Stampa: “Is it possible that there’s nothing Italian [on the tv]?

Boncompagni: “There is one idea that’s all ours: The Holy Mass, it’s not Dutch and has nothing to do with Endemol.”

hmmmm.