The Italian journalist Maurizo Costanzo has died this Friday in Rome at the age of 84. Television presenter, with his debate program on Mediaset channels in the 1980s, he invented a genre and starred on television nights in his country for decades.

In addition to having a very long career linked to the media, signing dozens of radio and television programs, Costanzo created stage comedies and was a screenwriter for films such as Una giornata particolare, with Sophia Loren and Mastroianni, directed by Ettore Scola in 1977. He was even an author of some songs like Se Telefonando, which Mina sang in 1966.

But his name will always be linked to the Maurizio Costanzo Show, a program held in a theater where people from politics and entertainment debated, which was a success for years and which was broadcast from 1982 until recently, with only a few years of absence.

He was born in Rome on August 28, 1938, began as a journalist for the Paese Sera newspaper in 1956 and then went on to work as a radio author on Rai and later on Mediaset, where he was successful with his debate program that launched numerous personalities from the world of television. show.

His program became the “living room” of Italian television where you had to go to be successful. Also in that period Costanzo made the maximum effort in the fight against the mafia. A personal friend of judge Giovanni Falcone, he even burned a T-shirt with the words “Mafia made in Italy” on live television.

His success made him a target of the mafia and on May 14, 1993, a car packed with explosives exploded in Rome, in via Fauro, a few meters from the Parioli Theater, where the program was being recorded, just as Costanzo was passing by on his car, although he was unharmed.

He married four times, the last one with Maria De Filippi, another of the famous faces of Italian television who hosts several programs on Mediaset.

“Maurizio Costanzo leaves us: an icon of journalism and TV, who knew how to recount difficult years with courage and professionalism. Thank you for bringing culture, sympathy and kindness to the homes of Italians. A thought for his wife Maria and their loved ones. Have a good trip,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on Twitter.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project