Where Prime Time Is Porn Time

Black and white or color, Italian TV is increasingly blue

With a twirl of his TV dial on one typical evening last week, an Italian viewer could tune into the following shows: instruction in sexual positions by a scantily clad young couple; lessons in chess, French or English; a battery of commentators ruminating about the kidnaping of ex-Premier Aldo Moro; an education program to help children with their homework; a spaghetti western; a porno feature called The Masseuses; and a phone-in quiz starring a housewife--masked to protect her identity--who peeled off an item of clothing every time a caller got the answer right. For the truly hard-to-please, there were also sports and political programs, and films brought in by relay stations from France, Monaco, Malta and Yugoslavia.

All this is the result of a 1976 court ruling authorizing private local stations to compete with the two staid nationwide networks operated by Radiotelevisione Italiana (R.A.I.), the state broadcasting monopoly. Taking advantage of a lack of regulation, new stations have mushroomed. At present, 385 private stations are battling with R.A.I. and one another for the attention of the owners of Italy's 15 million TV sets. There are 31 stations in the Rome area, twelve in Milan and eight in Turin; even smaller cities have their own stations.

The private telecasters, who can get on the air with an investment of as little as $70,000, are cashing in on the frustrations of advertisers with the limited commercial time allowed by the R.A.I. networks, and on the irritation of Italian viewers with R.A.I. programming, which tends to dreary news programs and interminable talk shows. Result: the private channels have lured away an estimated 20% to 40% of Italy's prime-time viewers from the state networks.

Though some of the private stations offer classical music and good sports coverage, much of their programming consists of game shows and films, both of which seem to be dedicated to proving the pulling power of porn. When Telefantasy in Rome offered the American sex epic Deep Throat (which is banned from Italian moviehouses) on three successive evenings last January, the city all but came to a standstill while the show was on. When a Rho station, Telereporter, advertised for amateur strippers, dozens of housewives and students applied. Despite howls of protest, including a complaint from the city's Oblate Fathers that the station was "transmitting Satan live," Telereporter's amateur strip show has proved so popular that there was a run on the antennas needed to pick up the station's broadcasting frequency.

Among other recent freelance porn offerings, Rome's station PTS (for People Television Service) put on a special called Nude on Parallel Bars, featuring a nearly naked girl giving a passable imitation of Olympic Star Nadia Comaneci. Telefantasy currently stars a 23-year-old student whose job is to writhe suggestively on a bed in a baby doll nightie while listening to a male voice on the radio reading excerpts from sex novels.

Milan Psychiatrist Dino Origlia has concluded that all the amateur nudity on TV represents "the frustrated woman's revenge. These women still feel the need to assert themselves, to be the center of attention." Among other things, he says, the phenomenon shows "how we Italians have not yet overcome our sexual problems. This puts the clock back a century to keyhole sex." Other experts disagree. Says University of Trento Sociologist Gian Paolo Fabris: "Sex on the tube produces no guilt complexes. On the contrary, it creates an atmosphere of harmless complicity among the most repressed couples and can even stimulate desires."

Healthy or not, the porn programming seems likely to be curbed eventually. Already 18 stations have been warned by the courts to show more restraint or be closed down. Italy's parliament will soon consider a bill that will reduce the number of stations to 100 and limit the amount of advertising they can carry. Meanwhile there are signs that, after the porn wave, the next new rage on the tube may be politics. Italy's main parties have already established a foothold in TV, mainly through ownership by newspapers allied with them. Thus the fare on Rome's newest station, called Videouno, might be expected to be red rather than blue. The station, which will begin test operations this week, is owned by the daily Paese Sera, a supporter of Italy's Communist Party.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.