Should Rai do more to broadcast art on the three main channels?

It is not comforting that the Christmas appointment with Alberto Angela is in danger of becoming a tradition, assuming that the popular popularizer has not already entered by popular acclaim among the characters of the holiday pantheon, along with Santa Claus, Rudolph the reindeer, the Grinch, and the Dan Aykroyd-Eddie Murphy pairing. This is not comforting because it should not be normal to wait until the evening of Dec. 25 to see an art-historical popularization program in prime time on Rai’s flagship network. And we are talking, moreover, about a program not even of sublime quality, about a program that mixes popularization and entertainment, about a program that carefully avoids leaving the usual anecdotes and places: Florence, Venice, Milan, Pompeii, Naples, Rome. Places, moreover, proposed in the form of glossy, polished, innocuous postcards. The problem, however, is not so much the quality of Alberto Angela’s program: the problem is that Alberto Angela’s program is the only program on public television where art plays a non-marginal role.

Of course, we know that there is the excellent and in-depth offer of Rai5: those who want to see art on television are usually aware that they have a safe and daily landing on channel 23, where the offer is of a high level, from original or imported documentaries to that excellent container that is Art Night. But it is not enough: Rai, as a public service, has a cultural responsibility towards all citizens, not only towards enthusiasts. It is not normal that those who want a minimum of cultural insight from public television have to remember to tune in to Rai5 to avoid running into the schedule of reality shows, talk shows, reruns of dramas and cooking competitions on the generalist channels. It is not normal for the public service to limit art content to the cultural channel, effectively excluding a significant portion of the audience, starting with those who are unfamiliar with Rai5’s offerings, or those who are unfamiliar with art.

This marginalization is a fundamentally new phenomenon, which has taken on increasing proportions over the past decade or so, that is, since Rai began shifting some of its programming to thematic channels, and which would seem to have become more acute since the launch of RaiPlay (2016). At the time when Rai5 began its first broadcasts (late 2010), it was still possible on generalist channels to come across, if you will, even quite rich programming: Alberto Angela (who at the time did not yet emanate that sacred aura that, for some reason, seems to surround his figure today) was hosting Ulysses, Philippe Daverio was recording what would be the last episodes of Passepartout, every week Flavio Caroli had a not insignificant space on Che tempo che fa, a few years later (2013) Francesco Bonami would try to bring in the second night thecontemporary art with Dopo tutto non è brutto, Vittorio Sgarbi would launch into his forays on the talk Virus. The Contagion of Ideas, Achille Bonito Oliva would replace Daverio at Sunday lunchtime with Fuori quadro.

Now? It’s almost all gone: apart from a few sporadic episodes (such as Francesca Fialdini’s Rome Between Art and Faith , a format identical to Alberto Angela’s Nights, but even more soporific), the presence of art on public generalist TV is confined to very few spaces: there is the art column of Splendida cornice, which is supposed to be a program somewhere between satirical and cultural, entrusted to a former Mtv vj, Alessandro Arcodia, there is the occasional talk about art on Geo, there is a wait for an episode devoted to art topics in Paolo Mieli’s Passato e presente , and there is little else. As of today, on Rai1, Rai2 and Rai3 we usually talk about art within programs or containers that talk about something else, there are no programs entirely dedicated to art, nor do we happen to come across art documentaries broadcast on generalist channels. And let’s not even talk about contemporary art, which is practically not talked about, with the result that those who are not insiders lack even the most basic knowledge: probably for the vast majority of Italians, art history ends up where school programs usually do (at the Bauhaus or so), for those who were lucky enough to have studied art history in school.

To what do we owe this marginalization? Meanwhile, we live in the age of entertainment dominance: public television no longer has to compete only with its historic commercial competitors (Mediaset, La7), but also with streaming platforms and their endless on-demand offerings. Commercial televisions live on viewership and thus attract investment where the ratings are highest, while streaming platforms offer content on a subscription basis: it is natural that both focus on easy or very easy-to-access programs to maximize profits, and arts programs are not exactly among the easy ones, or at most among those for which most audiences would be willing to pay a subscription. This is the same reason why it is increasingly difficult to see on generalist TV in-depth programs tout court, on any subject: music, film, politics and so on. Music has been reduced to talent and competitions where music itself often plays a marginal role, thinking about politics on television is equivalent to imagining talk shows that often turn out to be chicken coops where everyone talks over each other, and even cinema is confined inside the containers. Why should Rai compete at the bottom? The point is that Rai also lives on advertising revenue: to the sums Rai gets from the licence fee (about 1.7 billion euros) must be added the revenues from advertising, about 300 million euros a year. This is why it is impossible to demand at the same time an increase in the quality of the offer and a cut in the fee: these are two mutually exclusive goals. Last year’s cut imposed on the fee (from 90 to 70 euros) was the result of a populist policy that produces, for public television, either the effect of screwing itself even more to advertising sales (thus increasingly confining topics perceived as niche to thematic channels), or that of cutting back on productions.

Art on TV then suffers from the aforementioned specialization of the channels: as thematic channels have spread, art programs have been shipped to Rai5, which is still perceived as the natural habitat for in-depth art-historical coverage. Even more difficult, then, is to see contemporary art content. This is not the end of the story: for those who offer art, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile the level of in-depth analysis that the subject matter would require and the constant lowering of the audience’s attention span. Talking about art, in essence, becomes increasingly difficult when faced with an audience increasingly accustomed to watching series in episodes that last twenty minutes, listening to podcasts that last ten minutes, and scrolling through the videos of influencers and content creators who on social media claim to exhaust a topic in one minute.

Is there then a way out? Broadcasting art on generalist channels would mean not only increasing the cultural offer, but also intercepting the interests of a wider audience, making art more accessible and, above all, fulfilling the mission of public service. Rai should give a damn about theaudience, because chasing ratings should not be its goal. However, we know that, at least for the moment, this is not the case, and it is necessary to find intermediate ways. One might then look at what La7 does, where, with seemingly paradoxical evidence, the art offerings are more extensive than those of Rai: on Aldo Cazzullo’s Particular Day they often talk about art and with a decidedly fresher and more appealing format than that of Alberto Angela’s programs, there is a container entirely dedicated to art(Artbox), there is the weekly appointment with Jacopo Veneziani (a figure to whom, it can be said without hesitation, much more space should be given) in the program In Other Words. La7’s programming is proof that it is still possible to talk about art on a generalist channel. No one, of course, is saying that there is a need to go back to the Rai of the 1970s, to Simongini’s programs, to permanent critics on TV (that would not be bad, but perhaps it would be too bold), nor that art should have a leading role that it never had in the history of Italian TV. But there are many other ways. Change strategy, experiment, dare. Public television could and should do more: Refresh formats, focus on new figures or rely on charismatic presenters, go back to including art within talk shows, within news programs, invent segments on exhibitions, hidden treasures or all that is topical about art, look for connections between art and contemporary popular culture, between art and fashion, music, cinema, find more engaging narrative forms. To show, in short, that art can aspire to a wider audience than is usually reserved for it. And try to reverse that marginalization to which art on TV has been forced for too many years.

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