Well, first of all, a very good afternoon to everyone. I believe this is an excellent, a beautiful opportunity to tell a significant piece of what is both the production of information, but generally cultural production, cinematic, Italian. And here in Dogliani this afternoon we have the Chief Executive Officer of RAI, the Italian public company, well, there's nothing more to say. It's a company we all know in our lives, that has accompanied us since we were born. Giampaolo Rossi is 59 years old and since October 2024 he has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of RAI. Before that he was Director General and had various other previous experiences at RAI. Everyone describes him, because he is not a man who likes to appear much, everyone describes him as a reserved man who exposes himself little and speaks very rarely. So this is a beautiful opportunity to know, to learn from him what the dynamics are, to ask him something about what RAI is doing and what it will do. We said he is a man who speaks little, doesn't frequent much, has a certain dislike for salons. Some say, especially the somewhat radical chic ones, we'll verify that now. I ask, I read, so I ask for confirmation, that he was also a former head in the special forces of the army and therefore with the ability to understand who is in front of him, understand situations, adapt and make appropriate decisions. Naturally, I would like to start with Rossi on the issue that is so much in the newspapers. I know that probably from his point of view it is not the fundamental issue, but regarding RAI in this phase, critics say that it is very, let's call it the phrase about the synthesis and Telemeloni, to be clear, and Rossi has responded that this definition comes from those who are very angry. Because RAI has been liberated. Chief Executive Officer, from what has it been liberated and what does this accusation make you say?
Well, thank you first of all, Director, thank you for the invitation here to Dogliani where I had never been and so it is, how to say, an opportunity to know this initiative, but also to know a place, I must say, enchanting even with this background. Um, well, no, actually the issue is not exactly that of the liberation of RAI, but perhaps of the rebalancing of RAI. Well, we must start from a premise. The premise is this. RAI is the company of public radio, television, multimedia service, but it is above all the main place where today a significant piece of our national imaginary is still built. This imaginary, this story of our country happens through information, but it also happens through audiovisual, through fiction, through film, through entertainment, through cultural dissemination, that is, through those genres that in television and in new horizontal platforms define an idea of culture and country. I believe that the fundamental role of RAI is not to impose any kind of hegemony. In the past there were hegemonies that were imposed even through RAI, but that the true role of RAI is to guarantee only one hegemony, which is that of freedom of expression, that is, of the plurality of stories. And therefore the objective of those who administer a company that is complex, because then perhaps we will talk about it, it would be interesting to explain what the RAI industry is, not only what you see through television screens or listen to on radio or can see through the Replay platform, but what is behind one of the largest industries in Europe. And the fundamental objective is to ensure that stories can be as plural as possible, multiple and therefore represent the diversity of the imaginary of our country. This is the effort of those who must administer from an editorial point of view a company like RAI. In the past it has often been done, sometimes not. And so the objective is to try to maintain a proper balance between the different souls that tell the story and the identity of our nation.
I wanted to stay on this point, then go a little bit on an issue. I started doing this profession of journalist almost 40 years ago and I remember that it was said that RAI had to become like the BBC. The BBC in reality now has become something different. It is no longer the BBC of those years. But the issue of how RAI can better represent the plurality of the country, its ideas, its cultural demands is a serious issue that always leads to the point, but how is it possible if RAI still has such a strong grip of the parties? It is an almost impossible enterprise, or not?
Well, I think this. There is a RAI that is told very often even by newspapers, and there is a RAI instead that is and that is often not told. The RAI that is told often and willingly even through politics, but not only, through newspapers, some intellectuals etc., is that of a company that practically spends its days asking for permissions around to tell stories or represent plurality. The RAI that is true, instead, is that of an extraordinary company, almost unique in Europe, a company that has production structures that are envied by other European broadcasters. A RAI that in some ways has nothing to envy already now to the BBC, despite having the lowest public resources in Europe. RAI is, however, the company in Europe that has the largest number of television and radio transmission channels. It has a platform called R Play which is one of the most advanced OTTs among European models. Just think that the catalog available to RAI on R Play is double the catalog of the BBC. RAI is the company that keeps the entire Italian audiovisual industry afloat. Cinema, fiction, animation for children, documentary, without RAI it would not exist. Italian companies without RAI investments would close tomorrow because no other broadcaster in Italy, neither Italian nor foreign, invests what RAI invests in the Italian market to enhance an industry that is a national heritage of storytelling, but is also a workforce that produces billions in turnover and revenue and gives work to more than 150,000 people as an induced effect. So RAI is objectively a public service that can be criticized because it is a company that produces many contents 24 hours a day on all possible platforms. It is obviously criticizable. Yes. It is a company that is attractive to cultural environments, politics certainly yes, but it is also a company that maintains its dignity and its ability to be present from an industrial editorial point of view like few in Europe and I believe this is a value if we conceive RAI as an institution. Well, I am the Chief Executive Officer of RAI. I joined RAI in 2004, I was quite young, I was put to govern together with great professionals a company of the RAI group called Rinet, which in a short time became one of the most important digital factories in Europe of European public services. I was a board member, Director General, I held various roles from this point of view and I saw and I traversed RAI far and wide. I assure you that rarely is the level of professionalism, competence, dedication and responsibility that can be found inside this company understandable and I believe it is a truly valuable thing for all of us to defend RAI, not to denigrate it daily as often happens.
I would like to stay a bit more on the point of the idea of television and company, that is, you have said several important things regarding the prospects of generalist television which we can also deepen because they are a very serious point. You have declared that there is no right-wing or left-wing television, but good television or bad television. What defines good television or bad television? In a commercial context obviously the audience is only the share. For a public service like RAI, the appreciation of viewers is obviously important, so the share, the so-called ratings, today total audience, but also a function that commercial broadcasters cannot do. I must say that I smile a lot when I hear some exponents of the commercial television world say 'Well, but we do the public service and therefore we should have the license fee?' Because in my opinion when they say this they have no idea, probably they have never read a single line of the service contract that binds RAI to its role as a concessionaire of the public service, because RAI performs a quantity of roles and functions that have no commercial value, but that are fundamental in maintaining the social cohesion of our country. It would be interesting to see a commercial broadcaster forced to produce content in the minority languages of our country. In our country there are hundreds of thousands of citizens who are recognized as minority languages, Slovenians, Croats, Ladins. RAI produces as a public service content in original minority languages. These are activities, but many others could be cited, accessibility etc., which have no economic value. So the role of the public service is fundamentally this, to be able to balance the great impact of telling the country with social functions that obviously commercial broadcasters cannot do. Yes, certainly this is a point. Then there is RAI also as a producer of formats, content, broadcasts. In this period, I speak of the period in which he was both Director General and now Chief Executive Officer, some historical figures of TV and RAI have left, experiments have been made, some have gone well, some a little less well. What balance can you give regarding the CEOs? There have been some, well, that we have discussed a lot and what has arrived.
Well, the balance is more than positive, in the sense that today, in the first 5 months of 2025, RAI is having ratings up to May in the three generalist channels that are higher than those of the last at least 10 years with Raiuno reaching peaks of viewership throughout the day. Higher than the last 17 years and 20 years in prime time. In the first 5 months of 25 the gap in prime time in the evening which is the most important and most valuable time slot compared to the main competitor is nine points of ratings. In 2024 RAI closed in terms of ratings with a result that is the second best since 2017. So let's start from a premise. The narrative of an RAI in a ratings crisis is not true. RAI is increasing and winning a lot of ratings. RAI then, unlike commercial broadcasters, precisely because it performs a public service function and therefore not purely economic and commercial, is forced, by its function to experiment a lot, to continuously create new formats. And in a television market like this, which is deeply disintermediated, where there are high levels of competitiveness, obviously there are formats that succeed and formats that succeed less, but it is a rate, let's say, of mortality of formats and programs in line with what is the television market. After all, this is the company that in 2025 made the Sanremo Festival the most watched in the history of television, creating one of the most important shows in terms of ratings at the European level. And it is the RAI that is true, it is true, some faces have left, they have made some professional choices, in some cases less professional. Would anyone take them back? Fazio Nunziata. Well, Lucia, who is also a person I admire very much, made a life choice of her own, in the sense that she decided to leave because she had different prospects. They are all great professionals who have given a lot to RAI but today we have equally enormous professionals. I imagine Stefano De Martino, when Amadeus decided to leave RAI and on many newspapers the end of RAI was announced because Amadeus had left, RAI launched the face of Stefano De Martino who is one of the future faces of new national television entertainment. It was an incredible explosion above all expectations, as well as in the field of information, as well as in the field of entertainment, of dissemination. RAI brought back this year, after 12 years, Roberto Benigni in RAI with a plural story, let's say, that has few equals in the history of television. Let's say that it created some problems for him that evening in simultaneous with the vote in the Chamber of Deputies. No, on the contrary, it was precisely the emblem of how the story of Telemeloni is a great media marketing operation, but it does not exist because it would have been difficult to create a combination of this type. And anyway the return of Roberto Benigni to RAI is a great success also of this governance that wanted it. So I think the television market today brings talent in Italy to move from one side to the other. What we are seeing and that in terms of ratings outside RAI there is not all this great television market and very often more than RAI would like them to return, are the talents who have left who regret having left. Is there anyone who is... No, there isn't. For now there isn't. Is there anyone who is not there? A problem with Rai 3 and in RAI. What do you mean a problem with Rai 3? In the sense of definition, that is, it was a television that had a network that had a very defined identity, which has been, some say, a bit deconstructed. Well, perhaps you are talking about the old Telecabull, I imagine. No, I'm not talking about that. We have forgotten that more than anything. Well, let's say that the television model today is organized by genres, no longer by networks, so the Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai 3 channels, which were the old generalist channels, are being restructured as semi-specialized channels dedicated to specific genres. Rai 3 for a long time was the channel that had a strong cultural and ideological connotation, let's say so. But today the television model that goes by genres identifies in Rai 3 the specific channel for journalistic in-depth analysis and cultural dissemination, regardless of who does it. It is the place that attracts the audience that is interested in those specific genres, just as Rai 2 is the network that performs more than anything the function of the genre of light entertainment and experimentation. So we have reorganized Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai 3 away from ideological connotations according to criteria that go towards the model of the television of the future, that is, that of genres.
You mentioned Sanremo earlier, now there is a competition for Sanremo in progress to which you are, it seems, the only participants at the moment. It is a bit of a demonstration of what RAI is in Italy, but how will this competition end? I also read the possibility that it might not even be Sanremo the venue anymore.
Perfect. Well, we have participated in the tender issued by the Municipality of Sanremo based on a ruling by the TAR Liguria. We participated with reservation because we also reserved the right to contest this decision at the Council of State. At the same time it was appropriate that RAI, while waiting for the judgments, let's say, from a legal point of view, to be formed, participate in this tender and the fact that only RAI participated in the Sanremo tender gives a bit of a demonstration of what RAI is. Every time I go to Sanremo and, how to say, attend the great kermesse, the great entertainment show, which I repeat is one of the most important entertainment shows in Europe, I always tell my interlocutors do not look at what happens on stage. What happens on stage is a unique show, this year, by the way, motivated even more by a great artistic director who was Carlo Conte. That too was a winning choice of RAI, but look especially at what is behind the stage, because only RAI, its technicians and the production structure of RAI is able to broadcast live for 4 consecutive days in a theater that objectively is not exactly an avant-garde theater, the Teatro Ariston of Sanremo, one of the most important musical entertainment shows in the world. This means that RAI has a production machine, a technical capacity that is truly unique in our country. It is demonstrated by the fact that in a tender like that of Sanremo in the end only RAI participated.
Always between, let's say, sifting through the things he has said and those he has told, presenting a bit of his idea of public service, he said that perhaps due to ideological issues RAI has not been able to tell pieces of our history and to, how to say, tell the identity of the country. He also gave an example. He says, if the Americans had Garibaldi and the Expedition of the Thousand they would have made an incredible colossal film. We have never managed to do it. What idea is this and how does it materialize, that is, what is he preparing for us in terms of telling the identity and which colossal at this point?
Well, the story of our country through fiction, let's start from this premise, RAI is the largest producer of fiction in Italy, of cinema and fiction. Without RAI, as I said before, the entire Italian audiovisual industry would close or a good part of the audiovisual industry. So RAI has a great responsibility in the production of these genres. Obviously the limit was not so much that of RAI but perhaps that of the story of Italian cinema which in these decades has been a bit timid in telling the epics of our national history. I think for example of the Expedition of the Thousand, but I repeat, I believe that the Italian Risorgimento was such an epic that it is incredible that Italian cinema has had such timidity in telling it. I continue to believe that a character like Garibaldi in Hollywood would have an innumerable historiography of films. The Americans invented the episode of Fort Alamo as if it were a great epic, but it is a marginal episode of that story. The idea of a patriot who is sentenced to death, who leaves Italy, flees to South America, with Italian patriots, becomes admiral of a rebel fleet, frees countries in South America, takes, returns, returns to Italy and actually founds national unity. It is an epic that, I repeat, in any part of the world would have been told extensively by us there is a timidity in doing it, but because there is a timidity in recognizing the value of our national identity. And RAI on this can help cinema to tell it. Last year we told, for example, the story of Goffredo Mameli, no one had ever told it. The first rockstar, the first rockstar of modern times was Goffredo Mameli who invented not only the song of the Italians substantially, which is our national anthem, but created what was the unifying and not divisive melody of the national history. Stories of this type there are many and so the fundamental objective is to help Italian cinema to be less timid, to remember the great epics of our country, the great stories of our country, the great national stories, because the objective of RAI is not to divide but to unify and of this today we have a great need and it is succeeding, is someone working on it? I believe so, I believe so. I believe that we are succeeding because the stories we are putting together even recently are stories that anyway go in this direction. The objective is to create even contemporary stories that have a spirit of unification.
