More than the many defeats, it is the discussions that were never held that have brought us down. A bitter observation that stood out on a wall in Milan some time ago and which we could adopt for the fate of Rai. An example comes to us today, April 26th. A quarter of a century ago RaiNews24 began its activity. Seen in this way, the experience of the public service all news channel seems already consigned to the past. In reality, in these 25 years there is much of the company’s possible future, and above all of its problematic present.
Little has been discussed about that project that accompanied the company through the millennium. On April 26, 1999 at 6 am Roberto Morrione, the director who led the final phase of the construction and managed to obtain the completion of the construction site, ideally pressed the button that started a transmission which, as we told ourselves not without anxiety, she wouldn’t stop anymore. What was on air was something completely new for Italian television: an all-information channel, there were already some, but an editorial team based almost exclusively on the flow of network information had not even been hypothesized. The project on which we worked since 1997 was born from the explicit request of the service contract of the time, which required Rai to produce “at least” one all-news channel. We were in one of the company’s many economic transitions, coinciding with a new political season upon us. A management group, led at the time by the general director Iseppi, was being exhausted, and a new phase was announced with the arrival on the seventh floor of the duo Zaccaria as president and Pierluigi Celli as new DGs. Two indisputable experts in every corner of the company, identified with the defense of public service.
During the transition, the all news project took shape, which had to respond to a single constraint, obsessively repeated by those leaving and entering: spending little, almost nothing. We were in the midst of the emergence of that curious swarm of news and content that the internet was starting to pump out. And in fact, together with the two giants of the global video news market – the English BBC and the American CNN – there was talk of new initiatives from the French, Spanish, Swedish and, indeed, Italians. News was starting to cost little, but it wasn’t clear how to use the news online. Even more so in a company like Rai, which already had almost 2000 journalists between TV and Radio, distributed across 8 newspapers. “What do we do, create another one?”.
We danced on that question for several months, until the project we had developed to stay within budget limits reached the board of directors: a post-production channel, which would work on the flows of others, both internal to the company – around 700 news a day that the Rai editorial staff produced – both external, collecting and contextualising the large snake that was beginning to take shape on the web. To do this, a large newsgathering was designed with Sony, with a news room, the first of the company, in which journalists monitored, controlled, and commented on the world news that flowed on the internet and on the teleport, a kaleidoscope of almost 100 monitor connected to the main news networks on the planet.
It was a radical choice: for the first time the problem of a journalism of editing rather than testimony was posed. The novelty was precisely the fact that information began to germinate directly from events, with the first methods of user generated content. And then there were the Rai publications to ensure artisanal production. To make sense of this choice, I repeat, imposed first and foremost by a small budget which only authorized an editorial team of 49 journalists to cover the 24 hours. A constraint that initially forced us not to broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays, defining ourselves as the average of days worked.
It was therefore a question of giving meaning to this choice, placing the channel at the end of the Rai production cycle, as a continuous showcase of what was produced, giving it visibility and a service function for both individual users – the professional public that was beginning to need to always be tuned in to the latest information – both institutional – the audience of public bodies, businesses and institutions that had to be constantly updated.
It was a possible strategy. But it was not adopted. None were adopted. The corporate village was in turmoil: journalists wanted to maintain the traditional production model which made each newspaper autonomous and independent from the others; the technicians saw an imperialism of journalists who took over functions such as directing and live production; the program managers feared a limitation of their discretion, and above all the editors of the newspapers experienced the channel as an intruder, a competitor who threatened their independence.
The symbol and trademark of the project was the multiscreen. It was a screen divided into different spaces: a central video with the presenter, an icon for connecting to the network, a space for titles and accompanying texts. The idea was to think of the channel as a furnishing of public spaces, from stations to the airport, or to shops or offices, where it could be consulted with the eyes, even without sound. Let’s say a computer on the air.
All this was shattered due to corporate rejection, and above all due to the indeterminacy of Rai’s top management who was neither able nor willing to decide on the strategies that such an innovation entailed. Starting precisely from an initial idea of recomposing the company’s production structures, and from the recognition that the network was first and foremost the news factory before being a showcase for it. This vision involved a radical review, which we are just now starting to talk about, both of the production model and of the professional figures, with a tendency to intertwine between editorial functions and technical functions, with a centrality of infrastructures such as servers, then, and the cloud today, and with the power of selection and contextualization exercised by the editorial staff. As we were saying, we are talking about a quarter of a century ago now. Many trams passed through Viale Mazzini and none stopped at that station. Already discussing what happened in April 1999 could help us to get an idea of the errors and blunders, at least to understand where the slaps came from.
