Pippo Baudo, the king of Italian TV (of yesteryear) the king of Rai (of yesteryear) the king of entertnmeint still untainted and then devoured by reality TV, the man who invented Conduction and we will dwell on that at length, has died at 89. From Canzonissina to the many editions of the Sanremo Festival to Fantastico, the list of things done by the former tall boy who came from Sicily, Militello to be precise, is long and you will find it in the other newspapers . Here we would like to focus on what Pippo Baudo was in Italian TV and what remains of Pippo Baudo in today’s TV. In today’s TV very little, a TV where there are no longer giants but only medium conductors of a product closer and closer to the recipient, indeed where the recipient becomes more and more often The sender.
Baudo, on the other hand, was the sender of a public TV still primacy, a centrality of the message directed to the country, net of the so-called allotment of parties. The host in addition to being at the center of the narrative and plot was also the vehicle and sole guarantor of the message. It was a way in which the sender, moreover through the public company Rai, dictated the message to a vast, universal, national, intergenerational audience, not in a despotic way of course but in a persuasive and distracting way as state enterteirnment can be to take it to some extremes.
Even of Costanzo, who, however, later became the king of Channel 5’s second night, the same thing was said: the demiurge host, who goes behind the guests of his show, enlivens and extinguishes them like a God who gives and takes away (television) life and unifies with his own body all segments of the narrative.
Instead, the paranthesis of the national Pippo in the then Fininvest was a disappointment. Berlusconi made the market as in soccer with a Baudo at the peak of his career and brought him into the Saturday night of his already established but yet to be perfected television. It was called Festival the program but there was no festival with Auditel and the experience ended up in the attic before its time. Quite an attic I would say because Pippo in order to settle the contract had to give his own gorgeous mansion complete with penthouse and terrace to Cav.
In that building on Aventine Avenue, in front of the FAO, I had my office as Director of Videonews for ten years. I spent many moments there, good and bad. For everyone it was the Baudo building. The top floor the most beautiful took Mentana for his Tg5 and then for his Matrix. When Mentana left or was made to leave in 2009, some of my journalists settled there. I never wanted to go there , I am superstitious like all peasants, and being precisely the son of peasants, the second floor was enough for me to command.
We got to know each other with Pippo and well, he spoke to me with hatred about that experience of which he saved little except the great Mike, who was also mistreated in the end. There was a rumor, that Costanzo, being short and not slender let’s say, said that Pippo was too tall. Yet I am 1.93 cm and with Maurizio we loved each other very much. So pure bar malice (inside the studios).
Baudo also came as a guest here and there on my programs in Mediaset, we are talking about recent years now, but you could tell and he told me that he was nostalgic for a world that was no longer there, that is no longer there, neither outside nor inside the beloved TV.
Of all the things I have read in the last few hours, too many as always when a famous person disappears, I liked what one of his most important exes, Katia Ricciarelli, said: we will see each other again soon to have a laugh together, again. How nice to laugh again, in the mysterious elsewhere where we will all end up. When the stage and camera lights of life will be turned off forever. I send you a kiss dear Goofy in that elsewhere you reached on a hot August evening, on a Saturday, with the taste of the sunrise. Almost a TV scene of yours.
The article Farewell to an anchorman comes from TheNewyorker.
