Andrea Melodia
RECONSIDERING THE OFFER FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE IN THE ERA OF FRAGMENTATION
Speed and concision, but also superficiality and dispersion, are the new paradigms of communication. The one-way live broadcast, as the conquest of the last century, is being replaced by the live two-way connection, as the conquest of this century. Now the individual is at the centre, not the masses. But how can we get through to him?
According to the new model it will be he who seeks us, and everything is therefore resolved by marketing. Nevertheless I do not think that the society of today and tomorrow can do without the collective mechanism of a general call in response to emergencies and crises, but which is also a guide for everyone, a hidden connection or Ariadne ' s thread, an instrument of social cohesion, giving a sense of belonging and of recognition of the human family despite the fragmentation of nations, languages, cultures, religions and local traditions. This is the future of the radio-television and multimedia public service, generic or generalist by definition, institutional by mandate, free and utopian by necessity.
If we accept this objective, which sees the public service as perhaps the sole survivor of generalist communication in the era of fragmentation, we must manage the transition by helping the large public and private generalist television companies to enter the era of self-programming by individuals with the right credentials. Those that will be saved, by maintaining their credibility towards individuals within the new paradigms of communication, will become the new public service in some way. Along the way, we will finally have to decide whether this task deserves the allocation of resources and independent, skilled and constitutionally guaranteed governance.
It is easier to list the mistakes of today, in the midst of the evolutionary process now underway, than to give advice. Those who try to perpetuate the generalist offer, by accepting that it should be reduced to serving an elderly generation marked by the digital divide and distinguished by cultural laziness are obviously in error. The same applies to those who produce lengthy, fossilized programmes that cannot be reused as excerpts or sound-bites, or those who supply politically biased information, thereby ensuring rejection by all those who do not identify with that alignment, rather than being at the service of everyone and of the truth. There are also those who do not realize the urgency of the obligation to reorganize the production of audiovisual information based on the immediacy of the net and not on the canonical appointments of programming-schedules, as well as those who believe that pluralism can be ensured by arming opposing extremists, those who mix politics and showbiz entertainment, and those who are unable to unite culture, curiosity and the desire to know with fun and passion. Furthermore there are those who fill their programming-schedules with fashionable knick-knacks and rubbish acquired in the markets of disposable second-hand communication, those who are incapable of the retrieval, cataloguing, reuse and enhancement through all the available media of what they produce and the list goes on and on.
To end with some more positive criticism, I wish to give some concrete advice to RAI, the company where I started my professional career and to which I owe a great deal. My advice is this: Accept the idea of your downsizing, which should not consist of foolish and pointless privatizations but should be based on an autonomous desire to cut away everything that is not necessary for the new project. Also, do not just wait for politics to resolve your problems, but demand that it should do so. It certainly has the power and potential for this. And finally, put the quality of the product back at the centre of your concerns. The public will understand this and they will respond by renewing their trust in you, a trust that today is becoming increasingly uncertain.
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