Here we are. Good evening again. We are with Giampaolo Rossi, CEO of RAI. Dr. Rossi, this morning interviewed by Maurizio Crippa, Aldo Grasso, who is not just the critic of Corriere della Sera, for me he is the critic of Italy, made a dense joke, if you can call it that. Crippa asked him, 'Does Telemeloni exist?' And he replied, 'No, it doesn't exist, also because they wouldn't be capable of making it.' implying there is little capacity perhaps at RAI. Now I submit this remark to you, interpret it as you wish, and I expect an answer.
But first of all, good evening to everyone. Thank you for the invitation. I always come with great pleasure to Il Foglio's events and Salvatore's interviews, which, as usual, prepare somewhat unsettling questions. So, first of all, the main theme: Telemeloni exists. This is the great debate of Italian television today. Telemeloni does not exist; it is, as we said some time ago, a great marketing operation. In reality, RAI today remains one of the most important public broadcasters in Europe, an extraordinary industrial hub capable of sustaining the entire Italian audiovisual industry. RAI is not journalistic polemics, not the aesthetic taste of some critic. RAI is a complex, articulated industry that provides news, cultural dissemination, entertainment, and supports Italian cinema and fiction. If RAI, the public service, did not exist, the entire industry of our imagination would not exist. We would be invaded only and exclusively by American products from the big global players. So, the analysis and reflection on RAI must go beyond critics' jokes and individual aesthetic tastes, and should be placed within a complex scenario: what is the function of a public service in Italy and Europe in a modern society where democracies seem to be resolved, identities are fragmented and divided, and traditional broadcasters, once the mediators of the message, no longer exist or are in crisis because that broadcasting mode of transmitting messages is exhausting itself. Therefore, the role of the public service is much more complicated than can be captured in a joke. You may like or dislike today's RAI, but the RAI is more complex than expected. I have been in it for 20 years, so I know the complexity of that company, and I try to convey to the outside world, which simplifies RAI a lot, the complexity of a company that is a national heritage. Because this is the company that still allows investing a billion euros in a few years in sports rights and guarantees free visibility of major sporting events. It is the company that creates professionalism, that still hires journalists, while throughout Italy journalists are either fired or underpaid secretly, as often happens with other publishers. It is a company that obviously struggles because the market is very cruel, very violent, the market we are in, because technological innovation starting with artificial intelligence is producing accelerations that enter into production mechanisms and also work organization and creativity. But it is a company that, in my opinion, should be protected more deeply than jokes. Giovanni Minoli, in a recent interview I gave to Il Foglio, suggested that there is little time left until the end of this administration, about a year, and that perhaps we could give a great signal of movement, of ideas, by transforming Rai 2 into an all-news channel. He somewhat argued that you have done little, probably, and launched this idea. Is it possible? Well, I'll tell you, because people talk a lot, I tell the audience that perhaps does not follow RAI's affairs in detail, that for at least 15 years there has been talk of condensing all news broadcasts into a single news organization, not only to save money but to provide a better service. Now I don't want to list the number of journalists and news organizations, it's not just a matter of efficiency but also quality. So let's reason. I must tell you, Salvatore, I always listen with great attention to the great masters of TV like Giovanni Minoli and Carlo Freccero, also because I worked with them, I knew that RAI, and I have sincere respect for them because some of them made television history. However, we cannot ignore that television has changed a lot and RAI has changed a lot, and we must not run the risk of applying models from the 1990s or early 2000s, for example in the information segment, that no longer have relevance to reality. The RAI of Giovanni Minoli and Carlo Freccero was first of all much richer than this one because we forget that RAI operates within a competitive market and among the great public broadcasters BBC, France Télévisions, ZDF, it has the lowest public funding, the highest advertising revenue limits on the market, and regulatory mechanisms that have transformed it into a public company with all the constraints that entails. Today, if we have to apply a technological innovation process, we have to hold a European public tender. Netflix buys technologies, and the competitors that RAI fights against today are not those of 20 years ago when there was essentially Mediaset and Sky. Today RAI has to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Disney Plus, Mediaset, La7, Discovery, in a plurality of environments ranging from digital to linear. So it is clear that these solicitations, often posed by highly qualified people like Giovanni Minoli, must be read through the eyes of someone who today is forced to work in a different market. Now, RAI already has a news channel, called Rai News 24, which is a linear channel, as well as a pure free information portal, rinews.it, which has seen incredible audience growth in the last year and a half. The problem is that today news consumption occurs less and less on the linear dimension, the schedule, because news consumption, especially among younger targets, happens through processes of disintermediation on the web, through social media, through all processes of self-information. So it is likely that taking Rai 2, a generalist linear channel, and transforming it into an all-news channel probably satisfies some criteria of political aesthetics, but in the end it is unlikely to reach an adequate target and audience.
Here, Dr. Rossi, I wanted to ask you again, sorry, the question was about this or the next board of directors? If I can ask another question: this board is ending, probably there will be a reform, and that reform then changes everything. So I ask you: will you be reconfirmed as CEO or will you go do something else? And above all, have you gotten a bit tired of RAI because whatever you do, they attack you. If you do well, if you do badly, it doesn't matter. And is it true that you know the company, but I've seen you a bit worn out sometimes.
So, the order of the questions: first, if I do this, I don't know. Now we'll see what happens if this new law, this new regulation, can be passed. Would you like to stay at RAI? It's difficult because people often talk about RAI without knowing it. I believe it is an extraordinary company because even today, in an Italy where knowledge organization processes are very dispersed, RAI continues to be one of the most important spaces for constructing the imaginary. Working at RAI means intercepting everything: journalistic polemics, political polemics, but it also means being able to create very high cultural programs. It means working in the cinema and fiction segment, which we then export worldwide. It means doing the biggest TV show in Europe, the Sanremo Festival. It means intercepting a company that has technological and productive capacity that few have in Europe. Because I say, something like the Sanremo Festival, probably the BBC would not be able to organize it. A show that lasts 4 days in a place extraordinarily linked to our memory and identity, the Ariston Theatre in Sanremo, objectively a somewhat archaic theater despite its symbolic importance, and making it the biggest TV show in Europe. So it is a company that everyone would want to work for, including Giampaolo Rossi. Of course.
