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23 February: Anna Oxa wins the Sanremo festival with Senza pietà. The show is conducted, for the first time, by Fabio Fazio, sided by the actress Letitia Casta and by the Nobel Prize for Medicine Renato Dulbecco; the presenter achieves a personal success, getting the presence of several international guest stars, even not related to the music, such as Michael Gorbachev and Neil Armstrong. The festival is the most watched program of the year, with 16,234,000 spectators.
26 April: at 6 am, the all-news satellite channel Rai news 24 begins to broadcast.
1 July: the thematic channels RAISat Cinema, Album (material from the RAI archive), Art, Show, Ragazzi (for children) and Gambero Rosso (cooking) make their debut (for a fee) on the satellite platform Tele+ Digitale.
27 July: Rai Way is born. The company owns and manages the RAI broadcasting infrastructure. In the year, RAI effectuates, in Rome, the first digital terrestrial broadcastings.
7 October: the first episode of ’Francamente me ne infischio, with Adriano Celentano, is broadcast. Provocative as usual, the singer alternates musical numbers with a shocking video against the capital punishment, displaying an execution in Guatemala. The show gets 9,6 million viewers.
Mediaset
3 July - Debut of Momenti di gloria, a series hosted by Mike Bongiorno in which members of the public impersonate their favourite singers.
Other channels
Law 78, regulating Italian pay-tv, is promulgated; it imposes some antitrust rules to contrast Rupert Murdoch's plans for a monopoly in the sector.
30 May: the local televisions network Italia 7 splits into two ones: 7 Gold and Europa 7, belonging to the Abruzzo businessman Francesco Di Stefano.
28 July: A decree of the Ministry of Communications establishes that the national frequencies of Rete 4 are transferred to Europa 7. The rule, which should reduce Mediaset's monopoly of private television, will never be applied, despite a long Di Stefano's legal battle.
Non lasciamoci più (Let's never break-up again) – romantic comedy by Vittorio Sindoni, with Fabrizio Frizzi (in his only performance as an actor) and Debora Caprioglio; 2 seasons. A marriage lawyer, confirmed bachelor, avoids several useless divorces, till he's embedded by his helper, a charming female private eye.
Al posto tuo (In your place)– talk-show hosted by Alba d’Eusabio ; 7 seasons. Considered a typical example of trash TV, the program is also accused of presenting as real made-up stories; following the controversies, the presenter was replaced by Paola Perego.
Cominciamo bene (We start well) – talk show of the morning, hosted by Toni Garrani, Michele Mirabella and various others; 13 seasons (+ 10 seasons of the summer edition and various spin-off).
Convenscion – cabaret with Enrico Bertolino and Natasha Stefanenko ; 3 seasons.
Festa di classe (Class party) – game show hosted by Amadeus and Pippo Franco; 2 seasons. Two VIP (a man and a woman) must compete with their old schoolmates.
Sette per uno (7 x 1) – game show of the summer from the Mirabilandia park, hosted by Gigi Sabani; 3 seasons
Sanremo estate (Sanremo in the summer) – musical show, 6 editions.
Varietà – anthology of variety from the RAI archive; 5 seasons. It generates two spin-offs (Supervarietà and Fantastico! 50 anni insieme)
News and educational
Correva l’anno (It was the year...) – historical magazine, care of Paolo Mieli.
La musica di RAI 3 – magazine of art music; 16 seasons.
C’era una volta (Once upon a time) by Silvestro Montanaro – magazine about the problems of the Third World, realized in collaboration with United Nations; 14 seasons.
For children
Melevisione (Apple TV) – show for children, hosted by Danilo Bertazzi and Lorenzo Branchetti; 16 seasons. Initially, it's a simple block programming of cartoons, but soon it evolves in two distinct shows: La Melevisione (a sti-com set in an enchanted wood) and La melevisione e le sue storie (cartoons).
Finalmente soli (Alone, at least) – sit-com with Gerry Scotti and Maria Amelia Monti, spin-off of Io e la mamma; 5 seasons and 3 TV-movies. A dentist, who has lived with his mother up to forty, faces for the first time marriage and fatherhood.
Variety
Allegria! – quiz aired for Christmas and hosted by Mike Bongiorno, with VIP contenders answering questions about television history; 3 editions.
Chi ha incastrato Peter Pan? (Who framed Peter Pan?) – game show and variety with contenders from four to ten years old, hosted by Paolo Bonolis and Luca Laurenti; 6 seasons. (The 2005 edition, hosted by Gerry Scotti, has been called Who framed Uncle Gerry?) Italian version of the Spanish Esos locos bajitos.
Il trucco c’è (There is the make-up) - talk show hosted by Rita dalla Chiesa and the make-up artist Diego dalla Palma; 2 seasons.
TV Moda – fashion magazine, hosted by Jo Squillo; again, on air. Born on the Mediaset channels, it evolves later into a satellite channel of its own., owned by Class Editori.
Anime night ; 11 seasons. Unlike in other Italian televisions, anime are broadcast uncensored for an adult audience. (MTV Italia)
Total request Italia – Italian version of Total Request Live ; 11 seasons (MTV Italia)
Come Thelma e Louise (As Thelma and Louise) – reality series, hosted by Justine Mattera, showing couples of girls travelling in exotic places; 3 seasons. (TMC 2 and later Odeon TV)
Stargate Linea di confine (Stargate borderline) – program of popular science (actually, of pseudoscience and pseudo-history), initially bound to the Stargate serial, hosted by Ruggeerio Giacobbo and, later, by Valerio Massimo Manfredi ; 9 seasons (TMC).
Diretta stadio: ed è subito gol! (later, Diretta studio), talk show commenting live the main football matches, and TG7 sport, sport news programs; both again on air (Italia 7 Gold)
Pinocchio ovvero lo spettacolo della Provvidenza (Pinocchio, or The Providence's show) – parody of the Collodi's novel, directed and interpreted by Carmelo Bene.
Meglio tardi che mai (Better late than never) – by Luca Manfredi, with Nino Manfredi and Nancy Brilli (father and wife of the director); a girl pursues to Cuba her father, fled from an oppressive family, but ends up following his example.
Tutti per uno (All for one) – by Gianfranco De Sisti, with Giampiero Ingrassia and Anna Valle; a group of children resort to all means, even illicit, to pay for a heart operation on one of their mates.
Una farfalla nel cuore (A butterfly in the heart) – by Giuliana Gamba, with Claudia Pandolfi; an upper-class girl discovers her religious calling after the death of a friend.
Il mistero del cortile (The courtyard mystery) – by Paolo Poeti, with Elisabetta Gardini and Franco Castellano; 2 episodes. A psychologist, casual witness of a murder, is, against her will, involved in the enquiry.
La donna del treno (The train woman) by Carlo Lizzani, with Antonella Fattori and Alessio Boni; 2 episodes. A deputy prosecutor investigates a crime, whose main suspect was her one-night stand.
Ombre (Shadows) – thriller by Cinzia Th Torrini, with Stefania Rocca and Tobias Moretti; coproduced with Germany. The hunt for a serial killer is bound to mysterious murders happened three centuries earlier.
Miniseries
Gli amici di Sara (The friends of Sara) by Gabriele Muccino; 8 shorts produced by Ministry of Health for a campaign against AIDS and broadcast simultaneously by RAI and Mediaset.
Fine secolo (End of the century) – by Gianni Lepre, with Fabrizio Contri, Ana Kanakis and Arnoldo Foà ; 6 episodes; intricate detective story vaguely inspired by the events of the Ferruzzi family.
La vita che verrà (The coming life) – by Pasquale Pozzerese, with Valeria Golino, Roberto De Francesco and Margherita Buy; 4 episodes; family saga, showing the Italian history from 1944 to 1960, through the lives of two married couples.
IAS – Investigatore allo sbaraglio (Detective in Jeopardy) - by Giorgio Molteni, with Corrado Mantoni as himself; pilot of a detective comedy series, not realized for the death of the showman.
Mai con i quadri (Newer with the Paintings) and Tre addii (Three farewells) – by Mario Caiano, with Daniele Liotti and Anne Roussel; a judge and a policewoman (former lovers) investigate together about mysterious murders.
Tel chi el telun (Here is the marquee in Milan dialect) - shooting of Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo stage show.
News and educational
Real TV , eroi per caso (Casual heores) - docu-drama about the dramatic experiences of true persons, hosted by Marco Liorni; the show is deleted after a season, because of a lawsuit for plagiarism by RAI.
Teletubbies (RaiSat Ragazzi) (1997-2001, 2015–present)
The Angry Beavers (Rai 2) (1997-2001)
Pocket Dragon Adventures (Italia 1) (1998-1999)