“If I had had breasts, I would have been an announcer as well.” Enzo Biagi was the face and mind behind RAI’s news programs for 40 years. His career was cut short in 2002, when the then Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, accused him of using public television against him in a “criminal” way. However, that definition was coined long before, when the Italian media mogul had not yet made the leap into politics and his empire was in full expansion. Biagi alluded to the omnipresence of Berlusconi in his television companies and this is confirmed by those who have worked closely with him.

«He was involved in everything: from the formats to the contents, including advertising. He himself was looking for clients”, recalls Giuseppe Tringali on the phone, whose professional life has been inseparable from Mediaset since 1983, when he became CEO of Publitalia, until 2018 when he left the group as vice president in Spain and after almost 20 years as CEO of his Spanish branch and president of Publiespaña. “His genius of him has been to interpret the market paying maximum attention to advertising and the audience,” he says, “he himself said it: we make an audience to sell advertising, not the other way around.” To understand this obsession with numbers that changed the paradigm of television, both in Italy and in Spain, you have to go back to the mid-70s.

He himself said it: we make an audience to sell advertising, not the other way around

The germ of Canale 5, the cornerstone of the Berlusconi media giant, was Telemilano, a small cable channel that only broadcast in the Milan 2 luxury residential complex, created, of course, by Berlusconi himself. The station was born in September 1974, shortly after local cable broadcasting, previously monopolized by RAI, was liberalized. Four years later, he launched for the UHF signal with a television network that brought together ten local stations, five in the north (Telemilano 58, Tele Torino, TeleEmilia Romagna, VideoVeneto and A

And in this equation, of course, the audience was an unavoidable element. To deploy his new paradigm, Silvio Berlusconi turned to American television, much more advanced. Not in vain, the trump card to launch its first national channel, now without cheating, was the Dallas series, which RAI had broadcast without much conviction and incomplete, imbued with a certain paternalism: only the 13 chapters that were considered “best” were seen. ». Reluctantly and in disarray. The owner of Canale 5, then a virtually anonymous Italian, went to the US, personally bought the rights and scheduled a double broadcast: Tuesday and Thursday. It was a success. «In addition to being a great moment of family communion, television is the tool that has allowed a gradual improvement in the quality of life: in any corner of Italy there is now an offer of entertainment, an escape that allows you to spend the free hours of the day (Think of people who are home alone, of someone lying in a hospital bed) in a pleasant way,” he himself defined his creation.

We talk about loneliness as a disease now, but he already saw it long before. He created a way to keep a lot of people company

“Now we are talking about loneliness as a disease, but I allow myself to say that we have already seen that much earlier,” says Paolo Vasile, 23-year-old CEO of Mediaset España and the man who took Telecinco to the television Olympus, “what created by Berlusconi was fundamentally a form of accompaniment for many people, always putting the viewer and the advertiser in the center». Vasile’s job was to translate that successful Italian model into Spanish: «There are products that are universal, but others are not. In Spain we have ham, in Italy prosciutto; both come from the pig but they have nothing to do with it », he compares.

The tycoon was, for him, “a television craftsman, a complete editor”: “He controlled everything from the sets to the music, and he always took care of transmitting to us that television is not made, it is lived.” The secret to success in communication is, according to the long-standing CEO of Mediaset, “punctuality”: “You have to have a very strong sensitivity to detect what people like, what worries them, and give it to them at the right time and space. You don’t have to arrive before, you have to arrive at the right time.

It is underestimated that he was the first new player in the system. We must have broken the monopoly. Without him there would not be the plurality that there is today on television

«Berlusconi arrived like a storm, breaking the old European balances of old languages ​​and good manners. His was a linguistic impertinence, it awoke the desire to be like him, shameless, creative and brave”, defines Massimo Bernardini, journalist, writer and media expert, former director of the Il grande talk program, dedicated to commenting on and dismantling other television programs. television and that he has been very critical of the Berlusconi model. However, he credits him with great merit: “It is underestimated that he was the first new player in the system. We must have broken the monopoly. Without him there would not be the plurality that there is today on television.

In the mid-80s, Berlusconi tried to expand his model to France but that did not come to fruition. So in 1989 he landed in Spain, curiously with his advertising business rather than with Telecinco itself. «He made an extraordinarily commercial television where the priority was advertising, without getting into great theoretical or political disquisitions», analyzes Manuel Campo Vidal, «he managed to create a European empire. In Spain, Telecinco was for a long time the most profitable television in Europe.

“In Mediaset a phrase was repeated: ‘Our model is very simple, we make programs between block and block of advertising'”, says a professional who lived through that Spanish landing from within, “the essential thing was profitability and Berlusconi did the same as the Roman emperors: sent money to the colonies, but expected a return. If there was money, he left to do ». And what came to be called “your friendly screen” was born, that of the Mama Chicho, the contests and the spaces for humor and varieties, which bordered on the erotic. Entertainment, ease and frivolity were the three pillars of a way of making television that had been the key to success in Spain for 30 years.

He managed to create a European empire. In Spain, Telecinco was for a long time the most profitable television in Europe

«It is true that it was a more vulgar, more commercial, more banal model. It is even said that Berlusconi changed the soul of Italy », says Bernardini, « he faced the great public services that did not invite him to the party and found themselves outclassed. They wanted to win, like him, and they wanted to have his audience.” And he adds: «In reality, Berlusconi’s adventure is much more libertarian and wild than what we have been told. His shamelessness left its mark and gave oxygen to the town. He then brought with him an avalanche of contradictions, especially since he entered politics and began to favor his companies. For a democracy, it is not a pretty experience and he highlighted the structural flaws of the system ». “He caused a very difficult moment in Italy, because when he was prime minister he managed his own televisions and the three RAI channels and that created tensions with the journalistic profession itself,” agrees Campo Vidal.

Beyond the political question, it is undeniable that Silvio Berlusconi’s media vision created a school that today continues to give its last blows. In Spain, the paradigm of the exhaustion of the model is the end of Sálvame, emblem of Telecinco for the last 14 years. The audience praised that “company” that fed back some gatherings with others, some reality shows with others, until they got tired. Today the main Mediaset channel is experiencing a deep crisis that has led to a rethinking from the base after the renewal of its management leadership, at the end of last year. Berlusconi’s death seems like the last act of a way of understanding television.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project